The Student Room Group

Lenovo vs HP vs Dell vs Acer

Hi, I'm buying a new laptop for uni and already have a good idea of what to get, in terms of hardware specs. I just need to figure out which brand to go with.

If anyone owns a laptop from one of these brands, please let me know about the battery life, longevity and overall quality of your laptop!

For comparison purposes, I'm aiming to buy a laptop with:

8 GB RAM (memory)
256 GB SSD storage
i5 or Ryzen 5 quad core processor
14" screen
Windows 10 operating system

In terms of the keyboard and trackpad, I like the feel of Lenovo best, but I don't really mind the others'.

Thank you :smile:
(edited 4 years ago)
Reply 1
If you are planing to purchase the laptop with the above configuration then i will recommend you to go with HP as they are best in laptop and millions of people across the globe has shown the trust with HP
Reply 2
Original post by albin6
If you are planing to purchase the laptop with the above configuration then i will recommend you to go with HP as they are best in laptop and millions of people across the globe has shown the trust with HP

Hi,

Thanks for your answer! Yeah, my top two contenders at the moment are HP and Lenovo simply because they seem to be the most popular, but I think I want to hear more about the other brands before I make my decision. I wouldn't want to miss out on something that Acer and Dell can possibly offer in comparison.

I also like Dell's and Acer's touchpad and keyboard a little more than HP's. It matters because I'll be doing a lot of typing.
Original post by APeerbhai
Hi, I'm buying a new laptop for uni and already have a good idea of what to get, in terms of hardware specs. I just need to figure out which brand to go with.

If anyone owns a laptop from one of these brands, please let me know about the battery life, longevity and overall quality of your laptop!

For comparison purposes, I'm aiming to buy a laptop with:

8 GB RAM (memory)
256 GB SSD storage
i5 or Ryzen 5 quad core processor
14" screen
Windows 10 operating system

In terms of the keyboard and trackpad, I like the feel of Lenovo best, but I don't really mind the others'.

Thank you :smile:

Hi APeerbhai,

I am a PC sales specialist and have been doing this 4 years now.
My recommendation will be going for a Dell Inspiron 14 5000 i5 / 8 GB RAM / 512 SSD currently retails at Β£699 at John Lewis or a Dell Inspiron 14 5000 Ryzen 5 / 8 GB RAM / 256 SSD which currently retails at Β£599 at Currys PC World.
I am recommending a Dell, given its reliability, durability and it's after-sales service which is second to none. Furthermore, You will enjoy additional features like Fingerprint Scanner, Anti-glare Screen and the ability to upgrade RAM upto 32 GB and Storage upto 1 TB SSD which will allow you to future-proof your laptop.
Lastly, battery life should always be taken into consideration with a pinch of salt as all brands have different standards to measure battery life. However, Intel chips are known for their optimization which allows for a significantly longer running time as compared to Ryzen chips. If the battery is your primary concern I would also recommend Dell Inspiron 13 5000 i5 / 8 GB / 256 SSD which retails for Β£599 at John Lewis.

Hope this piece will help you make your decision.
(edited 4 years ago)
texter657, as a PC sales specialist, how do you think a Dell Inspiron from Currys or John Lewis compares against a used HP 440 or 840 G5 off ebay?

What do you think of the school of thought that one should never buy from Currys unless it's an absolute emergency and you must have something right now today? Otherwise, other sources, such as ebay will give you far better deals.

For the OP, HP, Dell and Lenovo all make good business models. This is a highly competitive market. Business laptops tend to be a cut above consumer grade laptops.
The consumer gradeHP laptops that I've seen have been disappointingly built down to a price. HP business laptops on the other hand are well built.
Reply 5
Original post by texter657
Hi APeerbhai,

I am a PC sales specialist and have been doing this 4 years now.
My recommendation will be going for a Dell Inspiron 14 5000 i5 / 8 GB RAM / 512 SSD currently retails at Β£699 at John Lewis or a Dell Inspiron 14 5000 Ryzen 5 / 8 GB RAM / 256 SSD which currently retails at Β£599 at Currys PC World.
I am recommending a Dell, given its reliability, durability and it's after-sales service which is second to none. Furthermore, You will enjoy additional features like Fingerprint Scanner, Anti-glare Screen and the ability to upgrade RAM upto 32 GB and Storage upto 1 TB SSD which will allow you to future-proof your laptop.
Lastly, battery life should always be taken into consideration with a pinch of salt as all brands have different standards to measure battery life. However, Intel chips are known for their optimization which allows for a significantly longer running time as compared to Ryzen chips. If the battery is your primary concern I would also recommend Dell Inspiron 13 5000 i5 / 8 GB / 256 SSD which retails for Β£599 at John Lewis.

