Cool.

Not really, and I wish more laptops in the lower price range would have a 128GB SSD rather than a 1TB HDD.

Is this the one with the really crap battery life?


That's 40% more....

Yes Hassan!

Duplicate post

fugazi mac book

hmm, why the heat for a 128gb ssd? thats terrible storage for this price?

Seems a bit expensive, Dell do a 15" with much better graphics card and a faster quad core i7 for 200 more.

Seems decent value. Wonder if the screen is IPS and anti-glare. If it is, this would make it a really good buy for me (if I didn't already own a dell inspiron 13.
128GB is indeed a bit restrictive. 256GB SSDs are so cheap these days. Shame manufacturers don't recognise that you'd need more storage on a premium laptop.

The battery life is a killer for me. Why do so many companies selling laptops/phones etc insist on adding extras but cut on the basics?

For about £60 more you could have the 13.3" Lafité II from PC Specialist.

It's a 13.3 inch FHD IPS display and the machine gets a 7.5 battery life, is made of aluminium and has a backlit keyboard. Also comes with a three year warranty.

Spec it to a similar performance:
Core i5-6200U (yes, i5, not i7 but look here: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=2470&cmp[]=2556
8GB Kingston RAM
128GB M.2 2280 SSD (leaves room to slap in a 2.5 inch HDD or SSD)

£560

Got three laptops at home, haven't turned any of them on in over 3 years. Really not a fan of them, totally anti-social.

I'd be all over this if they'd just provide a plain black one.....

2 pence is 100% more than 1 pence
but sometimes its worth it

Ignore him - blatant trolling.

Duplicate post... it's been this price for weeks, search back...

15" laptops are portable...

Looking for something similar but refurbished/used for about half the price. Can anyone point me towards any such deals? Not expecting or need anything as powerful though. Thanks

No the battery gets 8 hours real usuage. http://www.dell.com/uk/p/inspiron-15-7559-laptop/pd?oc=cn95701&model_id=inspiron-15-7559-laptop

So that's 2-3 times more than this.

2.5 vs 1.5kg, guess it depends what you need it for. I find 13" too small.

If this has a rated batery life as 4 hours, your probably be lucky to get 3 out of it.

Ok this was 10 years ago, but I spent 2k on my ultimate dream machine desktop from PC Specialist ... what should have been an awesome machine was a nightmare ... the people they have putting them together couldnt care less about you or your dream machine ... i received it with an un screwed in floppy drive (lol) which was hanging around inside hitting all the other components in transit ... they put cheaper hard drives in than the ones i ordered... on first turning it on, the first thing i saw was 'your PC did was not shut down properly' ... It went backwards and forwards 3 or so times ... and then i got really ill and was not able to ever get my money back and the machine never worked ... They should have scrapped that pc and built a new one but they refused and I must have spent 200+ hours trying to get it to work ... worst company i have EVER dealt with in 45 years and i have never been in the position to afford a dream machine before or since ... one of the worst experiences of my life and I will cut and paste this into any PC Specialist deal I ever see here, and maybe one day theyll understand to respect people

This was indeed a very long time ago. My experience with PC Specialist and other enthusiast PC distributors in the UK has always been highly positive. I got PC Specialist to change my laptop's display for a better one with no extra cost on my behalf, quite good I think!

You bought a pre-built desktop? Why?

Don't be daft.

Potentially, yes. I guess it depends on how you are set-up.

I used to go home from work fire up the laptop every night. I'd sit there whilst supposedly watching TV wth my wife, but the laptop would be on and I'd be surfing the net. I'd constantly miss important bit of TV shows and she's say "did you see that?" - usually I hadn' as I was too busy staring at the internet. I realised I wasn't doing either of us any favours being this way, so I changed.

I put the laptop down and watched TV properly. I enjoyed the shows more as I tracked the dialogue properly and knew what was going on.

To continue my online interests, one night a week I don't gointo the living room at all. I use a desktop PC in anothe room. I can focus on that, without having to pretend I am watching TV. I often do online gaming etc and have quality computer time. Meanwhile, my wife watches the TV shows I don't enjoy whilst I'm not around.

