The Student Room Group

Whats a good laptop for a student which is fairly affordable and decent under £300

My dad's not willing to budge on this one and I need a decent laptop which wont break down or take ages to load and stuff.I want to be able to surf the web lag free and go on youtube/football streams aswell. Under £300 would be great. I'm doing English Literature if that helps.

Thanks.
Reply 1
You gonna be using it for anything more intensive, like gaming/high def streaming etc?
Reply 2
Original post by l1lvink
You gonna be using it for anything more intensive, like gaming/high def streaming etc?


Not really gaming/mainly for uni work/go on utube/surfing the web
The Toshiba Chromebook 2 is your best bet for £300. Very fast, light, 1080p screen, etc.

Get it from Amazon US though because the UK one is the older model (and use Revolut to pay for it so you don't lose money on the exchange rate).
Reply 4
Original post by macromicro
The Toshiba Chromebook 2 is your best bet for £300. Very fast, light, 1080p screen, etc.

Get it from Amazon US though because the UK one is the older model (and use Revolut to pay for it so you don't lose money on the exchange rate).


my dad bought me the levono thinkpad edge 520 , is that good?
Original post by scrawlx101
my dad bought me the levono thinkpad edge 520 , is that good?


It's not pretty but it's a solid choice - business laptops are always a good bet for students.
Buy any intel i3 core laptop

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Original post by scrawlx101
My dad's not willing to budge on this one and I need a decent laptop which wont break down or take ages to load and stuff.I want to be able to surf the web lag free and go on youtube/football streams aswell. Under £300 would be great. I'm doing English Literature if that helps.

Bless you.
Original post by scrawlx101
My dad's not willing to budge on this one and I need a decent laptop which wont break down or take ages to load and stuff.I want to be able to surf the web lag free and go on youtube/football streams aswell. Under £300 would be great. I'm doing English Literature if that helps.

Thanks.


Acer Aspire laptop £300
configuration,
i3 processor
4 GB Hard drive
Intel Graphics card
I asked my friend as i know nothing about laptops also it gave me a chance to find out the one he prefers so i can buy him a new laptop as a christmas present as i could not afford to get it for him the last 2 christmases because i had guy bought a Tablet then the next year i had to pay him back money he lent me and he can't afford a new one and has to use an old one. He used to hog my Tablet to watch films, football, skype,etc so i only used it in the evenings so i was so glad when he got his own laptop last year but it was an old style one his friend asked him to sell for him in cash converters and cex but cash converters only offered £70 & cex £140 so he bought it off his mate for £140 himself.

3 years ago he told me to get a 10 inch Lenovo Tablet with a built in stand for £200
I waited til the sales and got it for £160 in Sainsburys as it was cheaper in there
But Currys had it on sale but they were all sold out but now 3 years later Argos are selling them for £150 so he told me about that too. So i will get another in Argos as i dropped this one a few times and it won't charge properly even though he told me to change the charger but it now takes longer to charge or sometimes won't charge at all.
I got a Tablet because it was cheaper than a laptop but does everything a laptop does i think. I love watching films, You Tube, applying for jobs, etc on it as my phone is too small to enjoy watching films but i prefer a 10 inch as 7 Inches is too small to enjoy watching films on but you can get 15 inch Tablets now but they cost more. Even though i got a 40 inch flat screen tv i can use internet on that too because it's a smart tv but i still prefer watching films close up on my Tablet. I used to have an old tv but My friend got me the new tv 2 years ago as a surprise but i still had to pay him back for it but i offered to anyway. He could have got himself a laptop instead of getting me a tv so that was really nice of him, even my own family and friends i've known for years would never have done that for me

Maybe if you got a laptop in Argos you can pay it off monthly in small amounts if you sign up for the Argos credit card as i would do that myself to get him and myself a laptop but i always get rejected due to bad credit. Or your dad can do it that way
Original post by macromicro
The Toshiba Chromebook 2 is your best bet for £300. Very fast, light, 1080p screen, etc.

Get it from Amazon US though because the UK one is the older model (and use Revolut to pay for it so you don't lose money on the exchange rate).


That's right. This is the best option unless you're willing to buy a used one.

