Recommendations for business laptop

[Lery]

I'm looking for a business laptop. Budget is about $400.00.

I'm looking at this one here: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/lenovo-...?skuId=6449496

or this one: https://www.amazon.com/Acer-A515-46-..._dp&th=1&psc=1

The Acer brand I have used before and it was great. However, the one Lenova does have more memory. It also uses Intel chip where as the Acer uses AMD Ryzen.

Any thoughts on which is better and perhaps any other suggestions?

[Acelius]

Of those 2, get the Lenovo. The extra RAM and storage will be a big benefit.
Just don't expect to do anything other than very light work, both laptops are pretty weak.

[jellmoo]

I'm looking for a business laptop. Budget is about $400.00.

I'm looking at this one here: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/lenovo-...?skuId=6449496

or this one: https://www.amazon.com/Acer-A515-46-..._dp&th=1&psc=1

The Acer brand I have used before and it was great. However, the one Lenova does have more memory. It also uses Intel chip where as the Acer uses AMD Ryzen.

Any thoughts on which is better and perhaps any other suggestions?

Well, for starters, what do you need the laptop to do? What apps do you use regularly? What is your workflow like?

Do you need to plug in any USB-C peripherals? If so the Lenovo would be out as it doesn't have any such ports.
Do you need wired ethernet? Same deal, no go on the Lenovo.
Do you need SD card storage? If so, the Acer is out as it doesn't have an SD Card reader.

You can fix the above issues if you're willing to live the dongle/hub life.

Like you noticed, the Lenovo has more RAM and storage. Which almost make it the default choice. Running Windows 10 on 4GB of RAM and with only 128GB of storage is going to be a painful experience. *HOWEVER*, do note that the screen on the Lenovo is only 1366 x 768. That is a garbage resolution for a 15.6 inch laptop in 2021. Eyestrain is going to suck looking at text on that thing.

The thing is, when you buy a laptop at this price point, you are going to get a cheap laptop. A world of more options will open up if you can increase your budget to say, $600. Then you won't have to choose between specs that can comfortably run Windows or having a screen that doesn't look like garbage.

Also, would you consider a Chromebook? If your budget is hard set at $400, you may find some compelling options in the Chromebook space where you can get away with far lower specs and still have great performance. Of course if you need full Windows apps (like, let's say Office), this option will be a no go.

[Kagthul]

What Jell said.

Dont skimp.

This is very much a get-what-you-pay-for situation.

I'd also second the suggestion of - depending on what software you need to be able to use - consider a Chromebook.

You can get some pretty decent Chromebooks that will perform a lot better than a Windows laptop in that price range.

[Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang]

Given you're looking for a business laptop with a very low budget, at this price point I'd suggest looking at a refurbished Thinkpad (T or X line) or similar high-end workstation (HP Elitebook, Zbook, Dell Precision, Acer Travelmate, etc...). Those will be built like tanks, with good connectivity and usually be easily serviceable (replacing battery, RAM, HDD, and for some keyboard and screen even). Enterprises buy those in bulk, have them services by their IT team and offload them after a few years, after which you can get them by refurbishers.

If an i5 or i7 gen 6 satisfies your need you should find plenty of choice online or in specialized shops.

Otherwise as aforementioned for $600-700 in the current market you can find very good to excellent laptops. If you can stay clear from devices with only 4GB of RAM, 128GB SSD or a screen resolution that is below FHD (1920x1080 pixels). There can nice deals to be found directly on the manufacturers shops for that, with the occasional heavy discounts on the mid-range.

A big factor is how much you need the portability aspect : size/weight/battery life. Also for what tasks : text editing, excel, code, picture editing, CAD, etc...(for all of those, using a screen that is less than FHD is indeed a pain, and more than FHD is a big plus).

[Lery]

Well, for starters, what do you need the laptop to do? What apps do you use regularly? What is your workflow like?

Do you need to plug in any USB-C peripherals? If so the Lenovo would be out as it doesn't have any such ports.
Do you need wired ethernet? Same deal, no go on the Lenovo.
Do you need SD card storage? If so, the Acer is out as it doesn't have an SD Card reader.

You can fix the above issues if you're willing to live the dongle/hub life.

Like you noticed, the Lenovo has more RAM and storage. Which almost make it the default choice. Running Windows 10 on 4GB of RAM and with only 128GB of storage is going to be a painful experience. *HOWEVER*, do note that the screen on the Lenovo is only 1366 x 768. That is a garbage resolution for a 15.6 inch laptop in 2021. Eyestrain is going to suck looking at text on that thing.

The thing is, when you buy a laptop at this price point, you are going to get a cheap laptop. A world of more options will open up if you can increase your budget to say, $600. Then you won't have to choose between specs that can comfortably run Windows or having a screen that doesn't look like garbage.

