The Student Room Group

Gofre's 2014 Back to School/Uni Laptop & Tablet Buyers Guide!

It's that time of year again! With results days for GCSE and A Level fast approaching it's time to start thinking about the new academic year, and one of the most important things for a lot of people is a piece of gadgetry for creating work on, researching essays, communicating with friends and family, or simply relaxing between studies. So here you'll find my top picks for laptops and tablets in the run-up to the academic year. Prices and choices are all subject for change in this fast paced time for deals, but I'll try and update the thread when I can :smile:

£100-£200: The bare essentials

These options won't be winning any awards for their glam looks, killer features, or blazing speed. But what they will do is offer a solid performance when it comes to basic tasks, especially with the help of web-based tools to minimise the workload on their internal parts.

Tesco Hudl
£99 @ Tesco

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Tesco of all places provide the first entry in the ultra-cheap segment of this roundup, the Hudl provides a remarkably decent option for users on a budget. The Hudl is well built with a fairly beefy quad core processor for such a low end product, a higher than average display resolution of 1600 x 900 and a relatively uncluttered version of Android, and gives users access to the full range of apps found on Google Play as well as Google's own productivity tools like Google Docs. Its small size means it's not going to be suited for those of you looking to write enormous essays, where the screen real estate has to be shared between the page and the keyboard, however.

Other options: Amazon's entry level Kindle Fire HD tablet occupies a similar niche to the Hudl and starts at a similarly low price of £119, but aside from the slightly better speakers it's almost entirely inferior- lower resolution display, dual core processor, less storage for £119, heavily skinned software with no access to Google Play, and it's even ad-supported unless you pay a £10 premium. Only recommended for major Amazon shopaholics who want easy access to purchasing from anywhere or those with a phobia of Tesco!

Dell Chromebook 11
£179 @ Dell

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Chromebooks have forged a niche for themselves as great budget laptops that run nice and snappy on relatively modest specs thanks to their lightweight software compared to more heavy duty operating systems like Windows. Of the current stable of Chromebooks, Dell's model has got a reputation of being the best of the bunch. It's small and light at 11" and is generally a solid performer in all areas- it has a relatively powerful processor compared to other Chromebooks, battery life is great thanks to the low power specs, the display is decent and it's well built. ChromeOS has all the functionality a lot of people will need, with Google's own web apps providing productivity alternatives to Microsoft Office and the fully featured web browser of its namesake, but for anything more demanding or specialist software you'll definitely want to be looking at Windows. You're also tied to your internet connection for getting most of the functions out of your Chromebook, so not a problem at most UK universities but something to watch out for if you can't rely on a constant connection.

Other Options: There's plenty of sub-£250 options out there running ChromeOS, so shop around for things you prioritise over others like larger bigger/better displays or more RAM. Software functionality will be practically identical between all Chromebooks though, so don't go looking for any radical new features.

Dell Inspiron 15
£169 @ Dell

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Unfortunately the recent spate of killer Core i3 deals for around £250 have dried up, so with Celeron and Pentium processors being the next best options the low price, high quality Dell Inspiron is well worth looking at. It trades the battery life, portability and SSD storage of the Chomebook 11 for a bigger screen and keyboard, large storage and, probably most importantly, a full version of Windows 8. For long essays, specialist software and generally the most functionality you can fit into a low budget, this is a great place to start searching.

Other Options: The difference in performance between different Celeron and Pentium processors at this price point will be pretty minimal, just be sure to check it's a relatively modern model (if you google the processor number, in this case it's the Intel Celeron N2830 , the first link will typically take you to the Intel/AMD product page and tell you the release date- anything from late 2013 should be fine). From here you can look at different form factors or for larger capacity storage, depending on what you need the most.

£275-£500: Standard Studenty Workhorses

At this price you're well into the region of Intel Core series processors which are more than powerful enough for the needs of most people looking to tackle causal studenty tasks for the duration of a college course or degree, and enter into the premium tablet market for those looking for an excellent media consumption device.

ASUS X551CA-SX024H
£269.97 @ Saveonlaptops

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This Asus model has the holy trinity of specs that a student on a budget should ideally be looking for- a Core i3 processor for power, 4GB of RAM for multitasking and 500GB hard drive for capacity. There are plenty of 3rd generation i3 laptops floating around at the moment for around the £300 mark, but this one offers good value for the specs and Asus are typically a very reliable manufacturer.

