KEY COMPONENTS TO CONSIDER WHEN BUYING A NEW LAPTOP – LAPTOP BUYING GUIDE
what to consider and how to choose best laptop? This article is basically made for those who don’t know how to choose a good laptop. You may find yourself in the process of buying a laptop, it is quite complex to get to know on the laptop you should buy directly.
Despite the amount of money you are budgeting to buy a laptop for, you will find that in the laptop shop there are varieties of laptops to choose from. When you ask how to choose best laptop or the best laptop brand, giving them an easy answer will be a lie. When buying a laptop there is a set of criteria that you should use before landing into a good laptop and also ensure that you enjoy the value of your money. So in this post, I am sharing a complete laptop purchase guide for your convenience.
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Below are the best tips you should consider before buying a new laptop;
How to Choose Best Laptop – Purchase Guide
Size of Laptop
The size of laptop really matters depending on what you would like to do with the gadget. You should make sure that you go for the laptop that best suits your need because size cannot be changed upon buying whatsoever like the case with RAM or ROM of a laptop which you can upgrade it later. You should ensure that you lock yourself with the best size to avoid future disappoint yourself.
The laptops sizes vary starting from 11.6-inches and go all the way up to 17.3 inches. Most of the laptop brands and OEMS like HP, Dell, ASUS and Acer usually offer only three display sizes – 13.3-inch, 15.6-inch and lastly 17.3-inches. Despite these some of the vendors sell laptops that fall outside these sizes for instance 11.6-inches, 12.5-inches and 14-inches.
In case you prioritise the portability of the laptop you are going to buy, it is obvious that you should go for a smaller sized screens laptop. The smaller sized laptops tend to be thinner and lighter than their larger ones. It is then advisable that you choose the laptops that have a screen that is either 12.5-inches or 13.3-inches in size, and a weight between 1kg and 1.5kgs.
You should also know that the smaller-sized 13.3-inch machines often does not support the same high-end Intel Core i7 CPUs or discrete graphics cards that you will be able to find in the 15.6-inch machines of the same brand. In most cases they will also feature a less-robust selection of ports. Probably you will need to go for a larger screen size if the kind of work you intend to be using your new laptop for requires a larger display or standalone graphics power.
Apart from the specific sizes, you will find that there are several different classes of laptop to choose from for instance the case of Ultra books tend to favour a slim and lightweight form-factor over high-end performance for instance brands like ASUS Zenbook and Lenovo’s Yoga devices fall into this category.
The crucial thing to consider when it comes to size is first try to figure out the main purpose you are going to use the laptop for. It is very difficult to find a laptop which suits all the purposes so you must for go some purposes for the main purpose.
Screen quality
The quality of the screen is another key factor to consider when buying a laptop because once you buy the laptop you will end up staring on it for a long time. For that reason it is advisable that you look for the laptop with a screen which is comfortable with your eyes.
The other factor to consider when buying a laptop when it comes to screen, you will have to consider whether you want your next laptop to have a touchscreen. The touchscreens are common used nowadays and they can make some tasks easier than others. It is Unfortunate that they can also add a glossiness to the display which is sometimes may be highly undesirable. The glossy screens lead to reflections which are a definite negative in case you are gaming, watching content or even editing images and video content.
For the case of photographers and videographers will fortunately consider having privilege laptops that offer the best colour accuracy and support wider colour gamut and HDR standards over those the ones that do not.
If you like playing computer games you should take your time to check on the refresh rate on the display of any potential laptop. Laptops with a faster refresh rate can regularly provide a competitive advantage in online games, because it enables a smoother and more responsive play experience.
The other thing you should also put into consideration is viewing angles, it is extremely important. You will find that a laptop screen that touts IPS technology offers the widest viewing angles and the best user comfort. There are chances that you will not always be using your laptop in its natural habitat and for that reason a laptop with an IPS display is usually preferred over the opposite.
In summary, if it is possible, ensure that you take your time to go into a store and see the screen for yourself. If this is not the case you will have to rely on multiple reviews in order to get a good overview of the product and whether or not its screen will be able to suit your needs.
