Holiday 2011 Laptop Buyer’s Guide
by Jarred Walton on December 2, 2011 3:45 AM ESTBigger and Faster but Still Inexpensive: Budget Laptops
Let’s just get this out of the way: budget laptops inherently come with some compromises. I love using laptops with good quality displays, but finding a good display in a budget laptop is practically impossible. Last time I saw a decent display in something that didn’t cost over $500 (outside of tablets and smartphones), it was the ASUS Eee PC 1001P, and unfortunately a good display on an Atom-based netbook means you’re still saddled with Atom netbook performance. Outside of that one example, we haven’t tested any budget laptops in the past three years where the display was significantly better than average. Playing modern games on a budget laptop is also a stretch; AMD’s Llano (A-series) APUs may be a step up from Intel’s integrated graphics, but they still struggle to run many games at native resolution and medium quality settings. We’ll look at a budget gaming laptop below (which will cost a bit more), but the quick summary is that you have to know what you’re getting and set expectations accordingly. So just what would we recommend for around $500-$600?
Recommended Budget Laptop
Amazing what you can get for half a grand: HP ProBook 4430s for $500
Finding sub-$500 laptops is relatively easy; finding something that doesn’t have a larger-than-necessary 15.6” chassis (and still with a 1366x768 resolution) is far more difficult. I’ve mentioned in the past that 14” laptops are my personal sweet spot for mobility without compromising on other areas, and finding HP’s ProBook for $500 was a pleasant surprise. The ProBook line isn’t quite at the level of HP’s EliteBook, but you get a full-blown Sandy Bridge Core i3-2310M processor, 4GB RAM, a 320GB hard drive, and an aluminum cover, which is more than I can say for most budget laptop. The display is also a matte finish, the keyboard is a decent chiclet-style offering with the added benefit of being spill resistant. In the past it has been very difficult to find recent Intel laptops for under $600 that didn’t severely trim features—e.g. Celeron or Pentium CPUs instead of Core i3/i5, smaller batteries, no USB 3.0, etc. Intel’s HD 3000 Graphics may limit your ability to play games, but outside of that use case they’re sufficient for regular SOHO/student use. You’ll still need to uninstall a lot of bloatware on the ProBook (par for the course these days), but once you’re done with that there’s very little left to complain about.
Budget “Gaming” Laptops
If you want to keep costs down but you still would like the ability to run some games, you’ll want a bit more than Intel’s HD 3000 Graphics. AMD’s A-series APUs are one route, but we’d suggest skipping the A4 models and shoot for an A6 or A8 if you’re after graphics performance. If you want an AMD A-series APU and like me you’d prefer a 14” chassis, pickings are very slim—the one laptop that meets those requirements at Newegg is the Toshiba L745D-S4230. It’s an updated take on the L645D we reviewed earlier this year, or a smaller version of the L775D we tested in August; unfortunately, at $600 it’s a tough sell considering the overall features and performance. As much as it pains me, we’ll have to bump up to 15.6” laptops to get something with gaming potential without spending $600 or more. The good news is that by moving to a 15.6” chassis, the price drops quite a bit.
AMD’s Llano does gaming for less: Toshiba L755D for $430
Yup, we’re back at Toshiba again. Toshiba is a good way to go if you’re looking for something with an AMD processor that won’t cost too much, and for just $430 you can pick up an A6-3400M APU with 4GB RAM and a 320GB hard drive. If those specs sound familiar, it’s because other than the APU/CPU that’s exactly what you can get in the HP ProBook listed above. You’re basically trading CPU performance for GPU performance and saving $70 in the process, although the 15.6” chassis isn’t nearly so enticing in my book.
If you want some other options, the 1.4GHz quad-core CPU falls behind Intel’s i3-2310M in areas where the GPU/IGP doesn’t come into play; for that matter, even Intel’s last-gen Arrandale i5-460M (as an example) surpasses the A6-3400M in CPU related benchmarks. Elsewhere, the HD 6520G (and even the A8 series HD 6620G) still comes in behind discrete GPUs like the GeForce GT 525M and Radeon HD 6630M. So if you’d like a laptop that can handle games better and provides better CPU performance, we’re back to Intel offerings.