Other Options: For £30 more you can get this Lenovo laptop with a 4th gen i3 processor. It's still a low voltage CPU so it won't be much more powerful, but it will give a slight improvement to battery life. Alternatively, as mentioned above, you can find 3rd generation i3 machines (the processor generation is denoted by the first digit of the processor number for Core processors, so here it's an i3-3217U. Be sure to look for third generation or better when buying!) for under £300 from a number of different retailers and brands, so shop around for ones you like the look of and for features you want. This Asus for example has the same processor and RAM but the hard drive is 50% larger for £20 extra.

Lenovo G510
£389.97 @ Saveonlaptops

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For a step up in power from the i3s, this Lenovo marks a great upgrade for under £100. The third gen, low voltage i3 is replaced here with a fourth generation, full power Core i5 processor which will laugh in the face of casual tasks and make more demanding ones go a bit more smoothly. Hard drive space is also doubled to 1TB for huge amounts of storage, and Lenovo are another widely regarded brand when it comes to reliability.

Other Options: The G510 is the best option for a full power i5 laptop at the moment, but you can spend a little less and get a low voltage "U" variant which will see improvements to battery life in exchange for a drop in power. In my opinion though, if you're going low voltage I would spend less and get a 4th generation i3 instead.

Lenovo Flex 14
£399 @ PCWorld

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Touchscreen laptops and convertible laptops are all the rage these days (for reasons lost to me!), and the Lenovo Flex series are a great example of both. While it doesn't fold back fully into a tablet, the flexible hinge does allow you to use it as a standard notebook, or use the keyboard as a kickstand, propping up the touchscreen for ease of use. The rest of the spec sheet is no slouch either, with a fourth generation i3 processor, 4GB of RAM and 500GB hard drive.

Apple iPad Air or Samsung Galaxy S 10.5
£399 @ Apple and PCWorld

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The iPad Air and Galaxy Tab S 10.5 both represent the best tablet experiences for their respective ecosystems. While they lack the raw power and functionality of a fully fledged laptop or Windows tablet, both the iPad and Tab offer glorious high resolution displays, all-day battery life and compact form factors, making them excellent media consumption devices and portable secondary solutions for taking out to lectures for things like note taking or light essay work in bed. Both are excellent to use and top class hardware, and the decision of which is best for you boils down to a few key differences- the iPad is undoubtedly the more premium feeling device externally, is tied into Apple's cloud based services and intergrates seamlessly across other iCloud enabled devices, and has the stability of iOS along with the unmatched selection of tablet-optimised apps its App Store contains. On the other hand, the Galaxy Tab S has a larger and even higher resolution display, has expandable storage via microSD, and has the openness and customisability of Android.

Other Options: Both the iPad and Tab S come in smaller sized models, the iPad Mini with Retina Display and Galaxy Tab S 8.4, with both tablets having identical specs and screen resolutions squeezed into a smaller package- perfect for those looking for a more compact solution. All four of these options also come with 4G models for those looking to use data on the move. On the iOS front, Apple's older models are still available for anyone looking for a slightly cheaper iPad. When it comes to Android, the Sony Xperia Z2 is a worthy consideration for its decent specs and waterproofing, buit is otherwise inferior to the Tabs. Finally a mention of the Nexus 7 and the venerable Nexus 10 too. The N7 is a rock solid performer at only £200 for 16GB with a high res 1920 x 1200 display, and while the Nexus 10 is getting a bit long in the tooth it still offers good performance and offers the same 2560 x 1600 resolution found in the more expensive Tab S models. The big defining feature here is that both Nexus devices have stock Android, making them infinitly customisable.

£500-£800: Premium machines

When you start hitting the bigger bucks, there's roughly two ways you can go, sleek and shiny or big and powerful. This category will cover the former, machines that load up on slim form factors, top notch displays, cool features or a combination of the lot!

Dell XPS 11
£699 @ Dell

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Dell's newest ultrabook does a remarkable job of fitting just about every feature you could ask for in a sub-£750 ultraportable. Small and light? Check. Good performance? A fourth gen i5 has you covered. Great display? 1440p and touchscreen! Solid state drive (for extreme loading times)? A very modest 128GB. There's very little not to like about the XPS 11 aside from if the 11" is a little too dinky for your tastes.

Other Options: Virtually every manufacturer has got in on the ultrabook game at this point, with varying success. For around £650 you should be able to find a fourth gen "U" variant i5 (U denoting low voltage) and either a decent hard drive or small SSD from most brands. Few will come close to matching that 1440p display though.