Keyboard quality
When buying a laptop it is advisable that you figure out how long will be your typing sessions, for the case of long typing sessions, you will probably need to get a laptop that has a comfortable keyboard. It is a bad idea to go for a keyboard that packs in every key under the sun because that will definitely translate to a poor overall user experience when finding for specifics like the arrow or delete keys.
Buy a laptop whose keyboard that has a comfortable layout with full-sized keys and some space around the arrow keys. You should also ensure that the keys have an adequate travel on the down stroke and snappy responsiveness when you let them go.
You should also ensure that the keyboard is also backlit, so that you can be able to type with an easier view on the keys in dimly lit environments.
It is recommendable when buying a laptop you try to consider the instances whereby you will be typing and go for the laptop that best suits your typing tasks.
RAM
In past, rarely anyone used more than 4 GB of RAM or more to get the best out of your machine.
You’re definitely going to want to think of 8 GB as a minimum these days. 16 GB is the way to go, if you’re a power-user. Meanwhile, if gamers want the best experience, they can look at dialing things upwards all the way to 32 GB.
Further RAM allows further programs to run concurrently and allows the device to easily access more data at any time, which is useful for tasks like editing images or video content.
Storage
Hard drives used to be all the rage but they are mostly out of fashion these days, particularly for thin and light laptops. This is because they can be sluggish, somewhat voluminous and produce visible noise and heat.
At the other hand, a solid state drive (SSD) provides far more power than a hard drive, runs quietly and can be mounted in a form factor which does not add too much to a laptop’s weight and size. Because of these clear advantages, most OEMs have adopted SSD storage as the standard for laptops.
Stick to your new laptop’s SSD and you’ll love the speed at which it can load programs, access your data and how quickly it can boot your device.
The only issue is that SSDs are not offering as much power. Which means which dollar-to-gigabyte SSD storage is often more costly than conventional hard drives. You’re going to be stuck with a drive that is either 128 GB, 256 GB or 512 GB in size, but that would cost a lot more than one with a 1 TB or 2 TB hard disk.
Most laptop and PC OEMs now pair a smaller SSD with a bigger hard drive to make up for that. This enables consumers to get the speed benefits of maintaining their operating system on SSD storage while still providing ample storage space for the remainder of their files.
NVMe solid-state drives are also available on the newest, fastest laptops, which are much faster than standard SSDs but also more costly.
Battery life
The battery life quoted by the supplier is almost never representative of what the real world experience of using a laptop is like. Basically, there are so many factors impacting battery life. There’s the brightness of the screen, the size of the screen, the amount of programs you run in the background plus whether or not you stay actively connected to Wi Fi networks or Bluetooth devices.
A laptop runs on the operating system, too, will play a major role in deciding the battery life. It is for this reason that Chrome OS-based ultrabooks and convertibles continue to deliver superior battery life than those operating on Windows 10.
When you run programs that need a lot of computing, stream lots of online video, play graphics-intensive games or upload lots of files over a wireless network, then your battery drains much faster than the vendor has quoted.
A reasonable idea here is to look at the Watt-Hours (Wh) or Milliamp-Hours (mAh) value of the battery. The longer the battery will last, the greater those figures are. For example, for a 13.3 in Ultrabook a 44Wh to 50Wh rating battery would give you the best results.
Build quality
Despite our level of accuracy and carefulness laptops are inevitably going to find themselves, dropped, thrown and knocked around by the rigors of everyday use.
In order to curb this modern laptops have been made with feature that enable them withstand rain and dust. Some of the modern laptops are built especially for the brutal educational environments and they also come with military-grade protection certifications.
It is recommendable that you ensure that you check out how much testing a laptop has undergone or if there is any sort certification that you can put your confidence behind.
In conclusion, you should ensure that you balance all these features with your budget and your needs, and you might also have to make some compromises. It is very rare to come across a laptop with all its features being perfect more so when it comes to price.
I hope your question “how to choose best laptop” is solved with this laptop buying guide. Enjoy the value of your money by choosing the laptop that best suits you!