So instead of having 5 average evenings, I have 4 good TV evenings and great online evening. I also don't get neck/back ache trying to get comfy on the sofa with a laptop.

Each to their own but, as I see it, you're either online or you aren't. If you are, you don't need a laptop in front of the TV - in much the same way as trying to do homework in from of the TV never worked as a kid. Go in the next room, finish your homework and then come back and enjoy the TV.

Hi, looking for something similar for a girl.
New, up to 500 pounds, size:13-14, good screen (brightness and ideally over the regular HD resolution), decent battery, so 6h lets say, and good trackpad. Normal processor (or U series, but not Intel M at 800Mhz) and over 4gb or at least upgradable in the future

My current options are and the downsides are (from research):
- laptop here (weak battery, hdd only 128, not sure if upgradable)
- HP 440 G3 (small screen resolution and trackpad)
- pcspecialist one (slow charging time, strange trackpad)
- HP Envy 13, only 4GB ram, non upgradable, heats up quite a lot aparently
- Asus Zenbook 303LA/UA (costs way more than 500)

Any other options? (please no 15 inch 2.5kg laptops)
Thanks

Although I read this site from time to time, am not sure which are the common trolls so please excuse my naivity.

@Zub: you did see I added 5 laptops that I researched and found, my question was if there's a better option. Please re-read the post.
@ollie87: One of the 5 laptops was the new version of the lafite. As I said the downside of it is the slow charging time (reviews were mentioning in the range of 8hours - http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/laptop/87641-pc-specialist-lafite-ii/?page=7 and bad trackpad surface quality). Still so far looks as one of the best options.

have a word with yourself, not worth £200 more for that nevermind this deal.

What night do you iron your socks :wink:

Slow charge time isn't really a problem when it has such a long battery life - use it like a smartphone. Just charge it at night.

Trackpad isn't amazing but no worse than most PC laptops - MacBooks being the gold standard of trackpads.

Plus it's an aluminium build so it'll be beefier than most plastic machines at this price.

Thanks. The reason I left it out, is that she doesnt like the tablet-laptops for some reason, but I'll suggest it again. Do you know if the hdd can be replaced?

No CD Drive!?

Whats so good about ssd? is a 1tb hdd not better??

Hahaha wow.

It's a nice machine and good specs/£ but these 3 things would put me off:

"sluggish trackpad, the noisy fan profile and the laboriously slow-to-recharge battery"

For a U processor, I'd expect a pretty quiet machine but that's not the case here. Throw in a quirky touch pad and slow charging, and it starts taking away from the user experience.

​i don't, I wear new ones each day.

When does this expire?

didnt realise that was so funny - maybe in a geek world thats hilarious??

SSD are much much faster than HDDs. The main bonus of this is your computer will boot a lot faster, my xps 13 normally boots in a couple of seconds compared to 30+ seconds for HDD computers. Also applications running off SSD will run faster, as will any read-writing to the drive. I would never buy a computer again without a SSD as there performance is so much better!

Just ignore Ollie87 ... he seems to enjoy belittling people because he knows everything .... wouldnt be surprised if he's on commission at PCspecialist ... as far as I know their laptops are not even made by them ... they just stick their badge on 3rd party cheap and inferior machines

An ssd has no moving parts like a usb stick ... a hdd is mechanical, uses more power, is less reliable and critically can be up to 5 times slower than a ssd .... SSD's are much more expensive than HDD's per gigabyte of storage, so the ideal solution is to have both ... Windows on the ssd and the hdd for cheaper storage. Having Windows on the SSD makes 99% of computers way faster to boot up and generally makes windows much more responsive, as there is no 'spin up time' like on a mechanical drive. Windows 10 boot up speeds on a HDD are i believe no longer painful like they were on older versions of Windows, but boot ups will get slower and slower over time as you install more and more software that starts up when windows does (and loads everything it needs to from your drive into RAM memory)... but I wouldnt take my word on this ... SSD's vary greatly in quality and speed though ... but i have both sandisk ultra 2 120gb (usually between £35-£50) and the Samsung 850 evo, which is in my opinion even better and faster and a similar (or slightly more) price ... its hard to find out what make and model of SSD is installed in a laptop ... if you get a cheap and nasty one, there may be options to change it, but many cheaper laptops are not the easiest to upgrade, whilst others will just be a case of unscrewing a panel on the underside of the laptop ... HDD's are usually 5400 rpm spin speed or 7200 rpm ... the 7200 will usually use slightly more power, but will be quicker ... and finally there are 'hybrid' drives that usually have a mechanical drive AND an 8gb SSD, you cannot chose what goes in the 8gb, but it will store most commonly used files there for quicker access ... they arent as quick as SSD's but are a great compromise between storage and speed

