Can anyone recommend a good laptop comparison site ?

[NPUK]

Hi... My son's laptop has just died so I need to get him a new one pretty quickly before he goes back to uni. Given that it was less than 4 years old I won't be buying a Dell again so need to do a bit of comparing between models. When it comes to cameras there are sites that allow you to enter different model numbers to easily compare specs and ratings but it seems much more of a minefield with laptops.

Does anyone know of a good site for laptop comparisons ?


Thanks

 

[gman]

When looking for a new laptop I used this site for a reasonably decent guide as to processor and GPU speed. It's particularly handy for processor speeds because I often find they can be a little misleading, such as a modern i5 which you would expect to be fast can sometimes be slower than a 10 year old processor.

PassMark Software - CPU Benchmarks

PassMark Software - CPU Benchmarks - Over 1 million CPUs and 1,000 models benchmarked and compared in graph form, updated daily!

www.cpubenchmark.net

Also, I recently bought this one and it's still an excellent price for the performance:

Acer Predator Helios NEO 16 AI, Intel Core Ultra 7, 16GB ...

Acer Predator Helios NEO 16 AI, Intel Core Ultra 7, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070, 16 Inch Gaming Laptop, NH.QX3EK.002 products

www.costco.co.uk

 

[Ian Grant]

My experience using laptops as my main PC for about 25 years is they typically last around 3 years before you get issues with the keyboard, or battery or screen connection.

Remember to re-use the Dell's hard drive, you can get USB caddies for all types, inc SSD.

Ian

 

[NPUK]

My experience using laptops as my main PC for about 25 years is they typically last around 3 years before you get issues with the keyboard, or battery or screen connection.

Remember to re-use the Dell's hard drive, you can get USB caddies for all types, inc SSD.

Ian

I must have been very lucky then because the Dell laptop I bought in 2011 still kind of works, albeit very slowly and needs to be plugged in so my son's failing before 4 years shocked me.
Thanks for the heads up about re-using the hard drive... I don't really understand but I'll look into it.

 

[JohnMcL7]

I must have been very lucky then because the Dell laptop I bought in 2011 still kind of works, albeit very slowly and needs to be plugged in so my son's failing before 4 years shocked me.
Thanks for the heads up about re-using the hard drive... I don't really understand but I'll look into it.

I've used many laptops and never had one last as little as three years old. I've had a few issues with graphics cards not lasting, one dual GPU laptop failed after a while and I had a little Dell XPS with the faulty batch of Nvidia cards. I have an eight year old gaming laptop which I still use regularly and also has no issues. I had a friend who was quite taken with a DV camcorder and wanted to see some of his capture, I couldn't find a charger for one of my recent Vaios so dug out a very old Vaio ultrabook (from 2004 I think, was the first consumer laptop with an LED backlit screen) and it powered up fine then captured the footage.

I think the difficulty with a laptop comparison site is there's many aspects beyond the simple specs that are important, you can have a machine with good specs on paper but if the screen quality is poor and the keyboard is rubbish then it's not worth considering. Also the computing market is in a mess at the moment as it deals with the fallout from ram and SSD prices going through the roof thanks to the genAI companies, it started with the raw ram and SSD prices but now it's really hitting the prebuilt market so prices are rocketing as well. I used to choose laptops on their repairability but even business laptops often are using mostly soldered parts and difficult t repair in the drive to make slim and light machines.

A final caveat is I'd recommend looking up the Intel or AMD sites when checking what they are exactly, I find some of the Intel naming misleading and bought what I thought was a higher rated processor but due to a change in naming it was actually a lower voltage and therefore lower performance one.

I normally use this site for checking laptops as they have a good amount of detail and they usually compare to a number of other machines too:

Reviews

Our latest laptop and notebook reviews.

www.notebookcheck.net

Hotukdeals is worth a read as well to spot deals on laptops and there can be useful comments there.

 

[Gold]

What does he use it for? If it's just standard browsing and uni work I would grab a MacBook Neo. Nothing at that price range will be as well built and last as long.

