Advice Request Need a laptop below $ 350

Hardware Discussions
37 Replies 4,738 Views
Share practical recommendations that address the author's needs.
anirbandutta01

anirbandutta01

Level 14
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
Is this a laptop available for basic use ( Office/Browsing/Listening music/Watching videos or movies ) below $350 (INR30000) ?

Prefered brand: HP / Dell. Please suggest Other brands if available.
 
Yes, you can consider the HP 14 (2021) or Dell Inspiron 15 3000. Both are under $350 and suitable for basic use. Other brands include Lenovo IdeaPad 1 and Acer Aspire 1, which also offer good performance for their price.
 
Since you're planning to watch movies I would suggest maybe spending more and getting something with a decent display like an oled

As the displays on laptops especially cheap ones are usually really bad and that's fine with most productivity but awful for entertainment

Here is a Amazon listing of the cheapest OLED laptop but I'm sure you can probably find a better deal somewhere



₹35,999
 
Last edited:
This one is a Ryzen 5. from 2022. Basically I look for the highest CPU that your budget will allow. Then I go to PassMark CPU site to see when the CPU was released. Then you remember that PassMark benchmark score and google for a really good laptop and see what cpu it has and what score it gets. A really good laptop will last 8+ years. Now look at the score for the one within budget and guess how many years that would last.

 
Last edited:
Victor M said:
This one is a Ryzen 5. from 2022. Basically I look for the highest CPU that your budget will allow. Then I go to PassMark CPU site to see when the CPU was released. Then you remember that PassMark benchmark score and google for a really good laptop and see what cpu it has and what score it gets. A really good laptop will last 8+ years. Now look at the score for the one within budget and guess how many years that would last.

Click to expand...
Screen is meh
So as long as he doesn't plan to watch movies on the laptop the advice you gave will be best otherwise he would probably benefit from a better display then what is included in that laptop which is HD (1366 x 768), 250 nits, 45% NTSC and would be unpleasant to watch movies on



About a laptop lasting laptop 8 years well we can't know what workloads will be required by then and I assume you will need high ram , bandwidth and special acceleration cores like npu and even then it's just trying to guess some of the workloads based on what's new today
Another issue the battery wouldn't last that long

So essentially I would probably bet it will work well for 3-5+ years and since there is major changes of adding different accelerator cores , a ton if recent design changes and future photonics that are going to actually get used soon
Because of all the changes everywhere I doubt future proofing is a good choice
 
Well i think since you can't really guess what computing we will be doing in 8 years, you have to base it on today. The AI thing is the really troublesome guess and I don't know if there will still be AI chat sites as we have today where all the processing is done by a server. Or will it will be expected that all future 'basic' models can do AI.

For future proofing, it is better to get a desktop where parts can be swapped out. If you are going to be sitting at the same desk every day while using a computer then desktops really are the better choice - you can swap out cpu, swap out gpu, add ram, add storage.

Actually calling it future proofing is not accurate, you are just trying to maxmize the value of your dollar spent. Maybe with the troublesome AI lurking, it is better to spend less at this time until a clearer view is in sight. A npu may or may not become standard equiptment when people balk at the electricity bill they have to pay.
 
Last edited:
Victor M said:
Well i think since you can't really guess what computing we will be doing in 8 years, you have to base it on today. The AI thing is the really troublesome guess and I don't know if there will still be AI chat sites as we have today where all the processing is done by a server. Or will it will be expected that all future 'basic' models can do AI.

For future proofing, it is better to get a desktop where parts can be swapped out. If you are going to be sitting at the same desk every day while using a computer then desktops really are the better choice - you can swap out cpu, swap out gpu, add ram, add storage.

Actually calling it future proofing is not accurate, you are just trying to maxmize the value of your dollar spent. Maybe with the troublesome AI lurking, it is better to spend less at this time until a clearer view is in sight. A npu may or may not become standard equiptment when people balk at the electricity bill they have to pay.
Click to expand...
Npu is already included in every modern phone even cheap ones it's just that it's not common enough in PCs btw the npu is just one accelerator there will be other accelerators to boost different instructions and since after a long hold of PC tech barely improving untill Ryzen and now with a next gen computing boom (ai) it would be pretty terrible to try to future proof untill there is a big decline again
 
Victor M said:
I didn't know npu's are now in phones, shows you how dated I am. But please explain your sentence, I don't quite get it.
Click to expand...
You know about Moore law right ?
Basically it's dead so there was a decline in computing innovation but since there are advancements again it's kinda relevant to ai and next gen computing as there is a similar innovative growth


Apple has npu since nearly a decade (2017)

Neural Engine - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org
 
@anirbandutta01 what is the CPU model # of your current laptop ? And what is the amount of RAM and size of SSD/Nvme ?

Read the above discussion first. Upon thinking about it, I have to revise my recommendation. It is unclear at this time whether or not an NPU will beocme standard equiptment for 'basic' laptops of the near future. So it is better to spend less for this laptop that you are getting and save the money for the next laptop when the dust settles. Or if your need is not urgent, then don't spend at all.

Tell me what you have now and I will go look again.
 
At this price point you have to make sacrifices in more than one places. Do you only want a slightly better processor like 5625U or 1220P or do you want a better build quality or an OLED display.
You are not going to get a better display at this price point than one posted by @Vitali Ortzi , it is pretty well balanced imo.