So how do I read my backed up things, create CDs for the car and install things which come in CD format?

Its true. I got a tablet thinking I could use it in bed and you basically end up not doing very much at all. The idea of do everything at once doesn't work. But a laptop is useful to move around and they hold their value better than a desktop.

Just get an external (USB) DVD/CD reader writer.
They are cheap and do the job fine on the rare occasions you need it

I bought this on the 6th January... the deal was expiring then, looks like it's renewed.

I bought it to replace my desktop and its looking good so far.

battery life is low but I don't really need to take it away from home so didn't bother me. I've got an external hardrive so again memory was not an issue.

for an i7 with 8g ram, within my budget, ur was spot on for me... best in class.

A lot of Laptop Hard drives only have 4200rpm, thus rendering them even slower than normal hard drives.

Solid deal heat. a bit small for my liking but heat.

1TB SSD is such good value now, there really is no excuse for HDD.

HDD may still be cheaper, but SSD is now cheaper per GB than people used to happily pay for HDD - especially in laptops.

Obviously I can't talk for you but I can't remember the last time I did any of those things using optical media.

Even my last car that was 10 years old had Bluetooth streaming, I backup all my important data to cloud services and I can't remember the last time I bought software and it came with physical media - it's usually just a license key.

I own four computers and only one has an optical drive - they only reason for that is that it's a HTPC and I use it to play Blu-Ray about once a year at most.

I find it hilarious that you don't have Google where you live.

That goes for most laptop manufacturers now. They are hardly inferior. Most of the world's gaming laptops are made by MSI and can be bought barebones for resellers to configure how they want.

OK sorry I didn't realise this was an ultra book, didn't look very compect and the poor battery life, screen not to the edge etc.

Good shout, about the first pcspecialist deal that looks decent

A desktop PC.

Okey dokey :laughing:

Why do most of the laptops on HUKD look like knockoff MacBooks?

the difference between using an ssd is the difference between using the royal mail to send a letter or using an email...speed. Once youve used a machine with an SSD youll never want to use one with a HDD again, unless you want some storage :wink:

SSD - Faster, quieter, cooler, not susceptible to mechanical failure
HDD - Cheaper

You can get a 1tb SSD but it's more expensive obviously. Most people are happy living with a small SSD to have windows and programs installed on and keep large media files elsewhere.

13.3" 128gb SSD, no thanks

can someone tell me if this is worth the monwy? I have a 5yo 13.3" lenovo but the battery life was 6-7 hours on that, only a core 2 duo ULV 1.3 ghz processor though

Id rather not judge, but you strike me as the kind of person that would state something as fact not knowing if its true or not, ... you are already trying to get everyone to buy from a company with a less than stellar customer service record, and most of the things you say are derogatory to the person you speak to, so you are not someone I would ever listen to or trust the advice from ...

Of course it is. What are you? A midget?

Yes. I can't believe you could be so racist.

/s

You are trying to convince people not to buy from said company, based on an experience from ten years ago, on a completely different product.

Only bought one of them, was for my wife. The other two were ex-work machines.

Does anyone know if this laptop has 'space' for a normal HDD to be installed?

So the SSD can be for the OS and the HDD can be for all other files to be stored in. Not the best at this but can't be sure if this is possible

Clearly sarcasm at play, not trolling

I bought one of these at £529 - nice enough machine but even after uninstalling bloatware I had nearly half the SSD gone!!! Luckily I bought from JL so took it back and they refunded. Phew!!!

Ok thanks for letting me know

This 5th Gen i7-5500u has a Passmark of 4036.
This is not particularly fast and similar to 5th Gen i5 6200u at 3916.

While my secondhand quad-core Asus i7 laptop Passmarks at over 8,000, but of course it's a lump, whereas this is thin and sleek.

Just so people don't get blinded by that i7 sticker...

why ia the post repeating itself ffs?

A good deal, if i had the money...or wasn't so tight.

wow a no brand vs lenovo, and only that much more? cool!

How would this laptop cope with the sims 4 and football manager? Any help much appreciated!

My dad told your dad to pull his finger out, like my boss who I saw one lunchtime in the fetal position make wimping noises in the changing room & he says the exact phrase to everyone else.

By the way, does anyone have any experience with John Lewis when it comes to electronics? Would it be easy to return the laptop after a week or two if I change my mind? The reviews on trustpilot are horrible.

This has been this price since xmas. offer ends this week.
Almost bought it a few weeks ago. Graphics could be better but good value for money still.

​cheers mate, will get this and sell mine.

Heat because
-Good brand
-SSD NOT HDD
-Specs
-Price
-Can't go wrong with John Lewis

I haven't uses my laptop in two years, I got something called a tablet, does all I need and has a great battery.

I've recently brought this laptop and it's amazing. Okay the battery life isn't great but it's stupidly light and very fast

ordered, best i7 13.3" deal around

If only it had a backlit keyboard. Thats the deal breaker for me

dad took this back as it had some issues and JL were brilliant and took it away and gave a new one
love good customer service

Yeah as others have said performance is much better with SSD, and honestly it does make a massive difference.

Ignore the rude replies, there is no reason you should know this. In fact I think it highlights the issue and the reason most low end laptops still come with a HDD rather than SSD, because a lot of people still look at the capacity, if you look at how high street stores such as Currys advertise laptops its always once of the specs they mention "comes with a 2TB HDD!!!". Most people don't need much storage in reality and would benefit much more from improved performance.

My only experience with them (PCspecialist) was around 3-4 years ago. It mirrors yours, except I did get my money back. It took a while and was a major headache. Never again would I buy from them. They seem to function by getting you interested with better specs for a lower cost. I would rather buy from JL any day.

My apologies. So it does! Wonder how easy it is to upgrade the drive to something more useable for photo editing

Theres no pleasing some people....

I recently got an i5 U31 from very.co.uk. All in all very happy for the price. It has a sturdy metal housing and is very slim. The screen is great, full 1920p with good colour and brightness. Performance can be a little variable but I think that's due to my having a HDD. Runs quietly. The battery life has been performing well enough to get a good 6-8 hours depending on the programme usage. Back lit keyboard as has been noted. From what I gather from Lenovo's manual, it's very simple to expose the motherboard and change components such as the RAM and hard drive.

Or maybe I'm looking for something more suitable for my needs. There is no doubt this is good, but since my current HDD has 200GB of stuff on it then 128 isn't really a massive amount....

Are you advertising your own stuff?Goodbye :wink:

Looking at Lenovo's website pictures of it it doesn't have any access panels for getting to the internals so I'd wager a colossal hassle. USB or NAS are going to be the best choices for large storage with something like this or waiting for the 1TB hybrid storage option the be available.

Further to my last comment, instructions on how to open the housing and change components can be found here:

https://download.lenovo.com/consumer/mobiles_pub/lenovo_u31-70_hmm_201505.pdf

Forgot to add that there was a ton of bloatware on mine, but nothing that couldn't be removed with a bit of time.

Most Windows OEM's are like that. Windows 10 is really easy to re-install clean though:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10

Though Lenovo did get caught with their pants down having firmware level spyware that you couldn't get rid of. Does this still have that?

Does anyone know if this is 2 x 4GB RAM, or 1 x 8GB? I guess the max is 16GB?

My next lappy must have a 'touch-screen'

BEWARE THE BLOATWARE and other rubbish on Lenovo. Read the press first.

Me too. Bought one of the waste of time BT call blocker phones absolute rubbish took it back a few days later exchanged for a better make that worked with no hassle.

