I got this model as a perfect (actually new or as new) refurb from luzerntech on ebay. I paid £430 and it's a good machine, not everybody who wants a fast processor is into gaming so it helps us save money by not having to buy a graphics card we'll never get any use of out. I use mine for audio production which can be very CPU heavy.

You should state in the title that it is a refurb.

You're going to want to specify that it is a FHD (1920 x 1080) resolution screen before you are swarmed. Based on my knowledge it seems a hot deal to me OP :sunglasses:

A lot of specs for the money and I suppose great if you want to do some video editing on the go.

Apart from that I don't find it well balanced, the cpu is great but without discrete gpu you won't be able to game in any reasonable fashion and if you don't game or do some cpu intensive stuff you are not getting anything from that cpu and are losing portability and battery life.

I would say an i5 U version plus 960m are better combo for gaming and for general use any of the U cpus with ssd will make a faster machine to use and more portable as well.

Still a very good price for people who do need cpu power so heat from me. I simply wanted to stop people buying on the basis they will get a really fast pc simply because it has a fast cpu. (that said put an ssd in it and it will be pretty damn fast but still bottlenecked by ssd so you will see very little difference in terms of performance when compared to U versions).

Good deal

I got this model as a perfect (actually new or as new) refurb from luzerntech on ebay. I paid £430 and it's a good machine, not everybody who wants a fast processor is into gaming so it helps us save money by not having to buy a graphics card we'll never get any use of out. I use mine for audio production which can be very CPU heavy.

It is what it is so no point in comparing it to weak U series chips or gaming laptops.
If someone posts a deal for a big off road 4x4 is there any point comparing it to a mini or an estate car?

HP + refurbished = problems problems problems :P

​
Sorry but his past was informative and had both the positives and negatives of the laptop

Sure, I agree, but my point was more that there is no sense in buying a 4x4 if you only intend to use it alone in a city.

​i think I am in this catagory. this does indeed look fast to me. what should I be looking for as a giveaway that this is not as fast as it seems? thanks. (ps I am really only looking for football manager, but I do play the odd stratagy game like pillars too) thanks

I'm not sure If this would work but you could get an external gpu (say 750ti? @ £100), connect a pci adapter (EXP GDC @ £27) and use lcd control board (£10-£20?), disconnect the laptop screen from the motherboard and use the external gpu through the laptop monitor. It has been done on other model HP laptops but just thinking it might work on this. if you already have a gpu at home you save even more money, or you could just buy a laptop built for gaming of course lol. YouTube external gpu on laptop cheap. All I'm saying is with conversion, this could be be a cheap gaming laptop.

You seem keen to imply incorrect information. This laptop is fast when needed and it's also power efficient so it gives about 6 hours on battery under normal use. Obviously if you use it if for constant intense tasks the battery duration will decrease.

Hi - can I ask whether this would be good for photo editing and the demands that would make on the CPU/in built GPU? I'm one of those clueless folks unfortunately. I don't need the machine to be superfast but to be able to cope with larger graphics files as necessary. If not, can anyone kindly suggest a ombination around the same sort of price range. Thanks!

Well honestly 6h might have been a lot 2 years ago, but it is not today. Machines running i7 U version survive for over 10h.

I never said this will last for 2h, (although I very much doubt the 6h claim), I was giving an example of what people interested only in cpu speed experience (With i7 3610QM which I own in mind) but it is a 45W TDP unit and there is no escaping that.

Well honestly 6h might have been a lot 2 years ago, but it is not today. Machines running i7 U version survive for over 10h.

I never said this will last for 2h, (although I very much doubt the 6h claim), I was giving an example of what people interested only in cpu speed experience (With i7 3610QM which I own in mind) but it is a 45W TDP unit and there is no escaping that.

Well a 4 year old i3 seems to be chugging along just fine, never missed a beat for browsing/office and general use.

Also I think you got the reasons wrong, MS Word, at least for me runs at the same speed on all processors not because it is getting slower but because it requires almost no resources. How long it takes to start it is far more related to ssd vs hdd then the actual cpu if that is what you meant.

Wouldn't spend this sort of money just to play FM. Laptops break so quickly and the battery is always abysmal.
You might as well just buy an iPad; I used to always put 500 hours into FM on desktop, but the iPad version is extremely close to the real thing its crazy. Being deadly serious too, iPad version is great and I doubt I'll go back to desktop now. I'm fairly certain a lot of strategy games are on the App Store now too, but if you're like me, FM is mostly all you play.

As time goes on, software eg. Word gets slower because it gets bigger. The number of lines of code increases. More instructions to execute in given time. i3 might be great with current word, but will be slower with the next version, or the one after that. The original Space Invaders was about 2 kilobytes. How big is the latest video game?​