Apple MacBook Air
From £749 @ Apple (£644 @ Apple Student Store)

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A special mention has to go out to the MacBook Air line, arguably the first laptops to ever truly earn the title of ultrabook. Their slimness is matched by a lot of the market now (although they are still ridiculously slim) and their specs are well in line with the competition (notably for Apple, however, they do match up quite well against the market rather than being overly expensive) and the display resolutions are very pedestrian across the board. So why consider a MacBook Air? Three key reasons- they run OS X, have best in class trackpads, and get insane battery life. Mac OS X is a big enough draw alone for a lot of people, offering a distinctly different experience to Windows 7 or 8 that a lot of people may prefer, as well as increasingly deep integration with iOS devices. Their trackpads are a pleasure to use, large glass windows where a lot of small Windows laptops opt for smaller, more cramped ones, and coupled with OS X's extensive gesture support it makes navigating a Mac an absolute dream. Finally the Airs are particularly noteworthy for the battery life they squeeze out, with the 9 and 12 hours estimates for the 11" and 13" models respectively being more than achievable with moderate use (Apple are known for giving conservative estimates for battery life compared to other manufacturers who give optimistic ones). They well and truly are all-day machines without having to use lightweight operating systems like Windows RT, iOS or Android. Better yet, buy now through the student portal while Apple's Back to School event is still going on and you'll receive three years extended warranty for free (when bought online) and a £60 voucher to use in Apple's online stores like iTunes and the App Store.

Other Options: In terms of other Apple options, instead of a 13" Air you could get the 13" MacBook Pro with Retina Display (ignore the non-Retina MacBook Pro, poor value and easily beaten by the i5 laptops discussed in the previous segment). You trade the sheer slimness and long battery life for a glorious display and full power processor while still remaining really lightweight.

Microsoft Surface Pro 3
From £639 @ Microsoft Store (from £575 @ Microsoft Student Store)

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With the Surface Pro 3, Microsoft set the gold standard for tablets running Windows. Cramming Core series processors and a 1440p display into a remarkably thin and robust body, offering superb stylus and keyboard covers, and enhancing usability with a great kickstand make this the closest attempt at finding a true laptop/tablet hybrid yet. It's still a little while away in the UK, expected later this month, but it's available for pre-order for those looking for a do-everything tablet they can use like a laptop when it suits them, all the while getting the performance of both, it's worth holding out for.

Other Options: For the niche it fills, nothing else holds a candle to the Surface Pro 3. Perhaps the closest is the previous generation, the Surface Pro 2. It's still on sale and packs the same generation of Core processor, but lacks the refinements made in the transition to its successor models. They're also cheaper though, so it's a case of weighing up your priorities.

£500-£1000: Portable Powerhouses

Instead of going for more luxury machines, you can spend more money and get more power like the good ol' days! In this price point you start seeing quad core processors and dedicated graphics cards cropping up, ideal for gaming or more intensive professional/academic applications.

PCSpecialist Cosmos II
From £466 @ PCSpecialist. Recommended upgrades: Core i5-4210M CPU, 1 x 4GB RAM, GTX 850M graphics (total: £537)

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This marks the first entry into the gaming suggestions from PCSpecialist, a custom laptop builder that have become increasingly popular by providing virtually unlimited scope for getting exactly the right specs you want at very competitive prices. The Cosmos II is an excellent platform for building an entry level gaming machine on, capable of coming out with respectable innards like the recommended spec here for under £600. Don't expect to blow through all titles at max settings and certainly don't expect the laptop to stay nice and cool during intensive gaming sessions, but an 850M and i5 processor can handle most modern games at decent graphical settings. You can even choose to throw on Windows 7 if you like!

Other Options: As mentioned before, PCSpecialist offer huge scope for getting exactly what you want. If you wanna play on a nicer screen, there's a 1080p option. Want a different screen size? pick a similarly priced model and get playing with the different custom options! Choose as much RAM or storage space, either regular or SSD, as you need. In terms of options from more recognisable brands, there's really nothing out there at the moment that can fit this much power into a sub-£600 machine.

PCSpecialist Optimus V 15"
£796 @ Ebuyer

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Victory number 2 for PCSpecialist in the high performance category, this time a preconfigured model from ebuyer. Here we move into a full power, quad core i7 processor which is pretty much the ideal CPU for gaming, 8GB of RAM for more intensive multitasking, and a beefy 860M graphics card. All this will throw out gorgeous looking games on the 1080p display. You can expect to start pushing into the ultra-high settings of newer games with this setup.

Other Options: Asus, MSI and Gigabyte make some pretty nifty gaming machines, and while you'll pay a premium for it you can shop around to find similarly spec'd laptops to this for under a grand packing nicer designs, backlit keyboards and so in. Watch the weight though, laptops this powerful can be tanks! Of course there's always the option of heading back over to PCSpecialist and seeing what they can offer for your money too.

