laptop advice requested

[devohoneybee]

If you were thinking of purchasing a new laptop (PC not Apple) in the next month or two... in advance of possible price increases, what would you choose?

I don't vid and I'm not a gamer, so don't need anything super high end, except that as I move into retirement next fall, I quite likely will discontinue my cable tv service (to save $$) so do expect to do some streaming on the laptop.

I currently have a 5 or 6 year old Dell that's still working fine but very HEAVY, and, aforementioned considerations of price upticks by the time this thing crashes.

thanks in advance!

Comments

[eerian_sadow]

Hello! I work in electronics retail and was pointed to your request by Rhi, so don't panic! XD

Right now, if you're bot building your own unit, Asus, Acer and Lenovo are going to be your current best bets. Dell/Alienware have just had a massive decline in quality over the last 4 years, and HP has had quality decline+craptangular customer support+high on their own reputation (they seem to think they're Apple) and have just become rather mid, as the kids say. My dad, my brother, my bestie J, multiple coworkers, and myself all have Asus and we are very happy with them. Their zephyrus series is lightweight and doesn't sacrifice much power in exchange so that would probably be my first recommendation.

Looking towards the future, you're going to want at least an intel I7 chip or an AMD rizen 7000. (There's no quality difference these days processor chip really comes down to preference if you're not gaming.) You can probably get away with a bare bones graphics card but anything 40-- will be better in the long run. (I run a 3090 and see a tiny amount of streaming lag sometimes.) 500gb of storage is pretty standard but 1tb is fairly affordable and will give you space if you need it for programs. You want at least 16gb of RAM, but 32 will be better for smoother streaming. Nothing comes with a disc drive anymore so you'll need to add that as a peripheral if dvds are something you'll want to play on it. And if you go with something thin like the ASUS I recommended, you should probably think about a fan mat, because the on board cooling is where they sacrificed a lot of the weight.

This is the zephyrus in that range my store carries, but there are others like it (and that are sometimes less expensive at other retailers) https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-rog-zephyrus-g16-16-165hz-gaming-laptop-fhd-intel-13th-gen-core-i7-with-16gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-rtx-4070-512gb-ssd-eclipse-gray/6572582.p?skuId=6572582

Hope this helps, at least a little! Please let me know if you have more questions!

[rhi]

Hey, there! Yes, I really did look, see no one had commented, and went, eerian, can you come advise? :hugs!: