Laptop recommendation under $600

Jul 22, 2014
2
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4,510
My current laptop is an asus k50AF that I bought four years ago for about $650. It has been good for me but now i'm looking for a new laptop that is better than my current one and is below or near the $600 price point that I specified.

1. What is your budget?
$600, may go slightly higher if i must

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
15.6" screen is preferred

3. What screen resolution do you want?
1368x768 or higher, preferably the higher the better.
4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
portable

5. How much battery life do you need?
The longer the better, but as long as the battery life isn't terrible then i can deal with it

6. Do you want to play games with your laptop? If so then please list the games that you want to with the settings that you want for these games. (Low,Medium or High)?
League of legends and various FPS steam games(Team Fortress, Counter Strike, Left 4 Dead) Would like to play them with the highest settings that my price range would allow

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.)
Internet browsing mostly, my time will be spent either writing papers for school, browsing the internet, watching videos, or playing a computer game

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
Minimum of 250 would be nice

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.
amazon,best buy, newegg, any reputable sites

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
Three to four years probably, then i will repeat this process

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
Not really technologically savvy on this sort of thing, so i'll just say whatever drive i need that would allow me to play disc-based computer games

12. Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons.
My current asus was the first one that i've owned, so outside of that i dont really have much experience with the trustworthiness of other brands. I'll put my faith into you for advice

13. What country do you live in?
U.S.

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
Will just repeat that i'm looking for a computer that is better than the asus k50af that i bought 4 years ago in this price range. I'm assuming that since so much time has passed that there should definitely be computers better than it in this price range($600). If there are multiple options, i would also like to know the cheapest laptop that i could buy that would be better than the asus k50af, if possible. I may still buy the laptop that's in the $600 range, but if there's some computer that's only $500 and better than the asusk50af, than i would of course like to consider that laptop as well. Thanks for your help in advance!
 

Joe_Kano

Honorable
Jul 12, 2013
15
0
10,570
It would be hard to actually go do the searching and shopping on your behalf.

Perhaps you should have provided a couple of choices to pick from in that price range.

With a $600 budget in mind and a high-res laptop, you will probably be looking in the i5/i7 Intel range. Also, you will likely need to consider an Ivy-Bridge/Haswell, with Haswell being the better option for battery life/portability.

Also, I'd look into getting an SSD (if you can find one for a laptop in that price range). SSDs vastly improve speed, whereas sometimes the processor chip differences aren't much between generations (others may stand to correct me on this).

I'd say it is much less about super-high performance (in your case), as it is with "the entire package". You'd want a laptop brand that is reputable and known for quality. A lot of laptop brands these days are just rebranded stock laptops from China.

Look for entire-package quality (sometimes even the casing they use for a laptop can add some difference to quality).

For $600, you will likely get a Haswell i5, with about 4GB DDR3 RAM and maybe a 500GB HDD. Also, you'd likely get 1 or 2GB integrated-graphics in the laptop.

As far as the age of your old laptop goes, you could definitely pick up something that is around the $450-$550 range that is a decent improvement over what you're currently using.
 
Jul 22, 2014
2
0
4,510

http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-59345759-Z585-15-6-Inch-Laptop/dp/B009AEPS4K


http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CRXZUD0/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00CRXZUD0&linkCode=as2&tag=cwsgaminglaptopsunder500-20

http://www.amazon.com/ASUS-K55N-DB81-15-6-Inch-Laptop-Black/dp/B00COR29XI/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

I'm not very good at this, but I looked around a bit, are one of these any good, or are there better options in my price range?
 

Joe_Kano

Honorable
Jul 12, 2013
15
0
10,570


Do you specifically want an AMD laptop? I see that all the choices you have given are AMD.

I could recommend an i3, which may be in the $400-$500 range, but it seems that you want to play FPS games too, so then you'd probably be looking at i5/i7 or AMDs with their 6/8 core options.

The issues you have with your recommendations is that you want something portable, as well as something that has long battery life and can play FPS games. Those 3 things can't be done simultaneously, unless you spend in the $2000 range.

Can you rank the order of the things you'd prefer?

Eg.
First = long battery life
Second = portable
Third = Doing work on Word/Excel/Office
Fourth = Watching HD movies
Fifth = (Light) FPS gaming
 
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