 "Need a laptop? We help you choose the right one")
In this mobile-centric world, buying a laptop has become more of necessity than a luxury. With everyone from students to working professionals working on-the-go needing one and with so many options available in the market, it can get quite a task to select the right laptop for your needs. The sad part is, a majority of us just look at a budget and try to fit the best laptop within that particular budget rather than looking at our needs first. This approach can work for some, but a lot of times you may end up with something that falls short of your needs or at other times can be an overkill for your needs.
We decided to divide this market into five broad categories, based on the queries we generally get when it comes to buying laptops.
Category: Student
Budget you should look at: Upto Rs. 30,000
Dell Inspiron 15 sporting the Intel Pentium dual core is a good bet for students looking for budget laptops
What you should look for: Laptops have become necessary companions of students, at least at the graduate levels, if not for school or junior college. Gone are the days of going to college or public libraries for research. With so many assignments and projects requiring researching over the web, a student needs a laptop now more than ever.
Ensure that you keep your budget to a maximum of Rs 30,000 as most laptops within this budget (and even lower) will fulfill your needs. Of course, if you have the money to spend, you can go for higher end models - but let us take a look at the bare minimum you would need.
A majority of student work involves writing assignments, making presentations and researching online. You may want to listen to some music while working on your assignments. In short, your tasks will not be too taxing on the system.
Any laptop with an Intel Pentium dual core or AMD Dual core or higher processors will do the job. If you look hard, you can also score some good deals on a processor family which is a generation or two older. Ideal screen size should be around 14-inches, but you can go for 15.6-inches if you want a bigger screen size. Just ensure that the laptop will fit properly in your college bag as you wouldn’t want to carry a separate bag just for the laptop. Unless you are planning on installing any of the free Linux distros, ensure that you have Windows 7 or 8 installed on the laptop. As for RAM, 2GB DDR3 is enough for the tasks mentioned above.
One thing that students do a lot is transferring files and for that you need to ensure that you have a healthy number of USB ports - three at the very least, assuming one USB port is taken up by your mouse. You will most likely get USB 2.0 ports around this price range, but a laptop with USB 3.0 ports is a definite plus. Also needless to say, you need a laptop with an on-board Wi-fi adapter - 802.11 b/g/n.
Laptops in this category, may not come with the best battery life but that should not be an issue considering you will be using them at home or college where you will be around a power port. Invest in an extension cord if the power mains are far away from where you sit in class.
Laptops you can check out: Dell Inspiron 15 3521, HP Pavilion 15 (A4 APU), Toshiba Satellite C850 X0011
Category: Home use/Family laptop
Budget you should look at: From Rs 25,000 to Rs 60,000
HP Pavilion 15 can make for a good everyday-use family laptop
What you should look for: This is a laptop that can be seen as a desktop replacement, so you will want to invest wisely as this will probably be the only shared computer in your house. At the outset, this category can create some confusion especially with those of you who are looking at extremes with regard to the budget. Some of you may be looking at a mean machine that does everything you throw at it, whereas others might be having not-so-tech-savvy family members with needs simpler than that of the Student above. Let us look at each scenario.
Budget laptops are great for surfing the web, messaging, watching standard definition movies and doing some work with office suites. These activities are pretty much the norm in any family and the budget laptop specifications can be similar to that required by the Student. Only differentiating factor is the screen size, which should ideally be around 15.6-inches as you want a bigger screen specially at times such as watching movies or looking at photographs together with the rest of the family.
Around the Rs 60,000 budget, you can expect features such as an Intel Core i3 or Core i5 series processor from the third as well as fourth generation (Ivy Bridge and Haswell), a 15.6-inch screen, Windows 7 or 8 on-board, 4GB of RAM and a good capacity hard drive. There are many choices at this budget, but only opt for the higher end processors if you will be making use of it. For instance, if some family member is planning to work with Adobe products, you might want a Core i5 (3rd/4th gen) to be on the safer side but if your family is just going to watch movies, surf the web and do office work, a Core i5 system is overkill. You can go for a Core i3 processor and use the money saved to get other peripherals such as external hard drives, better mouse, a cooling-pad and so on. If you have young kids, it is natural for them to play games on this family laptop. While it will not be possible to get a hardcore gaming laptop in this budget, the graphics are powerful enough to play some older games at lower resolutions. You can go for an AMD A6, A8 or A10 APU which has much better integrated graphics than the Intel processors and the laptop will also be relatively cheaper vis-a-vis the Intel branded one provided all else is the same.