Also, would you consider a Chromebook? If your budget is hard set at $400, you may find some compelling options in the Chromebook space where you can get away with far lower specs and still have great performance. Of course if you need full Windows apps (like, let's say Office), this option will be a no go.

This was for a friend of mine who is cheap. I have already warned him about being cheap and that he needs to spend a little more money. However, he just needs something that will run Office and light web surfing. Nothing special and no games.

In the $600.00 space, what would you recommend?

[jellmoo]

This was for a friend of mine who is cheap. I have already warned him about being cheap and that he needs to spend a little more money. However, he just needs something that will run Office and light web surfing. Nothing special and no games.

In the $600.00 space, what would you recommend?

I mean, if he wants to be cheap that's perfectly fine. He just needs to set his expectations accordingly.

At around $600, he will have the luxury of not really having to compromise when it comes to things like performance and display. If all he's doing is using Office and surfing the web, then his needs are modest enough that most machines in this range should work well. Here are a few quick options (I tend to prefer Lenovo and Asus machines myself):

Dell

Lenovo 1

Lenovo 2

Asus

One thing I always suggest to people is to head over to Best Buy or some other local establishment and see if you can spot the laptop or something within that lineup. Try the keyboard. Seriously. If you're friend is gonna do some productivity on it, having a keyboard that they can't stand is just the worst. A quick check to see if they can see themselves working with it for hours a day will do wonders to gauging how good a fit it is.

[Kagthul]

Does it actually need to be “Real” Office, or will Google’s apps work? Or, of its real Office, would Office 365 suffice (thats MS’s Cloud-based Version of Office)?

If so, i HIGHLY recommend a Chromebook. For 400$ you can get a Chromebook that will beat the bejesus out of a Windows PC at that range.

[Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang]

This was for a friend of mine who is cheap. I have already warned him about being cheap and that he needs to spend a little more money. However, he just needs something that will run Office and light web surfing. Nothing special and no games.

In the $600.00 space, what would you recommend?

If he doesn't mind the long delivery delay (and if you're in the US). There is this one from Lenovo that is currently heavily discounted at $574.

[Gaidax]

For 600 you can nowadays buy decent laptop for use case required for sure. Anything ~I3, 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD storage made in 2020-1, that is lightweight and not tacky will do for your standard office/internet crap. Integrated GPU all you ever need too there as well. Bonus points for Dell or even HP (though I personally loathe HP), because of more business oriented support.

Don't waste time on Chromebook, however.

Last thing in business environment you want to deal with is shitty compatibility issues with generic business apps your colleagues use - should be able to open, edit, present and process everything your colleagues do or expected to do without having to waste your time jumping through loops and hoops to make basic office suites and software to work. Or hell even getting stumbled on something as simple as corporate mandated VPN or their custom application not supporting your flavor of weird.

[Gaidax]

Also last thing you need for business laptop is some weird ass crap from a startup that may go belly up in a year, has god knows what kind of reliability, warranty and actual support.

[Gaidax]

Spoken like someone who isn’t paying attention.

No, spoken like someone who understands that you need good local service for laptops you buy for your work. If tomorrow that piece of shit takes a drop and cracks a screen - how long it will take to get fixed and how much it will cost?

But hey they have a pretty one-pager. All is forgiven.

People who want laptop for their work need reliability and service above all else, they don't need your shitty modules for various addons they don't even fucking need for a basic office laptop. They need something that has a proven track record of not breaking down in a year and then if unfortunate happens - they need abundant service options locally and fast.

That shit is good for people who will actually make use of those upgrade options and don't mind taking a risk with v1.0 model with 0 track record. Not for people who want 600 bucks stock laptop for office/internet.

- - - Updated - - -

Also... its very basic model is frikkin' $1k USD and will only ship in 2 months. Totally what OP asks for.



1k USD for that config, that's pathetic.

[Onikaroshi]

Spoken like someone who isn’t paying attention.

Linus put like a quarter mill into them, so he'll probably drop them :P

[Temp name]

Spoken like someone who isn’t paying attention.

He wants a 400 dollar laptop, they don't have anything in that budget, or even available. It doesn't matter how good their product is if it's not 1) available, 2) within budget

[jellmoo]

Don't waste time on Chromebook, however.

Last thing in business environment you want to deal with is shitty compatibility issues with generic business apps your colleagues use - should be able to open, edit, present and process everything your colleagues do or expected to do without having to waste your time jumping through loops and hoops to make basic office suites and software to work. Or hell even getting stumbled on something as simple as corporate mandated VPN or their custom application not supporting your flavor of weird.