Budget gaming with Intel and Optimus: ASUS A53SV for $620
Scouring the Internet, we came up with two contenders for the budget gaming throne: Acer’s Aspire AS5755G-6823 for $550 and the ASUS A53SV-NH51 for $620. Both feature Intel’s i5-2430M CPU and NVIDIA’s GeForce GT 540M GPU with Optimus Technology dynamically switching between the two. They also have other similarities like using a mediocre 1366x768 resolution with a 15.6” LCD. Ultimately, it comes down to price and features, and between the two we’re going to recommend the ASUS A53SV. The main reason is that we prefer the ASUS chiclet keyboard to Acer’s floating-island keys (Dustin would use stronger language), but you also get a larger HDD and more memory as a bonus. If you don’t mind the Acer keyboard, either laptop will suffice.
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JarredWalton - Saturday, December 3, 2011 - link
...You wanted to talk about the keyboard experience, so let's do that.You're correct: the key depth is very shallow, but how much that matters is largely up to personal taste. It's the placement of the keys as much as the shape that helps me with typing, and I can definitely type on the UX31E. It won't win any awards for the keyboard, but to utterly dismiss it just because the key travel is shallow (which seems to be part of what we'll see on ultrabooks in general)? Nope, I don't buy that argument at all.
I'd suggest getting keyboard backlighting in place would be higher on my list of priorities than key travel, and I'd really like ASUS to move the power key out of the current location (which is where the Delete key belongs--I had to sset Windows to ignore pressing the power button after the third time I inadvertently "typed" Power Off).
Anyway, the keyboard isn't a ThinkPad or a Dell Latitude, but it's also not an Acer. I'd rate the layout as decent (outside of the power key) but the feel of the keys as below average. And I would much rather be typing on my Microsoft Natural Keyboard. Still, if I were in the market for an ultrabook (I'm not), out of the three or four 13.3" models currently available I'd go for the ASUS, mostly because 1600x900 with a so-so keyboard beats 1366x768 with a slightly better keyboard. I just don't think anyone is going to give me an excellent keyboard in an ultrabook.
And yes, this whole comment was written on the UX31E and I'm not feeling any worse about the experience than I did before starting. Fact is, I've got the Acer S3 sitting right next to me as I type this and having just typing a few quick sentences on it I can say that key travel isn't much better there. I think ultrabooks are going to be about compromise, and one of those compromises is in the keyboard travel. When you set the maximum thickness of the laptop at 0.8", you won't get the quarter inch of travel found in a desktop keyboard.
JarredWalton - Saturday, December 3, 2011 - link
PS: Just for you I've added a note about the keyboard on the UX31E in the article, suggesting potential customers try one out in person if that's an area that matters to them.Penti - Friday, December 2, 2011 - link
You miss a whole category I bought a Arrandale (before SNB) CULV 11.6" (1366x768) laptop some while ago for basically as cheap as you get, for the same price as Atom netbooks which comes with decent battery, W7HP instead of W7 Starter and so on. With basically better battery life (got the slightly larger battery, cheapest model don't have them regardless if it's netbook or cheap ultraportable), cpu, software support and it feels like a real computer. Netbooks have no place when you get better hardware for the same price and power envelope. It's nothing to recommend.I'm not terribly sure what you got in that market now in the states, but I would prefer cheaper Intel chips here they are simply much higher end then Brazos or Atom. But you can get something like Toshiba L735-S3350 with Pentium B950, 4GB, 500GB 13.3-inch 1366x768 for 500 USD, Acer TimelineX AS3830T-6870 with Core i5 2430M 2.4GHz, 4GB, 500GB 13.3-inch 1366x768 for 600 USD. HP Pavilion dm1-4050us Core i3 2367M 1.4GHz, 4GB, 500GB 11.6-inch 1366x768 incl external dvd-drive for 570-600 USD. Or more in those lines, it doesn't have to be netbooks or 1000 - 1200 dollar ultrabooks. Certainly worth it for the extra 90 bucks to get a dm1-4050us over a dm1z Brazos netbook. Sure might be $140 with the MIR, but still worth it over the Brazos. I take a hundred dollar over a Atom or Brazos laptop any day. Still cheap or small enough and enough power to contend with 13-15" cheap models too. When we are talking non-properly speced out Atom netbooks for 200-300 they only has 3-cell batteries and virtually no battery life and other drawbacks such as Windows 7 Starter, low amount of memory and low res display, no webcams, bluetooth and so on. Like no hardware accelerated video (and thus Flash player video) on Atom's GMA3150 without Broadcom accelerator card, and I'm not sure you can even get that anymore from HP or others. That's not a problem with the Brazos. But I would still go Intel over Brazos here, they are simply not very powerful and kinda the wrong niche when compared to cheaper Intel Sandybridge stuff. There's more choices any way which was my point.
