Which laptop should I buy? Dell Inspiron vs HP Envy

[George920]

I am looking for a laptop for the upcoming school year. I am deciding between a Dell Inspiron and a HP Envy. I want the faster out of these two laptops. I am going to be doing a lot of multitasking, CAD design, video streaming, and programming. Both of these laptops are around $950.

The specs for the HP ENVY - 15t Touch Laptop are:

15.6-inch diagonal Full HD WLED-backlit Display (1920x1080) Touchscreen
1TB 5400 rpm Hybrid Hard Drive
Backlit Keyboard with Fingerprint Reader
12GB DDR3L System Memory (2 Dimm)
Intel 802.11ac WLAN and Bluetooth(R) [1x1]
Windows 8.1
HP TrueVision HD Webcam with Dual Digital Microphone
4-cell 41WHr Lithium-ion BatteryG0T82AV
SuperMulti DVD burner
5th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-5500U Dual Core Processor + NVIDIA GeForce 840M 2GB Discrete Graphics

The specs for the Dell Inspiron are:

5th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-5500U processor
Features a 4MB cache and up to 3.0GHz processor speed with Turbo Boost.
16GB DDR3L memory
Note: Optical drive not included
15.6" LED-backlit high-definition touch-screen display
With IPS technology and 1920 x 1080 resolution
1TB hybrid hard drive
Incorporates an 8GB solid state drive
AMD Radeon R7 M270 graphics
With 4GB DDR3 video memory
Built-in high-definition webcam and integrated microphone
5-in-1 media reader
Supports SD, SDHC, SD 3.0, MS and MS PRO formats.
2 USB 3.0 ports and 1 USB 2.0 port
Built-in dual-band Intel® Wireless-AC 7260 LAN (802.11ac)
Bluetooth 4.0 interface
10/100 Ethernet LAN
Weighs 5.29 lbs. and measures just 0.9" thin
Microsoft Windows 8.1 64-bit operating system preinstalled

 

[Xephius]

Go with the dell, it has 16gb of memory compared to the HP laptop. it also has faster graphics powered by nvidia.

 

[manmeetpaul]

It all comes to personal choice. 12 gb of RAM is enough. The HP also features the finger print sensor which might be handy. The graphics card on the Dell is slightly better though. It's your call and brand preference at the end of the day.
Very best

 

[jaguarskx]

For general usage, there is not much of a difference between 12GB and 16GB, and RAM is generally the easiest component to upgrade in a laptop.

The Geforce 840m in the HP is more powerful than the Radeon R7 M270. The amount of dedicated RAM is not important; even the more powerful 840m is not powerful enough to use 4GB of dedicated RAM in games. The Radeon R7 M270 is closer to the older GeForce 640m than it is compared to the more recent GeForce 840m.

http/www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-R7-M270.139590.0.html

There is one thing that I do not like about the HP though and that is the mouse pad. It is too large for my personal taste because I tend to rest my palms on the laptop while typing. I have a 15" Dell Latitude 3540 with mouse pad that is smaller than the HP and my palm sometimes hit the mouse pad. My 14" Lenovo IdeaPad Y470 has an even smaller mouse pad, but I like that because I do not accidentally touch the mouse pad with my palms while typing.