Looking for a good, budget laptop

Knightfall2

Estimable
Feb 21, 2014
1
0
4,510
So I'm starting college this year (yay?). I have a Lenovo Y510p, which is a great laptop. Love it. I play lots of games, the keyboard's nice and can run any game. Problem is the battery is shit so I can't bring it to class for notes. It's also huge and can't fit on most of the half desks. Also it's expensive and I don't want to worry about it getting stolen. So I'm looking at getting a cheap laptop that can do the following:

-Good battery life (looking for 5-6 hours, would be happy with more)
-Touch screen, and folds into tablet (for netflix in bed and fantasy football)
-Small, not sure what's considered big but I want it to be small enough to fit on small desks

Thoughts? I prefer Windows.

 
Solution
If you want a bit more of battery life try going to the nvidia control panel and tweaking some settings, do the same in the intel control panel. Setting wndows battery settings to power saving, dim the display as much as comfortable, go into safe mode (it should load less things without having to tweak startup settings, set windows visual effects to perfomance, lower a bit the resolution, go into airplane mode if you don't need wifi and if your system has a control center tweak some settings there too. In case this isn't enough there are only two things left, one is an extended battery and the other one is buying a cheap laptop as you mentioned.

You can skip the paragraph above if you have already decided to buy a new system...

drapacioli

Distinguished
Dec 6, 2010
308
0
19,010
My sister recently purchased an Asus T100 for a school laptop/tablet hybrid, she didn't like the size of her larger laptop either and wanted a tablet, then when her Dell died on her over the summer she decided to buy it. From what she's experienced, it'll last almost all day (Asus claims 11 hours but we think it's closer to 8 or 9. We haven't done a full battery drain test on it though). It even comes with MS Home and Student for notes, and I believe Asus offers cloud storage through some company I've never heard of (I haven't paid much attention to those tbh) The only major downsides are the keyboard is a little smaller than normal (about 90% full size), and the internal SSD storage is low (32 or 64GB only), though there are options for an extra 500GB in the KB dock, and the model has a microSD slot for up to 64GB more storage. It's low on power too, but it'll have enough CPU to stream netflix (1080p isn't necessary as the tablet's display is only 1366x768. That's low compared to an iPad, but really not bad for the size at all. I've used a 768p display on a 15.6" laptop before and while it wasn't the sharpest, it was workable).

It can be found on Amazon, there are several models starting at $360 or so:

http://www.amazon.com/Transformer-T100TA-H1-GR-Detachable-Touchscreen-Laptop/dp/B00IVLHJ2M/


There might be cheaper options out there that'll work for you too, but she's been pretty happy with this purchase. Given my own track record with Asus, I would buy one for myself if I were in the market (I am not, actually I recently bought the very laptop you're looking to replace for school/play, just the 14" model).

If you're really on a budget, there are chromebooks available for about half that price, but I'm not familiar with them.
 

Bolin

Estimable
Sep 8, 2014
312
0
5,010
If you want a bit more of battery life try going to the nvidia control panel and tweaking some settings, do the same in the intel control panel. Setting wndows battery settings to power saving, dim the display as much as comfortable, go into safe mode (it should load less things without having to tweak startup settings, set windows visual effects to perfomance, lower a bit the resolution, go into airplane mode if you don't need wifi and if your system has a control center tweak some settings there too. In case this isn't enough there are only two things left, one is an extended battery and the other one is buying a cheap laptop as you mentioned.

You can skip the paragraph above if you have already decided to buy a new system. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Now, more to the point. I think I know what you want
http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/lenovo/flex-series/
http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/lenovo/flex-series/flex-2-15/
http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/lenovo/yoga-laptop-series/
http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us/products/surface-pro-3

 
Solution

Bolin

Estimable
Sep 8, 2014
312
0
5,010


Chromebooks are a pretty good option too
I suggest you install linux if you need to work offline or if the tools on chromium aren't enough