Laptop CPU

I'd personally wait just the couple months to get the upgraded one, and use uni library in the meantime. I don't think it'll make much difference for the sort of things you want to to use it for, but i'd rather future proof a laptop as much as possible to last them few years longer, plus newer os versions and updates tend to put more of a strain on the hardware so an upgraded one should last you longer. If you're not too bothered about it lasting too long past uni and want one now then i wouldn't feel too bad about getting a lower specced one now though, especially if there's better things you can do with the money that will help your studies this year.

Is it worth it to wait until Christmas to get a laptop with 11th gen i5 or now, with 10th gen?

Ahh okay. I was hoping it would last 5-6yrs. I guess I was also worried about the lack of reviews for the newer laptops. The price range is about £700-800 so I was assuming that a lot of laptops in this range would be fairly long lasting?

For what it's worth, 8th gen i5s are still perfectly respectable chips, especially for the workloads you mention. There's always going to be something new on the horizon, and sometimes if you don't just make the purchase when you need it you'll constantly be waiting.

You're unlikely to see significant differences (in battery life or performance) when 11th gen is released, and certainly not enough to justify waiting if you need something now.

A laptop in that price range should last a fair while, i had a dell in that range that lasted me ten years (admittedly the last couple years were slow) so it should all come down to how well you take care of it and don't clog it up with too many orograms.

oh okay, thank you so much.
My current laptop has a 5th gen i3, and it works fine for all the tasks. A little slow under massive loads but works well for everything else.
The only problem is battery life, hence why I'm looking for a new one. I wasn't really sure how much of a difference 10th vs 11th gen i5 would make as I've only had this one laptop!

ahhhh that's amazing!!
Thank you for your help

So historically speaking, 8th gen was when we got the last big jump in performance. It's when Intel started offering low power quad core chips and we saw substantial improvements over 7th gen for obvious reasons. Prior to this, each new generation was fairly incremental. Same story for everything after. Compare the 10th gen 10210U to the 8th gen 8250U and you'll see the same roughly 10% difference you'd see between the 7th gen 7200U and 5th gen 5200U. But compare the 8250U to the 7200U and you can see anywhere up to 50% depending on the workload.

These incremental performance increases are fairly small and that's in synthetic workloads. In real life use (YT, essay writing, web browsing, etc.) you won't notice the difference. Compared to a 5th gen chip (and an i3 at that), you'll see significant gains for anything 8th gen and above. When it comes to battery life, you'll benefit from both more power efficient modern chips but also just having a new battery. 5th gen chips are around 5 years old at this point, and if your laptop is close to that age what you're seeing is normal battery degredation. Realistically 2-3 years is the sort of timeframe where batteries start to degrade by noticeable amounts.

So it doesn't really matter if you get 10th gen or 11th gen. You'll see significant performance improvements either way, and your battery life will just simply be better in a new laptop anyway. And if battery life is something that matters to you, you'll have more luck choosing a laptop with a large battery over waiting for minute gains from 11th gen.

Just got onto my laptop and it says it's a tenth gen i5, been pretty happy with the speed of it so far in terms of browsing, booting up and a few programs.

Ahhh, I guess now that you've said that its really not worth waiting for one, especially if 10th & 11th gen are very similar performance-wise. And I'd also assume that 11th gen laptops would be more expensive than 10th gen (with all other specs being the same)
Thank you for your help

ahhhhh sweet!! How old is your laptop?

oh okay, thank you so much.
My current laptop has a 5th gen i3, and it works fine for all the tasks. A little slow under massive loads but works well for everything else.
The only problem is battery life, hence why I'm looking for a new one. I wasn't really sure how much of a difference 10th vs 11th gen i5 would make as I've only had this one laptop!

Well we don't know for sure at this point that 11th gen will be super similar to 10th gen performance wise. But based on previous trends and what we know, nobody is really expecting some magic jump in performance. You're right about pricing, and alongside being more expensive you'll have fewer options at launch. I'm generally not a fan of recommending bleeding edge products, since it's not uncommon for new products to be a little buggy at first, which increases your wait time further.

I think more than anything else though, 10th gen simply does the job you need it to do, is likely to do so for a long time, is available now and you want it now. That's enough of a reason to just buy a suitable laptop today rather than waiting.

Only a couple months so can't speak for longevity, but speed seems great right now. It's a dell one, think it was just under 500 price wise.

If it's a 5th gen i3 model laptop, then it will be a few years old now - what model laptop is it?
Back then, laptop batteries were replaceable, so you can quite easily just replace the battery if the battery is ageing a bit, but everything else is OK.
The i3 will be a dual core CPU; 8th gen i5's and newer (as well as Ryzen 5s) are quad core or above, so the extra cores will come in handy for intensive tasks.
For Word/Office/browsing, your current i3 will probably be fine (as will any decent dual core, e.g. my 4th gen dual core i5's are fine).
YouTube, Zoom and other online video conferencing software will also be fine on a dual core i3. It may be pushed a bit harder than it'd like to be, and you definitely want to be doing those sorts of things on mains power (you'll flatten your battery rather quickly), but those activities should be fine on your current laptop.
Of course, an 8th gen core i5 (and newer) will be better, and give you more longevity over the coming years, but unless you need to start doing intensive stuff, your current laptop should be OK. Especially if it has 8GB RAM and/or an SSD.

It's a HP Pavilion 15 - 5yrs old now. The only real issues are that the touchpad is no longer working as well (need to use a mouse) and that it's not that portable - I'd be taking it around quite a bit at uni, and I'd prefer to spend as little time plugged into the mains as possible.

The issue with portability can be partially resolved by buying a new battery - so that you then don't have to carry the charger around as much as before. A 5 year old HP will have a replaceable battery, so you can just buy a battery and click it in.
The touchpad not working will require having to disassemble it, to replace the touchpad. It can be done if you're into computers (like how I am), but if you want something a bit more portable for taking around university campus (when the campuses open after Covid-19), you're better off getting an 8th generation or newer Intel Core i5 laptop/AMD Ryzen 5 laptop with a 14 inch display. 14 inches is a good balance between screen size and portability.

Though if you decide that you don't need your HP Pavilion anymore (once you've replaced it), then transfer all of your data off it, do a reset on it (there's an option in Windows 10 to do a reset, and reinstall the operating system), then sell it on eBay/Gumtree etc