Hope this piece will help you make your decision.

Hi,

Thank you for your answer! I researched the differences between Intel and Ryzen processors a little after seeing your reply, and I think I'll stick with Intel based on what I've seen. It will also help narrow down the choices.

Somebody else on Student Room also recommended Dell Inspiron for university students. Battery life is pretty important as I might spend long days at uni, and I don't always want to carry my charger around. And I never thought about potential upgrades, but now I will!

I'll also check out your recommendations, they sound really helpful, thank you : )
Reply 6
Original post by Dunnig Kruger
texter657, as a PC sales specialist, how do you think a Dell Inspiron from Currys or John Lewis compares against a used HP 440 or 840 G5 off ebay?

What do you think of the school of thought that one should never buy from Currys unless it's an absolute emergency and you must have something right now today? Otherwise, other sources, such as ebay will give you far better deals.

For the OP, HP, Dell and Lenovo all make good business models. This is a highly competitive market. Business laptops tend to be a cut above consumer grade laptops.
The consumer gradeHP laptops that I've seen have been disappointingly built down to a price. HP business laptops on the other hand are well built.

Hi,

Thanks for your answer! Yeah, I've also seen many people say to go for business grade rather than consumer grade laptops. I looked at some business laptops on Currys but generally they're a bit more expensive than what I'm willing to pay for. I guess the specs above will get me through uni and a few years after?
Reply 7
Original post by APeerbhai
Hi,

Thank you for your answer! I researched the differences between Intel and Ryzen processors a little after seeing your reply, and I think I'll stick with Intel based on what I've seen. It will also help narrow down the choices.

Somebody else on Student Room also recommended Dell Inspiron for university students. Battery life is pretty important as I might spend long days at uni, and I don't always want to carry my charger around. And I never thought about potential upgrades, but now I will!

I'll also check out your recommendations, they sound really helpful, thank you : )


seems very minor differances from my research, with intel just coming out on top.

ryzen is noticeably cheaper than intel, it may be worth going with a ryzen to save money.

there was an Asus 15 inch laptop at amazon will all the specs you mentioned selling at around Β£399 on amazon a couple of months back. not sure if it still is though, but it may be worth doing a search as that price is currently cheaper than all the other offers you've been quoted in this thread, plus it's a bigger screen.
Original post by APeerbhai
Hi,

Thanks for your answer! Yeah, I've also seen many people say to go for business grade rather than consumer grade laptops. I looked at some business laptops on Currys but generally they're a bit more expensive than what I'm willing to pay for. I guess the specs above will get me through uni and a few years after?

Everything in Currys is more expensive than what I'd be willing to pay for. Much better laptop deals can be had elsewhere.
Original post by Dunnig Kruger
texter657, as a PC sales specialist, how do you think a Dell Inspiron from Currys or John Lewis compares against a used HP 440 or 840 G5 off ebay?

What do you think of the school of thought that one should never buy from Currys unless it's an absolute emergency and you must have something right now today? Otherwise, other sources, such as ebay will give you far better deals.

For the OP, HP, Dell and Lenovo all make good business models. This is a highly competitive market. Business laptops tend to be a cut above consumer grade laptops.
The consumer gradeHP laptops that I've seen have been disappointingly built down to a price. HP business laptops on the other hand are well built.

Hi Dunnig Kruger,

Buying a used HP ProBook 440 or 840 off ebay is a valid argument. However, these are business laptops which are built for rigorous use 365 days a year for 5-6 years and have additional features like TPM, secure-erase and Vpro chipsets. These additional features may not be worth paying for as an average student might never use these features, however, one would enjoy slightly robust built.
What you usually see online are products which have been heavily used and are reaching the end of their life-cycle. These products are often bought in bulk from organisations and most the parts are replaced with cheaper off-branded parts to run like new. These laptops are often out of warranty and highly unreliable unless bought from a trusted refurb company and is under warranty.
Hence, a Dell Inspiron 5000 would be a much better option than the used HPs mentioned above. Furthermore, You will get a brand new laptop with the latest Intel 10th Gen chip or an AMD Ryzen 3000 series chip for under Β£600 which will be under warranty for 1 year (Currys) or 2 years (John Lewis).