PCSpecialist Vortex IV Limited Edition
From £734 @ PCSpecialist. Recommended upgrades: Core i7-4710MQ CPU, 8GB RAM, GTX 870M GPU, 120GB Kingston SSD, 1TB Western Digital SSD (total: £1,047)

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Three wins in a row for PCSpecialist! I had intended to highlight other laptop brands in this category but in doing my research I found that PCSpecialist's custom and preconfigured options all offer the best value for money right now. Here we're breaking out of triple digits and into the big leagues, and the 6GB 870M in the Vortex IV is a beastly card that can play virtually every game on the market at 30fps maxed out with the right specs around it like the same i7 and 8GB RAM as before. Here they're also joined by a 120GB SSD (be sure to choose this in hard drive slot one so your OS gets installed here!) for rapid boot times of the system and a few select games and programs. All in all it's likely to see you through many years of gaming and other heavy duty tasks.

Other Options: This MSI Dominator from Saveonlaptops offers very similar specs, with an 870M graphics card (albeit only 3GB, but this isn't of enormous importance), 8GB of RAM and even a slightly more powerful processor for around the same price as the recommended Vortex configuration, but loses the SSD. And, as always, remember to shop around the different PCSpecialist models to see what they can accommodate for your budget.

£1000 and beyond: Beastly Behemoths

This is where diminishing returns start kicking in and you start moving into top tier machines. Whether you're looking for the manliest of laptops that will laugh in the face of everything you throw at it for years to come or specialised machines for your work or course's most demanding tasks, if you have the money to throw around odds are you'll find something that will meet your needs.

PCSpecialist Vortex IV Elite 17.3"
From £1,229 @ PCSpecialist

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This is my last PCSpecialist recommendation, promise! This time they get a mention for being the cheapest platform to offer the most power mobile graphics solutions currently on the market, either the twin Radeon M290X or twin Geforce GTX 880s. Yep, they take the most powerful graphics card from either manufacturer, put it in the machine, then do it again. Don't expect good battery life, do expect to treat any game for the next couple of years as a puny attempt to make these graphics cards cry. Of course there's the usual bevy of options PCSpecialist offer on all of their laptops, so be sure to throw in a quad core i7 and then whatever RAM and hard drive options you fancy- double 1TB SSDs anyone?

15 inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display
From £1,669 @ Apple (£1443 with student discount)

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At this price diminishing returns has well and truly kicked in for the Mac line, looking squarely at the spec sheet you'll notice we started outdoing these specs quite a few entries ago. However OS X, the obscenely high res display (at least until 4k laptops start showing up), entirely flash storage and awesome build quality mean the high end MacBooks remain enduringly popular among creative professionals. Whether it's using Apple's own editing programs or the Mac versions of universal apps that some users prefer, the 2880 x 1800 display means you can fit more in your timelines and even get full 1080p playback in the preview window of video editing suites. They're certainly not for everyone, but the Retina Pros can certainly be a big boon to some peoples' workflows.

Aorus X7
£1745 @ Saveonlaptops

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Not quite the most powerful gaming machine on the market but for sure among the most premium; forget Alienware, this one's a head-turner. Crammed into this ridiculously slim package are twin GTX 860Ms in SLI, about as powerful as a single top-end 880M, a full power i7, 16GB of RAM, three 128GB SSDs (and a 1TB HDD, because why not), all chucking out gaming goodness to a 17" 1080p display. Unusually light for a 17" laptop, especially one this powerful, if you want a beastly gaming machine is a suave, sophisticated package, look no further.
(edited 9 years ago)
Nice post.
I got the cosmos 2 laptop from PcSpecialist and although it did take its time in coming it is an amazing machine. I don't play 'top' games such as CoD and the like but games like Portal 2 and WoT(high settings) run very well about 30fps+.
Although I would mention this:
for PCSpecialist computers you could buy your operating system from the microsoft store. I bought windows 8.1 Pro from the windows store and got it for £50. A steal in my opinion, once you get used to windows 8 tiled interface. I quite enjoy windows 8 now and find it relatively easy to use:smile:

http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msuk/en_GB/pdp/productID.288533400
(edited 9 years ago)
There are others available as well.

I'd recommend looking at PC World. On their website you can filter by lots of different things.

Type "laptop" into their search function, then filter by product category (laptop). Then you can filter that by brand, processor, hard drive, memory, battery life, etc. I used it to narrow down my list of options and it helped me choose the laptop I've just bought.
So you directed me here :biggrin:

Im actually strongly considering buying the asus X551CA. However I dont know whether I should go for a pentium processor or i3... seeing as I'll be using it for everyday stuff like internet, studying, music and movies, would it make a significant difference for me? I mean i know the i3 is the better one but is it a significant difference in my case? im on a budget and the pentium one is quite cheaper and idk if the i3 is worth the extra money for me

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