Penti - Friday, December 2, 2011 - link
I wouldn't call a Llano which has worthless graphics in all fairness no faster then integrated HD 3000 Graphics a choice when it comes to gaming and I would even be critical and pushing it to call GT540M a choice for low-end gaming.That IPS displays don't end up in 11-16" laptops is basically because they aren't manufactured or are manufactured in low volume or are expensive, or power hungry. HP's dreamcolor 15" IPS display is still specced at 15 Watts. In tablets they usually use AFFS+ displays for outdoor viewability which you simply don't get with IPS displays in that way. Even though some Tablet PC's do use IPS displays in the 12-13" range. However does displays probably end up costing quiet a lot.
For gaming I would probably say something like GTX550M or HD6750M is minimum. You can probably find some Llano with HD 6755G2/HD6750M for 500 refurbish and 700 ordinarily if you like budget. If you really like an AMD option. But again for 700 you have Intel options as well. 650-700 is probably where you find yourself under those 1000 dollar machines.
seapeople - Saturday, December 3, 2011 - link
Since the GT550m can play Starcraft 2 at 1080p in high just fine, I don't think the ~20% or so drop off to the GT540m disqualifies it for "low-end gaming".Penti - Saturday, December 3, 2011 - link
You would need GT550M for 1366x768 gaming basically for other games, but of course Llano without discrete GPU is disqualified. You wouldn't even get SC2 on 1366x768 medium on that. You need a discrete graphics card if you like to play SC2 at reasonable level. GT540M is just pushing on the limit to be disqualified, which is why I didn't outright say it's useless. For example a game like Metro 2033 would be too heavy for GT540M at 1366x768 and does not meet the _minimum_ requirements of many games at all. Anandtech here concluded for that matter that GT555M is not or just barely enough to drive 1600x900 in Alienware M14x in most games.Roland00Address - Monday, December 5, 2011 - link
For console ports Llano is fine for cheap laptops, since cheap laptops usually have 1366x768 resolution.PC focused games on the other hand is a different matter, high settings is another matter since what most people consider "medium settings" is what a xbox 360 is really running.
Malih - Friday, December 2, 2011 - link
tired of waiting for good ultrabooks with decent speed, good heat dissipation and good display,finally I put an end to all the wait and decided to get a MacBook Pro 13 (Late 2011),
I'm using it (mostly) on Windows, as I bought the Windows version of my work/development tools, it would be too costly, highly inefficient to buy the mac version too.
Vxheous - Friday, December 2, 2011 - link
I bought a G74SX-xc1 for $1350 Cdn, which other than 8 GB of RAM instead of 12GB, or having an SSD, was comparable in spec to some of the pricier G74 models. the XC1 is probably your best bang for buck in the midrangefrozentundra123456 - Friday, December 2, 2011 - link
Great article.One note however. I went to the Sears site, and several reviewers stated that that particular laptop has a somewhat gimped GT 560 M with a slower memory bus. I think the same thing happened a while back at Best Buy. They had a really good price on an asus gaming laptop, but the video card had a slower memory bus than the normal cards.
It wouldnt be a deal breaker for me, and that price is outstanding. But it is just something to be aware of regarding that notebook. Like I said, I would also be wary buying at Best Buy because they tend to do the same thing.