£300 is really the lower-end of laptops so you'd be lucky to get something that isn't crap, so Toshiba all the way.
I honestly wouldn't recommend any laptop for under £300. You would be better off with a second hand iPad and a Bluetooth keyboard, honestly.

After a year the £300 laptop will be useless but a £300 iPad will stay strong.
Original post by JavaScriptMaster
That's right. This is the best option unless you're willing to buy a used one.

£300 is really the lower-end of laptops so you'd be lucky to get something that isn't crap, so Toshiba all the way.


I agree - anything that isn't at least a Core i3 (or equivalent) has no hope whatsoever. I can speak from experience.
My parents needed a laptop a few years ago, for about £250. I pointed out to them the best laptop that was in that price range, but it was an AMD-E2 CPU at 1.7GHz. Not good at all for anything other than browsing, word documents etc.
Even live streaming sites such as Youtube struggle occasionally.
We also had to set up Livestream yesterday - it defaulted to 720p HD and really struggled. Got very warm very quickly because CPU was always maxed out at 100%. Switched down to standard definition (I think it was something like 430p) and even then, the CPU was almost fully utilized. And this was just with Chromium Web Browser open with Livestream running!

My opinion: i3 or better. If you can't afford that new then you'll have to look at the used laptop market - my Acer Aspire from 2011 easily outperforms the AMD-E2 processor (assuming it doesn't cook itself), and that's a 1st gen i5. Later generations of i5 (and even i3) will perform reasonably well also.
Original post by Lemon Haze
I honestly wouldn't recommend any laptop for under £300. You would be better off with a second hand iPad and a Bluetooth keyboard, honestly.

After a year the £300 laptop will be useless but a £300 iPad will stay strong.


At a budget of £300 the only sort of CPU that you'll find is either a Pentium, which is no good for anything intensive, or a low end AMD processor, which again, is no good for anything intensive.

I think you can get other tablets as well, that are decent; for example you can get a Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 (9.7" screen) from Curry's for £299. With a microSD card to top up your storage, and a Bluetooth keyboard, you'll have something that will definitely outperform a cheap laptop (certainly new laptops below £350).
too late dad bought the levono thinkpad edge 520...
Sky 0800 151 2775
Sky are giving free lenovo laptops to any new customers who sign up with them or anyone who switch to them
I'm thinking of switching from Virgin to Sky just to get the free laptop because Virgin charge a lot
My Tablet would not charge for 2 days so I could not use TSR and when I tried to use it on my mobile TSR kept rejecting my password so I had to create a new user name as I can't use my old one for now so I could not let you know earlier
The thinkpad is very good solid choice.


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£400 is the sweet spot if you're willing to wait until the sales in December. That's what I'm doing. Perhaps while you're at university you could get a job and save some money (alternatively if you can afford it you could take some money out of your student loan) That way come December you'll get something that's slightly more future proof :smile: If you definitely think you need one for University now though then there are still plenty of lower end choices. I don't really know much about Laptops spec wise so you're better off taking advise from people above me about actual choices ^^
We're a Mac/Chromebook house and I haven't looked into the windows market for years, but I'm going to have to this weekend.

My 97 year old grandad has been emailing me that his 8 year old HP vista laptop... Anyway he's of the make do and mend generation and from Yorkshire and doesn't want to buy a new one so he's trying to roll back to XP and is having trouble with service packs. This is all far too much hassle for a 97 year old, so I'm just going to get him a machine and give the bill to my dad.

He was interested in Chromebooks, due to the price, but 'doesn't trust the cloud' and wants a copy of office on the machine.

http://cvc2.org/best-laptop-for-college-students/

I can get 25% off at John Lewis and I need the computer in my hands ASAP, as I only have time to get down and give it to him tomorrow. Is this one over'specced for windows 10 lightish use - office stuff, photos, videos, a bit of basic stuff too (although please remember I'm not paying )

Buy Lenovo Ideapad 310 Laptop, Intel Core i5, 8GB RAM, 1TB, 15.6" | John Lewis with the discount it is £400

Going on previous windows experience and wanting a trouble free existence am I right in thinking that i5+8gb should make things nice and smooth? I've not even seen windows 10, let alone used it.
How about getting an iPad with keyboard? Have you considered that as a possibility?


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