Dad's laptop, any good?

[TomBerry]

Hey guys! My dad has just purchased a laptop as he wants something better than something from PC World but also something that isn't at all expensive. His budget was around £350 as this is understandable when he only needs it for work - he just needs to have lots of word documents, download files online and possibly have many documents open at once (Excel, Word, Chrome etc). Is this good enough or could he have made this a lot better?

Just mentioning again, he was the one that purchased it and wanted to know if it's any good for his uses, I'm not as smart with laptop specs so I'd thought you guys could have a go:

Chassis & Display
UltraNote Series: 15.6" Matte Full HD 60Hz 45% NTSC LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Pentium® Quad Core Processor N5000 (1.10GHz, 2.7GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM)
8GB DDR4 2400MHz SOLDERED (N5000 PROCESSOR ONLY)
Graphics Card
INTEL® HD GRAPHICS (CPU Dependant) - 1.7GB Max DDR4 Video RAM - DirectX® 12
1st M.2 SSD Drive
64GB Hard Drive Onboard (eMMC)
1st M.2 SSD Drive
256GB ADATA SU800 M.2 2280 (560 MB/R, 520 MB/W)
Memory Card Reader
Integrated SD Memory Card Reader
AC Adaptor
1 x 40W AC Adaptor
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre Cloverleaf UK Power Cable
Battery
UltraNote Series Integrated 36WH Lithium Ion Battery
Sound Card
Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Wireless/Wired Networking
WIRELESS INTEL® Wi-Fi 6 AX200 (2.4 Gbps) + BT 5.0
USB/Thunderbolt Options
1 x USB 3.2 GEN 1 PORT (Type C) + 1 x USB 3.2 GEN 1 PORT + 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS
Keyboard Language
15" ULTRANOTE SERIES UK KEYBOARD
Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
NO RECOVERY MEDIA REQUIRED
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Google Chrome™
Keyboard & Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam
INTEGRATED 1MP HD WEBCAM
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 5 to 7 working days
Welcome Book
PCSpecialist Welcome Book - United Kingdom & Republic of Ireland

Price: £0.00 including VAT and Delivery

Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/ultraNoteVI-S-15/nCVyWCuBxH/

 

[TomBerry]

Quick bump

 

[Scott]

At that budget I would honestly recommend off the shelf of the likes of PC world. There are so many restrictions that it's pointless going down the custom route.

64GB eMMC should be avoided like the plague IMO
Soldered RAM is a huge no-no for me

Other than the above restrictions/limitations it should handle what he is looking for fine but I wouldn't consider it a very good investment with any future sustainability considered.

As an example, I know this is significantly more expensive (£100 more), but it has absolutely none of the drawbacks of the previous selection. It can be upgraded and increased in capacity and requirement as needed as time goes on. It is also significantly more powerful even just for the daily run of the mill tasks. I would always spend a bit more, and recommend doing so, in order to allow future growth and use.

Chassis & Display
UltraNote Series: 15.6" Matte Full HD 60Hz 45% NTSC LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i3 Dual Core Processor i3-10110U (2.1GHz, 4.1GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM)
8GB Corsair 2666MHz SODIMM DDR4 (1 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
INTEL® HD GRAPHICS (CPU Dependant) - 1.7GB Max DDR4 Video RAM - DirectX® 12
1st M.2 SSD Drive
128GB ADATA SX6000 LITE M.2 2280 (1800 MB/R, 1200 MB/W)
Memory Card Reader
Integrated SD Memory Card Reader
AC Adaptor
1 x 40W AC Adaptor
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre Cloverleaf UK Power Cable
Battery
UltraNote Series Integrated 36WH Lithium Ion Battery
Sound Card
Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Wireless/Wired Networking
WIRELESS INTEL® Wi-Fi 6 AX200 (2.4 Gbps) + BT 5.0
USB/Thunderbolt Options
1 x USB 3.2 PORT (Type C) + 1 x USB 3.2 PORT + 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS
Keyboard Language
MULTI COLOUR BACKLIT UK KEYBOARD
Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
NO RECOVERY MEDIA REQUIRED
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Microsoft® Edge (Windows 10 Only)
Keyboard & Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam
INTEGRATED 1MP HD WEBCAM
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Home Installation
NONE
Chassis
Clevo NL51CU FHD (i3-10110U, FHD, 60Hz N4)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 5 to 7 working days
Price: £459.00 including VAT and Delivery

Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/ultraNoteVI-15/bs9dBA7SBC/

edit: forgot M2 drive.

 

[Scott]

Ps, you can double the size of the M2 drive for £8 in the above too.

 

[Scott]

@Scott Thank you for posting about this. I figured for normal everyday tasks like described it would do a decent-ish job but have never come across soldered RAM before or eMMC (whatever that is).

eMMC is basically an SD card which is, typically, soldered to the motherboard. It tends to be reserved for budget laptops and tablets. The main issue with it is that it's a fixed storage capacity. When you use it as a primary drive you become very restricted with no wiggle room for upgrading.

A friend of the family has my head in my hands every time they bring their laptop for a clean as it has a 32GB eMMC primary storage drive. I literally can't do anything with it other than a full wipe and I need to get the latest iteration of Windows each time as they can't do any proper upgrades (all space is used).

With a Windows installation and the simple programs that they use the installation is over 25GB (including page file and hibernation). I need ti disable the hibernation and drop the page file just to do minor updates. It's horrendous.

Of course 64GB won't be as bad, but with the need for capacity increasing as time goes on it won't be long before it becomes a restriction as well.

 

[FerrariVie]

I liked Scott's build a lot more than OP's initial one. I know it's £100 more expensive, so if you need to stick with the £350 budget, I would prefer getting something second hand like a 2 or 3 year-old lenovo thinkpad with an i5. Would have better performance than a current Pentium N5000 and would last for many more years, as it's usually very upgradeable (not soldered RAM or storage).

My wife has a 2011 thinkpad T420 with an i5 (2nd-gen) CPU that we bought second-hand in 2014 and everything still works very well (even CD reader works), at least for her usage (similar to OP's dad ). We just upgraded RAM from 4Gb to 12Gb and changed HDD to SSD last year.