Good Laptop for Sims 3 & 4

I recommend you look at the Lenovo ThinkPad E555. It is a business laptop and ThinkPads are known for being very good quality laptops. Plus if you need to deal with customer support you will be dealing with the business side rather than the consumer side which is a good thing.

The ThinkPad E555 starts at $431, however I recommend that you at least upgrade the APU to the A8-7100. Doing so will get you the Radeon R6 (Kaveri) integrated graphics core which is more powerful than the Radeon HD 8610G / HD 8650G in the HP laptops mentioned in your post. That graphics core is more powerful than the nVidia GT 820m but less powerful than the nVidia GT 825m which means it is more than enough to play the Sims games. That increases the price to $458.

http/shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/e-series/e555/

You can upgrade the APU to the A10-7300 which also add a dedicate Radeon R7 M260 graphics chip and brings the total price to $602. But it seem the R7 M260 is not much more powerful than the integrated Radeon R6 (Kaveri) graphics core; it is still less powerful than the nVidia GT 820m so getting a more powerful APU with a slightly more powerful dedicated graphics chip does not seem to justify the extra $144.

The laptop only comes with 4GB of RAM by default. You can upgrade it to 8GB on Lenovo's site, but that will add $80. Alternatively, you can simply by a 4GB RAM stick and install it yourself. Here's a link for one that will cost you $35 from a good company.

http/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148813

The following video shows you how to install RAM into a laptop this is for an Acer laptop. The size of the back panel, it location and the however, the number of screws varies from laptop to laptop, but the steps are basically the same for all laptops.

https/www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcBwnb8rENQ

The A6-7000 APU is a bit of a mixed bag compared to the Core i5-2410m. The processing performance of the A6-7000 is less than the Core i5. However, for everyday usage you should not be able to tell the difference. The integrated Radeon R4 graphics core is more powerful than the Intel HD 3000 so games should be perform better.

If only reason you are looking for a new laptop is because of the battery, then you can always purchase a replacement battery like the following...

http/www.amazon.com/Anker-Performance-5200mAh-Battery-ThinkPad/dp/B00F02UT8G

I don't know how CPU intensive the Sims 3 & Sims 4 are, but I don't believe you should have problems with the A6-7000 APU. From a graphics performance point of view you should be able play with higher graphics quality settings.

If your L420 laptop is basically dead, then you can remove the RAM and install it the E555 because they use the same RAM. Do you have a particular budget to work with or is the cost of the E555 basically the max you want to spend?

Like I said, I do not believe you should have any problems and reusing the RAM will be fine. The RAM in most laptops like the Thinkpad is easy to access and install / remove. See video below:

https/www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcBwnb8rENQ