Portable office laptop

[kaizen]

Hi, I'm looking to buy a laptop and my key concerns are:
- weight and size, I will be carrying it around a lot
- I will use it for work (Office & browser), I tend to have lot of documents open (Word, Excel, etc.) and loads of tabs open in browser. I use OneDrive and Dropbox and need them to sync fast in the background.
- I will sometimes take it with me when travelling to watch movies or play music but I don't need high graphics spec
- No hardcore gaming on this laptop

What is the minimum spec (CPU, RAM, type of hard drive) I can get away with to have good speed and work efficiently?
Any advice is appreciated.

 

[Oussebon]

If you're looking for the minimum, an off-the-shelf laptop, especially on sale, would likely give you what you're looking for for a much lower price.

 

[kaizen]

If you're looking for the minimum, an off-the-shelf laptop, especially on sale, would likely give you what you're looking for for a much lower price.

Thanks, but before I buy from wherever I would like to know what "the minimum" means.

 

[Oussebon]

The minimum kind of depends what you're happy to put up with.

I'd probably consider the minimum to be something like an i3 7100U, 8gb RAM, and an SSD for office work, especially if you need to have a lot of browser tabs open. You can spec up some options from PCS with that kind of spec but it won't take you long to find cheaper things with that sort of hardware elsewhere.

But that's just my office-spec. Some people would be fine with a chromebook.

Needless to say it's not allowed to give detailed advice on options for shopping elsewhere on this forum

- No hardcore gaming on this laptop

If you intend to do some gaming, what kind of gaming?

 

[kaizen]

Thanks, that's exactly the sort of advice I was after.
I don't think I will be doing any gaming on this laptop to be fair.

 

[Oussebon]

In that case integrated graphics are fine.

An option from PCS would be:


Chassis & Display
UltraNote: 14" Matte Full HD LED Backlit Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i5 Quad Core Processor i5-8250U (1.60GHz, 3.4GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM)
8GB Corsair 2133MHz SODIMM DDR4 (1 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
INTEL® HD GRAPHICS 620 - 1.7GB Max DDR4 Video RAM - DirectX® 12
1[SUP]st[/SUP] Hard Disk
NOT REQUIRED
1[SUP]st[/SUP] M.2 SSD Drive
256GB SAMSUNG PM961 M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 2800MB/R, 1100MB/W)
Memory Card Reader
Integrated 6 in 1 Card Reader (SD /Mini SD/ SDHC / SDXC / MMC / RSMMC)
AC Adaptor
1 x 40W AC Adaptor
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre Cloverleaf UK Power Cable
Sound Card
Realtek 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Bluetooth & Wireless
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-8265 M.2 (867Mbps, 802.11AC) +BT 4.0
USB Options
1 x USB 3.1 PORT (Type C) + 1 x USB 3.0 PORT + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Battery
UltraNote IV Series 44WH Lithium Ion Battery
Keyboard Language
14" ULTRANOTE III SERIES UK KEYBOARD
Operating System
Genuine Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 365
Anti-Virus
BullGuard™ Internet Security - Free 90 Day License inc. Gamer Mode
Browser
Microsoft® Edge (Windows 10 Only)
Notebook Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam
INTEGRATED 1MP HD WEBCAM
Warranty
3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 4 to 6 working days
Quantity
1

Price £642.00 including VAT and delivery

Unique URL to re-configure : https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/ultranoteiv-14/jCk6Xba5Gq/


Note some cheaper laptops have 1366x768 screens - you want 1080p for productivity uses as the extra pixels really help fit more on the screen, including displaying document side by side.

The spec above has an 8th Gen Intel i5 (i5 8520U), which has twice as many cores and threads compared to 7th gen CPUs (e.g. i3 7100U, i5 7200U). For your uses there might not be much point to the 8th Gen i5 over a 7th gen i3, but it's only £60 more for a huge potential performance upgrade. If you work with complex spreadsheets or you just want to have the extra performance available in case you might do something that needs it, it's not a bad option. But if going for the 'minimum' then the i3 7100.

The PM961 is much, much faster than the basic and cheap OEM SSDs you'll find in many laptops. I would say it is well worth the premium over the small 120gb no-name SSD PCS offer, or the 120gb Kingston, etc. But again, if you're going for the minimum and don't mind trading in some performance, there are cheaper SSDs.

You can compare the above to off-the-shelf options and make your own mind up I guess

 

[kaizen]

Hi, many thanks, really appreciate your help

The PM961 is much, much faster than the basic and cheap OEM SSDs you'll find in many laptops. I would say it is well worth the premium over the small 120gb no-name SSD PCS offer, or the 120gb Kingston, etc. But again, if you're going for the minimum and don't mind trading in some performance, there are cheaper SSDs.

You can compare the above to off-the-shelf options and make your own mind up I guess

I like the spec, the only issue is the hard drive. I need minimum 500gb drive, ideally 1TB. Can't really afford the PM961 with that capacity. I was thinking about 1TB SEAGATE FIRECUDA. Would the performance suffer a lot with this drive?

 

[Oussebon]

Yes, an SSHD is not nearly as fast as an SSD. What about a 256gb PM961 and a 500gb HDD for mass storage? That way you still get to have the OS, programs, etc on a very fast SSD.

 

[kaizen]

Thank you. Sorry, I don't know much about hard drives. The smaller and faster SSD would have windows & office installed on it and all my docs would be on the slower but bigger HDD? Does it matter that the HDD is marked as 1st drive on the spec and SDD as 2nd? Can I just tell PCS to install Windows on the 2nd drive?

 

[Stephen M]

I would second Oussebon's idea, go with an SSD and a normal HDD for storage. Personally I would go with a 1TB HDD as you may want more space in the future, plus HDDs perform better when they are not full or nearly full so the 1TB will give a bit of breathing space. Another option would be to go with the spec posted and shop around for an external USB drive as you may well find some quite cheap.

 

[BlessedSquirrel]

Thank you. Sorry, I don't know much about hard drives. The smaller and faster SSD would have windows & office installed on it and all my docs would be on the slower but bigger HDD? Does it matter that the HDD is marked as 1st drive on the spec and SDD as 2nd? Can I just tell PCS to install Windows on the 2nd drive?

The PM961 is an M2 drive in the M2 dropdown, when you finally accept the build it will ask and recommend you install windows on the M2 drive.

 

[kaizen]

Thank you both. I've got the full spec now.