Which of these 3 laptops should I buy?

[EvilHamster]

These 3 laptops cost about the same, at present. What do you guys think I should choose? I want it for a bit of mobility and and a bit of gaming as well. A sort of all around kind of a thing. Work+Fun+a bit of travel.

1.Dell Inspiron 15 5567. Spec: i7-7500U + 16GB DDR4 2400MHz + 256GB SSD + R7 M445 4G GDDR5 + 42 WHr Battery

2. Acer Aspire E 15 E5-575G-54T8 Spec: i5-7200U + 8GB DDR4 SDRAM + 128 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD (prob. 5200 rpb, not 100%) + GTx 950m + ??? Batter. (I expect similar though. It says 1 WHr, which is obviously a typo).

3. HP Pavilion 15-au111ng Spec: i5-7200U + 8GB DDR4 SDRAM + 256 GB SSD + GTX 940m + 41 [strike][/strike]WHr Battery


What do you guys think? Also, not only about the specs. Things like durability, band QUALITY (not name),

 

[Lutfij]

If you're going along with specs, then my vote would go to the Acer laptop merely because you're getting more for the money. The HP fails since you have no additional storage and if you game on your laptop, that 256GB drive will fill up quite easily when given a healthy game library. The Dell's unit would've gotten my vote if you said you were looking for productivity and you're willing to backup any and/or all content onto a removable storage device(via USB or cloud).

Quality wise, the Acer's aren't bad IMHO but Dell's unit's tend to be more sculptural/beautiful.

 

[EvilHamster]

Thanks for the quick replay Lutfij.

I am looking MORE for productivity than for gaming. But I would also like to play games every now and than. Usually not the newest stuff, but say games from 2-3 years ago. (Some older ones too, I still play Medieval II ).

I can also use an external HDD for Media library and games etc. Btw. do you know if one can add a second HDD to the Dell? I was not able to find it out when I looked it up a while ago.

 

[dudeman509]

I like the specs of the Dell the best, personally.

 

[EvilHamster]

thanks dudeman509.

The thing is, form what I have seen there is very little difference in performance between the i7-7500U an d the i5-7200U. Also, 16 GB of ram seems a bit over the top. I would have preferred say an additional 1 Tb HDD and only 8 GB ram, but anyway. And the 950m seems stronger than the R7 M445.

I don't meant to be disagreeing, but I just don't know. If I may ask, did you consider the points I made in this post and still consider the DELL better speced? Perhaps I am getting it wrong. I did not use a laptop as a main PC in ... ages.. over 15 years I think. So things might be a bit different on Laptops than on Desktops.

 

[dudeman509]

You said productivity, which I figured the 16 GB RAM would help with (video editing, photo editing, heavy multitasking). I find that 16 GB of RAM on my i7-based laptop w/ a 256 GB SSD is sufficient for those tasks, but I also have a desktop with lots of storage that I offload things to when I'm not on the go.

If you're just mainly doing office stuff and occasional gaming yeah, go with the Acer. Sounds like the extra storage is important to you, so that and the better GPU are additional benefits.

I have both a Dell and an Acer (actually, a HP for work too). I like them both...the Dell for design (it's prettier), and the Acer for outright durability (it was cheaper, and it's built like a tank). HP (an Elitebook) is extremely well built and has a nice screen and incredible battery life (i7-5600u).

 

[JackNaylorPE]

This question is always interesting. First off, neither Dell, HP or Acer actually make a laptop ... not a single one. So discussions about brand quality would have no real meaning. It's entirely possible that they were made in the same factory, using many of the same components.

The vast majority of laptops on the market are manufactured by a small handful of Taiwan-based Original Design Manufacturers (ODM), although their production bases are located mostly in mainland China. Major relationships include:

Quanta sells to (among others) HP, Lenovo, Apple, Acer, Toshiba, Dell, Sony, Fujitsu and NEC
Compal sells to (among others) Acer, Dell, Toshiba, Lenovo and HP/Compaq
Wistron (former manufacturing & design division of Acer) sells to Dell, Acer, Lenovo and HP
Inventec sells to Toshiba, HP, Dell and Lenovo
Pegatron sells to Asus, Toshiba, Apple, Dell and Acer
Foxconn sells to Asus, Dell, HP and Apple
Flextronics (former Arima Computer Corporation notebook division) sells to HP

It looks as if you are in the price range if about $750. If this is the case, I would highly recommend buying a higher quality unit, custom made to your specifications.... however the entry point here is about $100 higher. Gaming, while not the primary usage, is listed as something you want to do and tho I'd want at least a 1060 to do that on a lappie, a 1050 will certainly satisfy your stated need. i will bump you up about $100 but give you much longer term of usage and be viable even 4+ years from now.

https/lpc-digital.com/product/sager-np5855-clevo-n855hj/

15.6” Full HD (1920 x 1080) Clear Matte Display
NVIDIA GeForce® GTX 1050 NVIDIA Pascal™ with 2GB GDDR5 Video Memory (HUGE Upgrade)
16GB Dual Channel DDR4 PC4 2400MHz (PC4 19200) Memory (2 x 8GB)
M.2 250GB SSD SATA 6Gb/s (OS DRIVE)
1 TB RPM SATA 6Gb/s Hard Drive
Intel® Dual Band Wireless- AC 3165 Wireless LAN + Bluetooth Module

$886.58 before discounts.

Build quality is well above the mass market outfits and service in incredible.

http/forum.notebookreview.com/threads/clevo-guide-v2-0-faq-and-reseller-info.91510/

CLEVO is a large Taiwanese computer company specializing in laptops. While the Clevo brand name is perhaps not widely known, their products are re-branded and sold by known boutique brand OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers)… notably Sager, VoodooPC, Falcon Northwest, Eurocom, etc. hey are also considered (by whoever knows about notebooks) to design and manufacturer the best of the best notebooks in terms of superior build quality and innovative designs.

 

[boosted1g]

The acer has the slighlty better GPU so gaming would be "better".
Quality wise I agree that the Dell is better, but as stated that 256gb drive will fill up quickly with games.
If the dell has a CD drive then you can replace teh CD drive with another hard drive which would be the better option.
Either way the U serries CPUs are all designed to be low power CPUs and even the i5 and i7 are just 2 core 4 thread CPUs.

If you can get a little more budget that will enable you to get an HQ serries i5/i7 and 1050/960/1060 gpu then you can have an all around good laptop for all of your goals. The current models are certainly making some tradeoffs/compromses.

 

[EvilHamster]

Thank you both for the replays.

@JackNaylorPE,
I realise that most of them are made in the same place, but they use different materials. As much as I dislike Mac, you can not, for example, say that the production quality of a highend Macbook pro is the same as that of an Acer/Asus/Lenovo etc. Not to say that the latters are badly build, just that the Mac uses Carbonfibre etc. and that material is just lighter and stronger... and more expensive.

As to having one custom build.. I don't see a reason to pay more and get the same product. I built my own Desktop, but that's because it was much cheaper and I chose ever part, even the non-advertisement parts, like PSU etc. to be quality. With a random website like that, I am not sure if I will get the same quality. Plus, I am not in the US, but the UK.

So, I think I will stick with either of the three. But thanks for the suggestion. It is good to know that that kind of alternative exists as well.

I welcome others thoughts on this as well. However, I am starting to really consider going for the Acer or the Dell. I think the HP is, in this case, probably objectively weaker than the other two.

Cheers.

 

[EvilHamster]

The acer has the slighlty better GPU so gaming would be "better".
Quality wise I agree that the Dell is better, but as stated that 256gb drive will fill up quickly with games.
If the dell has a CD drive then you can replace teh CD drive with another hard drive which would be the better option.
Either way the U serries CPUs are all designed to be low power CPUs and even the i5 and i7 are just 2 core 4 thread CPUs.

If you can get a little more budget that will enable you to get an HQ serries i5/i7 and 1050/960/1060 gpu then you can have an all around good laptop for all of your goals. The current models are certainly making some tradeoffs/compromses.

I could use an external HDD for Media etc.

But you said that one can replace the DVD drive with an HDD? How? On a Desktop that is simple. But I have never heard of that on a Laptop. Do you have a link on how its done? You would need to somehow close the drive opening, when you take the drive out. There might also be other difficulties. But if that works, that would be great to know!


The reason I am going for the U series Cpus is not just for price reasons. They also only have a TDP of 15 W, where as the HQ series have 45 W. That means 1/3 the power used for CPU + less power used on fans for cooling. I would, as such, assume that it will close to double the battery life, compared to an HQ series.

And the 7200/7500 series seem reasonable enough for most task, and most games too. Sure, not for ARMA 3 on max setting, but for something like Skyrim or Kerbal etc. I think it should be fine. An things like everyday tasks will not be affected, I am fairly certain of that.

I think the ASUS is `better' and the DELL is `prettier', but I think that they are really close... kinda need a tiebreaker .

 

[dudeman509]

I'm quite happy with the U-series CPUs for day-to-day usage. I have a Haswell i5-4210u and a Broadwell i7-5600u. They both multitask and the i7 runs some stuff that I really should have gotten a "better" laptop for (I wanted the smaller model we're issued for portability) without too much issue. Battery life is incredible and they make very little heat.

My 4-core i7 laptop SCREAMS when it's put under a heavy load, but it's a beast at multitasking or heavy workloads. Being a Sandy Bridge, battery life is...terrible.

 

[EvilHamster]

@dudeman509
My thoughts exactly. While the 4core model blows the 2-core model out of the water in pure performance, as expected, the additional power is not noticeable for most applications, even most games, since they are more GPU intensive than CPU intensive. Further the battery life, which is noticeable, is just so much better on the U series.

I am tending to go with the Acer.

Cheers everyone for their input and help. Much appreciated.


EDIT: I just bought the Acer for 600 pounds.I think it is a decent price. Thanks all for the help. Discussion is kinda closed.