Submitted 3 weeks ago by Don_Dickle@lemmy.world to [deleted]
As far as brands, almost anything in this price range is built as cheaply as possible to MAYBE last the warranty. No brand will be any better than the next until about the $500 mark.
I’d highly recommend buying a 2 year old used laptop, like others have said, an old business grade laptop would work perfect. Better build, better quality, better speed, better everything.
It’s a barebones one (hence the “Essential”), if your Toshiba laptop was a good spec, that one might honestly be better, if it was slow then this might be an upgrade. All depends on what you need out of a laptop.
Screen is 1366x768 so it will be hard to do much multitasking at all and you can’t view 1080p HD video at full resolution.
For the price in USD? I think it’s not good value. A used corporate surplus laptop would be far better. ~$200 would be a good value price for this spec.
A used corporate surplus laptop would be far better.
This is a good opportunity to shamelessly plug refurb.io - I’ve bought machines for my family there. If you can stand the occasional appearance blemish it’s a very reliable site.
A used corporate surplus laptop would be far better.
Absolutely, a 3 years old Dell that was $2000 can be had for like $300 sometimes on eBay
Example from Amazon - a ChromeOS laptop
Example from OfficeDepot - a Windows “AI-enabled” laptop
Anyway if you go with any hp I recommend you cut out all the useless crapware that comes with it.
It’s… Not great. It’s on par with other $300 laptops, which isn’t saying much. 8Gb of RAM in current year isn’t really enough anymore, and the screen is basically the cheapest possible. You’re looking for a laptop with a screen resolution near 1920x1080, and ideally 16 Gb of RAM.
It’s gotten very hard to recommend laptops based on the brand name, since pretty much every brand has started pumping out crappy laptops to capitalize on the brand.
Like others said, try looking at business laptops, either surplus or liquidation sales. They’re not great either but at least you’re ideally not getting fleeced.
If you’re feeling adventurous (and I’m mincing my words, this won’t be a breeze if you don’t know much but you’ll learn a ton), the best bang for buck you can get in a portable format is a Steam Deck with USB hub + mouse and keyboard (could be travel size if you want). Can be had for less than $500, if you have the budget portable screens also exist, and for that price it beats any modern laptop under $1000. I understand that it’s not exactly for everyone though.
Don’t know if it’s a good deal.
As others here I will recommend also looking at other brands. I think that you get the best deal by buying used business laptops. They are cheap, goog quality, built to last and often repairable.
Brand-wise I think Dell is OK, while Lenovo Thinkpads series T, X, W and carbon are even better choices, IMO.
I have awful experience with recent T series ThinkPads.
My Ideapad 510S that I bought many many years ago is much more robust, and has lived through a lot of use and abuse. Meanwhile I treat my ThinkPads like precious relics, and they still keep breaking down on me for stupid-ass reasons. I bought ThinkPad because I thought it could last me at least a decade — that couldn't be further from the truth. What a pile of trash. I guess they were good ten years ago.
Next time I'm gonna put good money into a laptop — and, as both charging ports on my T14s are currently failing, I'm afraid it won't be long — I'll get myself a Framework.
For the lower end of the price spectrum I sadly have no idea. I'm just here to warn everyone about ThinkPads. It has become my destiny in life.
Found the Thinkpad collector who is afraid of competition. Just kidding… 🙂
I haven’t had much experience with the newer models, so what you say may be true.
The cheapest framework is nearly five times the OPs link.
While “no laptop” is better than a HP I don’t see this link as helpful as all.
I will not answer the “good deal” aspect of your question, as I have no idea of the laptop market on your side of the Atlantic. But what I can say is that I steer away from HP in general:
What’s wrong with the old one?
A little bit slow and takes forever to download hospital programs and stuff. Been thinking about it for years and saw the HP Essential and thought it my work. I don’t play games I just watch tv and movies.
i’d choose a used business laptop, cheap and still good to go.
might want to consider a reinstall of the OS first, or some linux if you are up to it.
A new laptop, even the best in the world, won’t make your downloads any faster.
I also back what everyone else is saying. Unless of course you can update your current laptop. What have you got? An extra stick of ram and an SSD can make an old laptop feel brand new, especially with an OS reinstall
i think the old one is old
SandLight@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I would never buy another hp product. Had too many problems across different arms of their business (laptops, printers, etc.)
cocobean@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Same. HP could stand for “heaping pile.”
AlphaOmega@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I spent about 10 years working in IT and HP won the worst laptop in the world every year. They used to be designed to fail in about 1 to 1 years, depending on the warranty. That was about 10 years ago, but they were such shit back then that I will never buy a HP anything.
Lenovo and Asus used to be rock solid, probably still are.