IT'S NOT QUAD CORE! - CHECK THE SPEC - ONLY DUAL CORE.
IF YOUR GOING TO BUY HIGH END SPEND THE EXTRA FOR QUAD CORE!

I was thinking about getting this HP laptop http://store.hp.com/UKStore/Merch/MobileProduct.aspx?sel=NTB&id=N7J89EA&opt=ABU now i'm not sure. Maybe the advertised Lenovo is better?

Too many differences to directly compare. That HP is a touchscreen convertible laptop. This Lenovo isn't touchscreen but has higher specs. It's an apples to touchscreen laptops comparison.

But you just said that the deal breaker was no backlit keyboard now you've moved on to something else.

wow it's hot in here, glad I took the plunge now, can't wait for it to arrive.

Agree, tablet is great for surfing but when I order online etc or have something to do beyond surfing I always reach for the laptop....

That's a good spot, space for the M2 and a 2.5 inch drive is nice but no ethernet port unlike this deal.

I just bought an Optimus VII from PC specialist, and its gone straight back, the 1080p screen was terrible back light bleeding everywhere and the sound was a joke! i was barely audible in a quiet room, and what did come out was 100% tin can... these cleveos have great specs but they cut corners and you get what you pay for!

​10 years is enough for a company to totally overhaul its business, maybe they saw their faults and have upped their game. I suppose once you lose a customer to bad experience its hard to tempt them back.

Yeah that was very dodgy, though I believe they've stopped that now.

Decided to order and get a 1TB external HDD to go with it

Lol!

The backwards and forwards banter is the funniest thing about this thread :laughing:

You said the back lit keyboard was the deal breaker though?

Yeah hopefully they have, but my original comment has 8+ likes when i looked last night, and on a previous thread someone told me they hadnt improved ... and what they did was as good as criminal, 10 years ago or not

good spec hot, heat added.

Photo editing on a 13" TN panel?

I'm sorry to hear you had such a terrible experience with PCS - But as with most businesses, some people have good, some people have bad experiences.

I bought a £1000 Clevo laptop from them 4 years ago, and it still works flawlessly. I needed a new optical bay so I could install 2 2.5" drives instead of 1xDVD+1x2.5", and they swiftly sent that out to me (they charged me for it of course).

Also have a friend who bought a desktop gaming PC from them 3 years ago who is also happy.

None of my stories make it all right what they did to you of course, but some of us had good experiences with PCS!

I want a new laptop but don't want to spend £500 on something I don't use much these days as I use my tablet for browsing now.
I want something that switches on fast and is fast browsing the web, that's all I use it for so don't need anything fancy on it or loads of memory etc. I only use it to buy stuff online as it's easier and more secure than my tablet or phone. Wish I could just find something really fast but basic and cheap?

Thanks for posting. Bought it from a local store today and love it. Looks really smart.

Thank you weirdo, that looks perfect for me, are these as fast as a high spec laptop? Appreciate your help :smiley:

Why is the battery life so bad, it does not make sense ?
Low voltage CPU, no mechanical hard disk.

Thanks.

Avoid lenovo like the plague, they whitelist the bios in there pc's so you have to purchase any upgrades or components directly from them at a premium price, not to mention the touchpads they use in there laptops are beyond abysmal

You're forgetting about that 920m nvidia dedicated graphics card on the Lenova.

Got it yesterday. Battery life is a nightmare, case made of weak cheap plastic, returning it definitely...

Thanks a lot Picard, I'm off to have a look at those 2 now.

It not uncommon that laptops become deals on here where the item does not have a clean bill of health .
They are on sale for a reason or multiple reasons that are negative !
Once you sift through all the pages of noise in the threads it becomes apparent that real issues often exist .

