Today in 2023, buying a laptop could become a headache with tons of varieties and configurations available from different brands. Whether you are a student, working professional, business person or a gamer – out there is a laptop which could suit you. There are just a few basic things you should know before buying a laptop in 2023.
The very first question you should ask yourself is what will be the purpose for which you are buying a laptop for? 2nd most important question would be what is the maximum amount you could spend on the laptop.
Casual use can include things like – surfing internet, watching movies, series, music, presentations, documents, basic games. If you are a student or designer, animator then you will need to run different professional/school/college related softwares. Few such softwares could require your laptop to have SSD storage and good RAM for faster processing. If you are a gamer – playing hardcore games with high graphics would be your requirement for which you will need a laptop with a decent processor, a good dedicated graphics card and which has a good cooling system.
Top brands who manufactures laptops :
Common Budget Laptop Terms and what they mean to you:
Processor (CPU) – the brain or engine of the computer. Generally it is best to buy the fastest and newest processor within your budget. Intel and AMD are two common brands.
Memory (RAM) – the more RAM in your laptop, the more it can do at once. Check that the RAM on your potential laptop can be added to or upgraded. RAM comes in different types called DDR, DDR2, DDR3 with DDR3 being the fastest and most expensive. We recommend a minimum of 1GB RAM to start with for basic operations in a Windows environment, check that your laptop can be upgraded with more RAM before purchasing your laptop.
Hard Drive & SSD (solid state drive) – information is stored on a Hard Drive within the computer. Laptops and notebooks usually have a minimum of 500GB; with very small net books starting at 4G RAM which can be supplemented by plugging in an external Hard Drive. Now a days laptops with only SSD are also available. SSDs are faster than HDD. A min of 256 GB SSD would be a good buy if you plan to run some heavy softwares or few PVP games on it for faster processing. Also, don’t forget to look at the speed of the hard drive, usually 5400rpm or 7200rpm. Buy the fastest you can afford within your budget.
Graphics (Video) Card – these come in two types – dedicated and integrated and process only video. If you are planning to play a lot of games, touch up hundreds of photos on a regular basis or other graphic intensive tasks, look for the fastest graphics card with at least 512MB RAM dedicated. For watching movies, and a few photo tasks, then the integrated graphics on even the most basic laptops will do just fine.
Disk Drives – reading and burning from DVDs, CDs and even blu-ray discs. If you do not need to do this often, external disk drives can also be plugged in to your laptop.
Screen – consider this factor carefully, if you will be using the laptop on a desk and not moving it, a 17″ screen laptop model is a worthwhile purchase. However, if you want a lightweight machine to take with you, a 10″ screen may be more suitable.
Weight – laptops range in weight from 2 pounds to 10 or 11 depending mostly on screen size of the laptop.
Battery Life – Check this carefully, if you need a laptop you can use all day, something with a 3 hour battery life will not suit you. However, secondary batteries can usually be purchased separately. Speakers – most laptops have these built in to the casing, as well as the ability to plug in higher powered speakers, microphones and headphones.
Webcams – quite often built in to bezel at the top of the screen. If you plan to use VOIP applications such as Skype we recommend looking for a budget laptop with inbuilt webcam for convenience, although webcams can be purchased separately and plugged in to most laptops.
So next time you want to buy a good budget laptop consider the above points and find the best suitable one which fits your need.
Here are a few budget laptop recommendations for India:
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Lenovo Ideapad S145: This laptop has a 15.6-inch display, Intel Celeron N4000 processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 1TB HDD.
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HP Pavilion x360: This laptop has a 14-inch display, Intel Pentium Gold 4417U processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 1TB HDD. It is a 2-in-1 laptop and can be used as a tablet.
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Acer Aspire 3: This laptop has a 15.6-inch display, AMD A9-9420 processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 1TB HDD.
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Dell Inspiron 3467: This laptop has a 14-inch display, Intel Core i3-7020U processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 1TB HDD.
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Asus VivoBook: This laptop has a 15.6-inch display, AMD A9-9420 processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 1TB HDD.