Regarding Currys, unfortunately I will agree with you. I personally would never buy a Laptop/computer from Currys as their Customer service and after-sales service is awful. To add to the poor service they try to hard-sell add-ons like Cloud, setup and antivirus etc. as they earn extremely high commissions. Therefore, my recommendation would be John Lewis as they offer 2 years of guarantee rather than one and customer service is exceptional.

Hope this answers your questions.
Original post by texter657
Hi Dunnig Kruger,

Buying a used HP ProBook 440 or 840 off ebay is a valid argument. However, these are business laptops which are built for rigorous use 365 days a year for 5-6 years and have additional features like TPM, secure-erase and Vpro chipsets. These additional features may not be worth paying for as an average student might never use these features, however, one would enjoy slightly robust built.
What you usually see online are products which have been heavily used and are reaching the end of their life-cycle. These products are often bought in bulk from organisations and most the parts are replaced with cheaper off-branded parts to run like new. These laptops are often out of warranty and highly unreliable unless bought from a trusted refurb company and is under warranty.
Hence, a Dell Inspiron 5000 would be a much better option than the used HPs mentioned above. Furthermore, You will get a brand new laptop with the latest Intel 10th Gen chip or an AMD Ryzen 3000 series chip for under Β£600 which will be under warranty for 1 year (Currys) or 2 years (John Lewis).

Regarding Currys, unfortunately I will agree with you. I personally would never buy a Laptop/computer from Currys as their Customer service and after-sales service is awful. To add to the poor service they try to hard-sell add-ons like Cloud, setup and antivirus etc. as they earn extremely high commissions. Therefore, my recommendation would be John Lewis as they offer 2 years of guarantee rather than one and customer service is exceptional.

Hope this answers your questions.

The first 3 paragrpahs of this post is complete and utter made up nonsense and scaremongering.

840 and 440 G5's are recent model laptops. It's common for corporates to get 3 years warranty when buying them in bulk as part of the discount /. sweetener. These laptops have a generally more robust build and higher quality of internal components than consumer grade laptops. For the odd 1 in 100 that has fails under warranty, HP would replace the part with original quality like for like.
The vast majority of 840's and 440's will last for over 10 years without needing any parts whatsoever apart from batteries, which are semi consumable items on ALL laptops. Batteries are relatively cheap (about Β£50) and easy items (5 minutes) to replace on any laptop.

Apart from the battery it is either impossible to replace parts with cheaper off branded items or the buyer would know within an hour that it has a cheaper off branded part and could open a dispute in ebay for a full refund. Motherboards - only genuine original motherboards will fit in a laptop. They are not like desktops where you can swap motherboards due to standard sized and shaped cases. CPU's, you'd know it had the wrong CPU because Windows Properties would tell you it had an incorrect CPU. Hard drives - likewise or check the BIOS. Memory ditto. For the screen, check the resolution.

One advantage to buying a business laptop is that it will come with Windows 10 Pro, instead of Windows 10 Home. Windows 10 Pro comes with Bitlocker, Home doesn't. Bitlocker is a nice to have hard drive encryption, in the case of the laptop getting lost or stolen.

A number of 840 or 440's G5's being sold are sold by the original owner and come with remaining warranty left. Sometimes this is in excess of 12 months. It's extremely unlikely - about as likely as being struck by lightning that these laptops will have been nobbled.

The 440 and 840 G5's are too new a model for corporate IT departments to be disposing of them en masse - unless the company has gone bankrupt. In which case it's very likely that all the seller does is give them a wipe with some household surface cleaner and reinstall Windows 10.

All of this adds up to it being complete nonsense that the 840 and 440 G5's would be as you say "Highly unreliable". I'd rate a used HP 840 or 440 G5's as being more reliable statistically than brand new conusmer grade laptops. The old Compaq legacy of HP business laptops being built like tanks is still there.

A brand new direct from Dell with a student discount 10th gen Intel CPU based laptop would offer a laptop with a CPU with a 10% higher benchmark than an 8250u equipped laptop or 5% higher than an 8350u laptop. Is that worth paying Β£550 for? Instead of about Β£300 for an ebayed 840 G5?

I don't think so. Especially not for someone with a student loan. And especially not for someone that just wants to run MS Office and web browsing, which are not CPU intensive tasks.

Latest