Got mine today and first impressions are good. Looks lovely, seems solid enough. The trackpad isnt as good as a Mac but I wouldn't expect any different

Had mine a couple of days now, intended to replace my iPad and 15" basic laptop with this. It is a bit plasticky for £500, I don't think it will turn any heads. It is more or less instant on if left in standby. In native resolution some stuff on the screen looks too small, yet at 150% (default) some stuff like Picasa looks soft. Trackpad has a mind of its own at times. Battery life is about four hours light use. Keyboard backlight isn't on by default and can't be set to be always on, so difficult typing my password in the dark before I can enable it. It is nice and speedy though and very light. The SSD is a bit of a revelation in a laptop for me. Cortana didn't work until Windows did an update.

That's normal with display scaling, it's annoying but it's the app itself lacking support that causes it. You can disable it on individual apps though:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2900023

HDMI output.

Brilliant!! Ordered

I have hardly installed anything and down to 50gb of space remaining. Really is poor for storge as windows 10 uses a hell of a lot. Not sure I would be confident installing a larger SSD

I managed to clear 18GB of an old windows installation (must have been when it did the updates to latest version of windows 10) so this was a great help. Thanks

Picked up one of these for £399 in store (ex display) in prefect condition. Very pleased so far

So is this the flavour of the month, ironic/sarcastic replies to people who express themselves? Seems like a bratty cheap shot to me...

Ahhh nice ... its not often anything I say is correct heheh ... totally forgot about the 2nd w10 major update ... these are only 3-4gb each tho, so alot of rubbish from the factory install then ... glad it worked :smiley:

The guy said that laptops are anti-social. Laptops aren't anti-social, they can't be. They are an object. He then went on to tell a long winded story to explain how HE was anti-social, in how he chose to use his laptops. I hardly think its the most petty or offensive meme in the world. Just a light pop at someone talking nonsense.

I'm not bothered by the kids trolling, so I'm quite sure nobody else should be.

I stand by my message though. Laptops allow people to use computers in otherwise social conditions. If you're in a dedicated place for it, like an office or spare room, a desktop computer is perfectly adequate.

Ideal Laptop. And with the 920M GPU, you'll be surprised what games you can push with this chip at (low/med settings)

I have the Lenovo U410 with the GT730M and can play fallout 4 at 30fps consistently.

Good laptop for both business and pleasure.

Just got this today, after removing all of the bloatware, and disabling the hibernation file, you're left with about 75GB
idling now on here, at 96% battery, it's predicting i have 2 hours 45 mins left.

Isn't an ipad pro faster than this :wink:

after watching youtube for 3 minutes, the predicted battery plummeted 1.5 hours,
I suspect the you would struggle to watch a feature length film from 100% charge without dimming your screen significantly

Bought one of these, arrived with dead pixels and so I had to return it. Seems ok for the price for the brief time I had it. Reasonably quick although I did expect faster. About 75gb free when removed from the box which is a lot less than I thought there'd be. The trackpad however is awful, randomly freezes up on it's own and won't move for 10-20 seconds. The fan was also pretty loud when watching youtube videos on 1080p. You can't really complain for £500 however I thought the machine would be a steal at this price, but it's priced pretty appropriately for how it performs IMO.

Is it just me that finds the text to read on these little screens particularity when they in HD its like great for you tube but when you try to read any text its all blurry lol

If I want to read nonsense about technology ruining our lives I'll read the Daily Mail.

saved me 10 gig!

Nice to hear thx for letting us know ... I had forgotten about old w10 installs ... basically w10 now updates a bit like an android phone when they release a full w10 update ... they have released a completely new version of w10 since launch, and when you (or in the factory) upgrade to this it leaves a copy of the old w10 on your disk (so that you can undo the new version update if anything goes wrong).... using disk cleanup to remove old copies of windows retrieves several gbs of space ... as well as that windows seems to create alot of deletable files/space when it is first installed (I have personally retrieved 18gb once from disk cleanup), so i would recommend that everyone runs this at least once after receipt of your laptop ... just be aware that once deleted you can no longer go back to your old version of windows ... but if your laptop is stable and working well this shouldnt be a concern ... it is more important however if you have upgraded from win7 or win8 and want the option to be able to go back to the original os and remove w10 .... it does warn you if this is the case

I now have 2 purple dots in the centre of the creen. not dead pixels but looks like something has bled beneath the screen. Hopefully the JL warranty is as good as people claim