This one has metal body (if you care about that), with a better processor (Zen 2 vs Zen 3) but display is pretty bad.

PS older Ryzen chips like 5600u, 5500u, 5625u etc. don't have AV1 hardware decoding support (YouTube uses AV1 for majority of videos that I watch), so have that in mind as it will affect the battery life if you like watching YT videos a lot.
 
Victor M said:
@anirbandutta01 what is the CPU model # of your current laptop ? And what is the amount of RAM and size of SSD/Nvme ?

Read the above discussion first. Upon thinking about it, I have to revise my recommendation. It is unclear at this time whether or not an NPU will beocme standard equiptment for 'basic' laptops of the near future. So it is better to spend less for this laptop that you are getting and save the money for the next laptop when the dust settles. Or if your need is not urgent, then don't spend at all.

Tell me what you have now and I will go look again.
Click to expand...
Basically because he needs does basic usage where even a few years older machine will suffice then performance isn't the most important factor for his current usage and current computing demands but since he uses at for movies where there is a huge difference between a cheap display of most laptops and an old that's just slightly over his budget I think it's probably a good compromise to spend a little more and get the cheapest OLED laptop he can find and India has a lot of good cheap headphones that unfortunately aren't available in my country (personally I recommend getting some popular brand used headphones)

So going over budget if possible and getting some cheap decent headphones will make his experience consuming content far better and the machine performance will last a few years for basic usage although ai stuff will require cloud connection since he doesn't have an npu but thankfully the coverage of wifi and especially 5g is even better then my country in India so he wouldn't have any issue with a hotspot connection , public wifi
 
Budgets usually cannot be moved, espcially if set by a parent. Well, you can try pleadiing and nagging. But credit is expensive.
 
brambedkar59 said:
At this price point you have to make sacrifices in more than one places. Do you only want a slightly better processor like 5625U or 1220P or do you want a better build quality or an OLED display.
You are not going to get a better display at this price point than one posted by @Vitali Ortzi , it is pretty well balanced imo.

This one has metal body (if you care about that), with a better processor (Zen 2 vs Zen 3) but display is pretty bad.

PS older Ryzen chips like 5600u, 5500u, 5625u etc. don't have AV1 hardware decoding support (YouTube uses AV1 for majority of videos that I watch), so have that in mind as it will affect the battery life if you like watching YT videos a lot.
Click to expand...
Oleds are nowadays pretty cheap to produce so it's a shame many laptops use cheap displays
Even mini LEDs aren't common (cheaper then OLED )
But it's understandable as most productivity done on laptop will have no important benefit from an old but movies (entertainment) has a pretty significant difference in dynamic range Wich will make stuff both look a little unpleasant and more shadow details will be crashed because of the low contrast ratio

Headphones are important as many parts of India are loud and generally laptop speakers are terrible about wich headphones probably one with anc and if possible used if possible to find a decent deal then a Chinese one
 
Victor M said:
Budgets usually cannot be moved, espcially if set by a parent. Well, you can try pleadiing and nagging. But credit is expensive.
Click to expand...
Sometimes they can be moved a little sometimes they can't but if it's possible it will definitely be highly worth it as he will have a better looking display then some very very expansive gaming laptops and expansive business machines
 
If it were for me then I would choose as you say (@Vitali Ortzi ) Your suggestion is a good balance of price, performamnce and picture quality. I have never tried a OLED so I don't know what I am missing :)
 
Last edited:
Victor M said:
@anirbandutta01 what is the CPU model # of your current laptop ? And what is the amount of RAM and size of SSD/Nvme ?

Read the above discussion first. Upon thinking about it, I have to revise my recommendation. It is unclear at this time whether or not an NPU will beocme standard equiptment for 'basic' laptops of the near future. So it is better to spend less for this laptop that you are getting and save the money for the next laptop when the dust settles. Or if your need is not urgent, then don't spend at all.

Tell me what you have now and I will go look again.
Click to expand...
Thanks for your support. Computer specs
8 GB DDR3 RAM, 500GB HDD, 128GB SSD (installed Windows 10 Pro X64 22H3 on SSD) Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-2100 CPU @ 3.10GHz 3.09 GHz .

Also which browser can save laptop's battery life ?
 
anirbandutta01 said:
Thanks for your support. Computer specs
8 GB DDR3 RAM, 500GB HDD, 128GB SSD (installed Windows 10 Pro X64 22H3 on SSD) Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-2100 CPU @ 3.10GHz 3.09 GHz .

Also which browser can save laptop's battery life ?
Click to expand...
Chromium browsers brave ,edge ,chrome etc should be superior to Gecko (Firefox) and almost the same between different chromium browsers on resource usage as they have the same base engine


Btw does your current PC feel slow ?
 
Vitali Ortzi said:
Chromium browsers brave ,edge ,chrome etc should be superior to Gecko (Firefox) and almost the same between different chromium browsers on resource usage as they have the same base engine


Btw does your current PC feel slow ?
Click to expand...
Slightly slow. Also I need Windows 11 for my office work.

I have heard that Opera browser has a battery saver feature. Will it properly work? Windows also has a battery saver I think.
 

Recently browsing

Members who viewed this thread in the last 5 minutes

You may also like...

Back
Top