Yet another new laptop thread

Bythesea

Bythesea

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I have decided that I need a new laptop as my current one is struggling under the pressure of LR5, PS CC and the Nik bundle. My budget is up to £1000, though anything under that means more money for other toys :). I have a Dell U2412M as secondary monitor so screen is not the most important feature though a good one for when I am away from home would be a benefit.

I have made up a shortlist of the following three, and any comments on their suitability or otherwise would be welcomed, together with any others that would be worth considering adding to the list.

HP Envy 17-j053ea - seems reasonably well featured but a bit expensive, though due to bad experiences with PCWorld will only get this if it is considered to be the best (by some margin). £900

Lenovo IdeaPad Y510p - the main differences between the two versions of this model are first one has 16Gb RAM, 8Gb SSD and Bluray drive, whereas the second has 8Gb RAM, 24 Gb SSD and dual graphics in place of the Bluray drive. I would probably go for the first of these two given they are the same price - which is at the top of my budget. It is also a smaller screen than the other two at 15.6" but still 1920 x 1080. £1000

Dell Inspiron 17R - This is currently favourite, especially as it is by far the cheapest of the three while not appearing to lose out too much on the specs. Am I missing something? £729

Thanks in advance for any comments or suggestions.

Edited to include prices
 
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The reason the Dell is cheaper is that it uses a lower performance processor (dual core rather than quad core and running at a lower clock). Anything modern from Intel with a U suffix is designed for minimal power usage and is designed for long battery life Ultrabooks. The other two both run the same quad core mobile i7. I've no real feel for the difference in day-to-day usage between the processors though.
 
Thanks for that, I will have to look into what difference that would make. Maybe the Lenovo is the new favourite :)
 
If you want a great screen have a look at pc.co.uk, you can build your spec of machine and the 95% gamut screen is amazing for photo editing.
 
Thanks for that, had been there but hadn't seen the IPS screens, must have been looking at the wrong chassis! Have tried again and looks promising.
 
OK, have just specced one up and come up with the following configuration. Is there anything there you would change?

Chassis & Display Cosmos Series: 15.6" Matte Full HD IPS LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-4700MQ (2.40GHz) 6MB
Memory (RAM) 16GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 750M - 2.0GB DDR3 Video RAM - DirectX® 11
Memory - Hard Disk 1TB SEAGATE HYBRID GEN3 SSHD Drive, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (5400 rpm)
 
Almost the same spec as mine.... Mines a little older and doesn't have haswell processor and my HD is the kingston SSD hyperX so all in all looks very good.
 
Bythesea said:
OK, have just specced one up and come up with the following configuration. Is there anything there you would change?

Chassis & Display Cosmos Series: 15.6" Matte Full HD IPS LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-4700MQ (2.40GHz) 6MB
Memory (RAM) 16GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 750M - 2.0GB DDR3 Video RAM - DirectX® 11
Memory - Hard Disk 1TB SEAGATE HYBRID GEN3 SSHD Drive, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (5400 rpm)
Click to expand...

That's a pretty well specced machine. The bottleneck in that setup is the 5400spm hard-drive, personally I'm not a fan of Seagate drives, having lost two of them within a year of purchase, but you'll find stories like that with every manufacturer!

Have you considered dumping the HDD for an SSD for fast load times and augmenting with a USB3 external drive?
 
Funny you should mention that, I ordered it today but changed the drive to a 1TB HDD plus a 120GB SSD. Should make certain aspects a bit quicker. Would have liked a bigger SSD but the price already went over budget (just). Could hopefully upgrade the HDD to a SSD in the future.

Just have to wait for them to build it now.
 
I had a 120GB SSD and found it to be adequate. I had windows and Adobe CS on the SSD and everything else on the HDD and was pleased with the performance. After the CS install there was enough room for a "working folder" to speed up save/load times of files I was working on, I would them move them to the HDD once I was done. I've since done a rebuild and have gone for a bigger SSD for future-proofing.
 
Thanks Chris, that was how I was hoping to set it up so sounds as though it should do what I want.
 
I just picked up an oldish HP Pavillion G7 laptop. Specs are nothing special but for my use, it will be ideal. I picked it up cheap, and have changed a few bits (below):

i3 CPU (cant remember the model)
8GB 1600mhz ram (4GB as standard, upgraded)
nvidea gpu
240GB Kingston SSD (750GB HDD as standard, upgraded)

Its a flying machine.

Turns on and gets to desktop in around 7 seconds, loads Photoshop in 4 seconds, Lightroom in about 10 seconds.

Everything runs from the SSD.

It will purely be used to store photos on the go, and then I will pass to my PC for the editing, and delete from the laptop. So 240GB is more than enough for me.

Funnily enough, it runs quicker than my PC with the following spec (with a lot of progs installed)

i5 CPU (overclocked to 3.4ghz)
16GB RAM @ 1800mhz
128GB SSD / various HDDs

I think your laptop will run very fast with that spec!
 
futureal33 said:
I just picked up an oldish HP Pavillion G7 laptop. Specs are nothing special but for my use, it will be ideal. I picked it up cheap, and have changed a few bits (below):

i3 CPU (cant remember the model)
8GB 1600mhz ram (4GB as standard, upgraded)
nvidea gpu
240GB Kingston SSD (750GB HDD as standard, upgraded)

Its a flying machine.

Turns on and gets to desktop in around 7 seconds, loads Photoshop in 4 seconds, Lightroom in about 10 seconds.

Everything runs from the SSD.

It will purely be used to store photos on the go, and then I will pass to my PC for the editing, and delete from the laptop. So 240GB is more than enough for me.

Funnily enough, it runs quicker than my PC with the following spec (with a lot of progs installed)

i5 CPU (overclocked to 3.4ghz)
16GB RAM @ 1800mhz
128GB SSD / various HDDs

I think your laptop will run very fast with that spec!
Click to expand...

I must admit I'm always surprised by the performance I can get my Old Asus K53 with an I3 in it (I forget which one). As stated above I've thrown an SSD in it and upgraded to 8GB of RAM and it does very well for itself. Rather coincidentally your Desktop sounds like a similar spec to mine too!
 
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