 

[Faldrax]

I've used many laptops and never had one last as little as three years old. I've had a few issues with graphics cards not lasting, one dual GPU laptop failed after a while and I had a little Dell XPS with the faulty batch of Nvidia cards. I have an eight year old gaming laptop which I still use regularly and also has no issues. I had a friend who was quite taken with a DV camcorder and wanted to see some of his capture, I couldn't find a charger for one of my recent Vaios so dug out a very old Vaio ultrabook (from 2004 I think, was the first consumer laptop with an LED backlit screen) and it powered up fine then captured the footage.

I think the difficulty with a laptop comparison site is there's many aspects beyond the simple specs that are important, you can have a machine with good specs on paper but if the screen quality is poor and the keyboard is rubbish then it's not worth considering. Also the computing market is in a mess at the moment as it deals with the fallout from ram and SSD prices going through the roof thanks to the genAI companies, it started with the raw ram and SSD prices but now it's really hitting the prebuilt market so prices are rocketing as well. I used to choose laptops on their repairability but even business laptops often are using mostly soldered parts and difficult t repair in the drive to make slim and light machines.

A final caveat is I'd recommend looking up the Intel or AMD sites when checking what they are exactly, I find some of the Intel naming misleading and bought what I thought was a higher rated processor but due to a change in naming it was actually a lower voltage and therefore lower performance one.

I normally use this site for checking laptops as they have a good amount of detail and they usually compare to a number of other machines too:

Reviews

Our latest laptop and notebook reviews.

www.notebookcheck.net

Hotukdeals is worth a read as well to spot deals on laptops and there can be useful comments there.

You also need to avoid the cheaper laptops, as they often have poor quality hinges - leading to either failure of the entire hinge (so the laptop lid either detaches, or no longer closes properly) or failure of the ribbon cable from the main board to the screen. Battery failure is also not uncommon - and far fewer laptops have easily replaceable batteries these days.

I personally use a HP laptop for work (3 1/2 years old, still fine) and have a Dell as my personal laptop (4 1/2 years old, I think, again, still good).

 

[ancient_mariner]

There's a reason why Dells are often specified for business, and it's not just cost. Usually they are reliable if unremarkable (at the lower end) and the XPS series can be fantastic. Yes, some things fail like keyboards and batteries, but generally they are solid machines.

I also like Lenovo. We both have them and my 3yo machine still does 4 hours on the battery, although we recently replaced the battery in my wife's 5 year old machine.

I would generally avoid Toshiba and HP although I just spent the morning with a chap using an HP with W7 that was slow but fine.

FWIW I wouldn't consider spending less than £500 on a laptop for quality reasons. Have a look at the Dell outlet for better value.

 

[Faldrax]

There's a reason why Dells are often specified for business, and it's not just cost. Usually they are reliable if unremarkable (at the lower end) and the XPS series can be fantastic. Yes, some things fail like keyboards and batteries, but generally they are solid machines.

I also like Lenovo. We both have them and my 3yo machine still does 4 hours on the battery, although we recently replaced the battery in my wife's 5 year old machine.

I would generally avoid Toshiba and HP although I just spent the morning with a chap using an HP with W7 that was slow but fine.

FWIW I wouldn't consider spending less than £500 on a laptop for quality reasons. Have a look at the Dell outlet for better value.

Forgot to say, my previous work laptop was a Dell, was fine after 5 years (but was starting to feel slow compared to newer models, for obvious reasons), that company used Dell exclusively and I don't think anyone in our department had any problems with them (all software developers, so quite demanding on machines).

My wife has a Levono which seems good.

 

[NPUK]

What does he use it for? If it's just standard browsing and uni work I would grab a MacBook Neo. Nothing at that price range will be as well built and last as long.

Yes, he only really uses it for uni work and browsing. I had considered a Macbook Neo but was put off by the one I was looking at only had 8GB of ram. I'm aware that you can't directly compare ram in an Apple machine vs Windows machine but I don't really understand why so it still feels like a psychological hurdle.

 

[AndrewFlannigan]

It would be worth looking at the LG Gram series of lightweight laptops. Mine is six years old and still working well.

I also use Acer, Apple, Dell and HP laptops, some of which are much older than my LG, yet still do the job when required.

Even this HP Omnibook 425 from 1994 still works for the things it does...

 

[Raincloud]

How about an iPad Air? My daughter uses one in Uni and loves it.