We know that there is never enough space to store all our data, but 750GB is a good place to start at. You can also get a lower capacity HDD sporting laptop, and invest the money saved to get an external desktop drive considering the system will not be moved around much. Some laptops in this segment will also come with dedicated AMD or NVIDIA mobile graphics which can help playing back HD movies as well.
USB 3.0 ports and an SD card slot are recommended and so is a dedicated DVD drive. Weight shouldn’t be much of a concern as you will be placing this laptop in one place.
We have avoided Ultrabook recommendations, because the good points of an Ultrabook ie. light weight and longer battery life become irrelevant when the laptop will stay at home. You can get much better specifications on a traditional laptop as it does not include the premium pricing of an Ultrabook. Like we said above, keep your family needs in mind before investing and avoid going for higher specs blindly. If however, you find an Uwithin your budget, by all means get it.
Laptops you can check out: Acer Aspire V5-471P, Dell Inspiron 15R 5521, HP Pavilion 15-n012TX, Lenovo Ideapad Z500
Category: Business User
Budget you should look at: Rs 45,000 to Rs 80,000
MacBook Air’s slim form factor, long battery life, high-res screen make it ideal for a business user
What you should look for: There should be no compromises if you are looking to get a laptop or ultrabook purely for work purpose. Some of the major criteria for a good business laptop/ultrabook are: light weight, long lasting battery, good build quality, security features such as a finger-print scanner and a high-resolution screen. Considering a business user will constantly be on the move, the laptop should be in a position to take a bit of rough usage. The build quality of the keyboard and the trackpad should be top class as non-availability of a table (or a surface to keep your laptop on) should not deter you from critical work which needs to be done. A keyboard with a full sized numberpad is ideal as business users work a lot with excel sheets. An optical drive is not really necessary as most official communication happens over emails and larger files are shared over the local intranet. USB 3.0 is desirable and assuming that you will use one USB port for your mouse and another one for a 3G dongle, ensure that there are at least two more USB ports available to you (USB ports for the mouse and dongle can be USB 2.0).
We would much rather prefer you opted for an ultrabook. They have come of age and are available at reasonable price points as opposed to the stratospheric levels they touched when they had launched. In terms of processing prowess, a 3rd gen Intel Core i3 or Core i5 series processor will take care of most of your business needs. Around 4GB of RAM and 500 GB of hard drive is enough, but if you need to store large files on your work system, for reference purposes, then a 750GB or even 1TB drive is recommended. You may also opt for an SSD only Ultrabook if you won’t be storing much of your office data on your system and are looking at a blazing start up and program access times.
With business laptops or Ultrabooks, you also might want to get one which has a video out such as an HDMI out or a VGA out as that will help you with projecting your presentations on a bigger screen in meetings.
You may also consider 2-in-1 devices such as the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga or HP Spectre or the Dell XPS 12, if you want a laptop which works like a tablet when you want to sit back and just consume media - while you are on your long-distance flights. Although the current crop of 2-in-1’s in India sport the 3rd generation Intel processors, we would much rather prefer you waited for the Haswell processor sporting devices which are expected to give a much better battery life.
Laptops you can check out: Apple MacBook Air (4th gen Core i5), MacBook Pro, Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E430, Dell Latitude 6430U, HP ENVY 15-j049tx
Category: Gamer
Budget you should look at: Rs 40,000 onwards
Alienware 18 is a hardcore gamer’s companion. It’s specifications can be customised according to your needs
What you should look for: This is a segment which is quite similar to the home user segment in terms of the budget. So you have the mid-range as well as the high end laptops.
AMD APU sporting laptops are an interesting proposition for someone whose primary aim is gaming and is tight on budget. The integrated graphics processor on the A10 APU when crossfired with a dedicated AMD mobile graphics chip gives impressive results at medium settings on games, which are a couple of generations old. A majority of the laptops in the Rs 40,000-50,000 price range will have a native resolution of 1366x768, so for newer games you might have to bring down the resolutions for getting a smooth gameplay.