In my experience, it really depends on where you work and what the workflow is. I've worked places where a Chromebook would have been a giant pain in the ass. Almost any enterprise level company, for example, is going to have a workflow that either requires you to jump through hoops to be effective, or it will be downright impossible.

However, a lot of small to mid size businesses these days are choosing to go with Google Workspace for their productivity solution due to ease of use and cost. For these places, a Chromebook might be the ideal solution all around. I worked in a small business of about 35-50 people where the head of technology had a massive hate on Windows computers. Thought they were a security risk. Everyone therefore was using a Mac. This is fine and all, but was incredibly expensive, especially when large chunks of people (like the customer service team) absolutely did not need such a machine. I replaced their machines (and mine) with quality Chromebooks, at roughly half the price, with zero interruption of workflow.

If your office is using Google Docs and Gmail, a Chromebook can be a great choice if that's about the crux of your needs. But you're absolutely right that if you need to step outside of that it can be dicey. You can work around a lot of things with Android and Linux apps, but the experience isn't always that great, and it doesn't help at all if you are using proprietary enterprise apps.

[Kagthul]

Thats why I asked "what does he -actually- need?

Like Jell repeated/pointed out, if you're just using basic productivity and email, a Chromebook will do you fine.

And large enterprizes are getting into Chromebooks too, with VMWare (i believe it was VMWare, not the other major company that does VMs) supporting Windows VMs on Enterprise Chromebooks.

But if all you're doing is daily-driving, content consumption, and basic Office suite apps (even MSes, since 365 is perfectly usable), a CHromebook is fine.

[Gaidax]

It's really just a simple case of understand that you buy a laptop for a few years and you don't know where you might find yourself next in the business environment. Given the uncertainty, last thing you need is to end up having to buy laptop again just because the place/position/gig you landed in comes with software suite that simply does not run on Chromebook.

Same goes for that pointless modular laptop - very nice, but not for this use case where you don't want to deal with potential support issues or simply hardware troubles one-two years down the road that the makers themselves are not aware of yet. It's not 500th version of Dell Latitude or even cheap IdeaPad - where they iterate over the years. Not that it matters, because the thing is way off what OP asks for.

If you want laptop for work - you want to concentrate on that and not dealing with stuff not running properly or iffy support.

[jellmoo]

Thats why I asked "what does he -actually- need?

Like Jell repeated/pointed out, if you're just using basic productivity and email, a Chromebook will do you fine.

And large enterprizes are getting into Chromebooks too, with VMWare (i believe it was VMWare, not the other major company that does VMs) supporting Windows VMs on Enterprise Chromebooks.

But if all you're doing is daily-driving, content consumption, and basic Office suite apps (even MSes, since 365 is perfectly usable), a CHromebook is fine.

I actually hadn't heard of that. What a weird solution. Wouldn't that still require a Windows license then, which kind of negates the advantage of the Chromebook? And I can't imagine that Windows in a VM is going to perform all that well, let alone how much additional storage that will need.

[Kagthul]

I actually hadn't heard of that. What a weird solution. Wouldn't that still require a Windows license then, which kind of negates the advantage of the Chromebook? And I can't imagine that Windows in a VM is going to perform all that well, let alone how much additional storage that will need.

Its not like a Windows license is expensive, especially for Enterprise clients who can buy blocks of hundreds or thousands of keys. As for performance.. its usualky native hardware (most Chromebooks that Enterprise is looking at are running Intel, usually i3s and i5s, so itd be fine for most enterprise apps which arent usually hardware punishing - just proprietary/Windows only.

Enterprise customers arent buying 200$ Mediatek powered Chromebooks. Theyre spending money on higher-end SKUs (which are still cheaper than Windows machines) and are using ChromeOS for ease of management and IT support. (Enterprise ChromeOS can be managed remotely and en masse easily).

- - - Updated - - -

I was wrong, it was Parallels:

https://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/chrome/

[Temp name]

He already stretched that to $600. And it’s out. My friend got 2 back at the end of July.

Okay, so if I go on their website right now, can I buy a laptop for 600 dollars?

No.
The cheapest one is 750. And that's a barebones without RAM. Or SSD. Or Wifi. Or OS.

Okay, let's say he's willing to pay 750, and have the extra stuff to make the barebones actually work for no extra cost, can he buy it then?
Sure, if he's willing to wait until November for it to ship.

Okay, so what if he wants one now? Nope, too bad, none available. At all. His options are to buy a 1050/1500 barebones (again, without RAM/SSD/WiFi/OS), and to wait for that to ship in October. Or get the 1400/2000 variants that aren't barebones, and again wait until October before they ship


Yes, the laptops exist, people have bought and received them, but they're not available, or again, within budget.
And yes, I think they're a great company and what they're doing should be rewarded, but they aren't for everyone and shouldn't be brought up when they don't match what people need / want