On the higher end of the spectrum you have works of arts such as the the ASUS ROG G750JX or the Alienware 18 which easily cost over Rs 1.2 lakhs. Agreed, you can get a powerful graphics card and build a proper gaming system in half that amount, but its not portable. These laptops are for the hardcore gamer and sport top-of-the-line mobile graphics chips such as GTX 770M and GTX 765M and so on. The main things to look out for if you have a sufficient budget are full HD (even 3D capable) monitors, Intel Core i5 / Core i7 processors, 6GB or 8GB of RAM, at least 750GB of storage space, great audio, HDMI outs and so on. For those who want to have a system which can access games faster, look out for gaming laptops which have a small portion of mSATA SSD which can be used for caching as it will significantly reduce game access times. Alienware and ASUS both provide options with SSD storage for caching.
Laptops you can check out: HP Pavilion 15-n007AX, Asus K55VM-SX086V, Dell Inspiron 15 7000 series, Alienware 17, ASUS ROG G750JX
Category: Video / Audio / Image editors or Content creators
Budget you should look at: Rs 1 lakh plus
Editing videos on Final Cut Pro on a MacBook Pro with Retina display
What you should look for: While most laptops mentioned above are capable of editing, sometimes you need systems which specialise in these tasks. For content creators, professional photographers, animators, audio engineers, video editors - accuracy and speed is of utmost importance. Sure most professionals have access to desktop workstations, but if you are travelling you have no option other than going for a mobile workstation. A regular laptop will just not do.
The Mobile workstation is the ideal class of laptops for such professionals. You will need an Intel Core i7 series processor to compute heavy tasks, specialised cards such as AMD FirePro or NVIDIA Quadro K series cards for speedier rendering, high capacity RAM (think 8GB and over), full HD or higher resolutions with calibrated screens and ideally an HDD+SSD combination for faster systems among other things. Applications such as Maya, Adobe Premier and the likes are resource heavy and with tasks such as rendering and 3D modeling, battery life will be sucked rapidly. You will need a workstation with a long lasting battery and may even need to purchase a dedicated external battery add-on.
Naturally, such high-end components means you will have to be in a position to shell out more money than say a traditional laptop.
Laptops you can check out: HP EliteBook series, Dell Precision series, Lenovo ThinkPad W series, Apple MacBook Pro (Retina Display)
So those are the five main categories to look out for when you go out to buy a laptop. But there are some things we haven’t touched upon which we want to talk about below:
Exceptions
Touchscreen laptops
You may have noticed that we haven’t discussed much about touchscreen laptops. Well, we feel that at the moment, touchscreens are just a gimmick. Apart from swiping through photographs, zooming in and out and playing games there isn’t really much use of a touchscreen and we would not advise spending a premium just to get a touch model.
Hybrid devices or 2-in-1’s
Hybrid devices is another category we have consciously refrained from in categories other than that of a Business user. We feel that technology still needs some maturity, at least in terms of pricing. Sure it sounds cool to have a device which goes from a laptop to a tablet and vice versa, but pricing is stratospheric if you want a 2-in-1 with a great battery life. With limited Haswell (Intel 4th Generation) hybrid devices in the market and not many Intel Bay Trail products, we would advise prospective buyers to wait. So far only ASUS has announced a Bay trail based Transformer Book. Let us wait for more announcements from other companies and of course a performance review of the same.
Let us know if you think otherwise about our exceptions. Also let us know, if you think we missed out on any major type of user.
Remember these three simple pointers before buying your laptop:
- Shortlist your expectations from a laptop.
- Then decide your budget.
- Don’t overspend on a laptop for features that you will rarely use.
 "Russian drones over Poland: Trump’s tepid reaction a wake-up call for Nato?")
 "As Russia pushes east, Ukraine faces mounting pressure to defend its heartland")
 "Why Mossad was not on board with Israel’s strike on Hamas in Qatar")
 "Turkey: Erdogan's police arrest opposition mayor Hasan Mutlu, dozens officials in corruption probe")
 "Russian drones over Poland: Trump’s tepid reaction a wake-up call for Nato?")
 "As Russia pushes east, Ukraine faces mounting pressure to defend its heartland")
 "Why Mossad was not on board with Israel’s strike on Hamas in Qatar")
 "Turkey: Erdogan's police arrest opposition mayor Hasan Mutlu, dozens officials in corruption probe")
