Tips and insight for a laptop we are going to buy my daughter

[kenaij]

Hi,
I have been looking around with this question but most answers seem to come from people who all think everyone needs a super computer. I figured there might be some tech savy people around here. I am not completely unfamiliar with computers and what does what in a system. So before I start. I know neither of these options are 'great' laptops. But we are working within a budget. Also my daughter is about to turn 10. She loves computers but does not do any high end stuff with them yet.
She has been using a very old laptop (i5 5200u) to get to know windows and play some games.

A quick summary of what she is going to do on the system.
- Schoolwork, mainly googling, MS word/powerpoint. Maybe some MS excel but no big sheets.
- Play games like Starstable online and Roblox, Sims 4 is about the most demanding game she is going to play. (Roblox and starstable at about medium 1080p, and Sims low-medium 1080p)
- Streaming some media like Netflix or watching videos on youtube.

We have been to a shop so she could pick which model (look) laptop she would like. And she picked the Asus vivobook 14". This model has a Numpad on the mousepad which she absolutaly loves.

Whatever it is going to be internally, she wants the laptop to look like this.
So I have been looking around and found 3 models. One of which is kind of outside of our budget.
My daughter saved up about 100 euros, and we want to spend about 300-350 euros.
She would also love to get the premium version of starstable which is 70 euros. So picking the cheaper model will allow us to give her that along with the laptop.
The models are as followed:

1: 525 euros (slightly over budget, and only this price when it is on sale)
i5-1235u, Intel iris XE, 2x8gb DDR4, 512GB SSD

2: 430-480 euros (on budget, no premium starstable)
i3-1215u, Intel UHD 64eu, 1x8gb DDR4, 512GB SSD (this model is upgradable to 1x 16GB DDR4 later on)

3: 350-380 euros (under budget, can add premium starstable)
i3 N305, Intel UHD 770 (I think), 1x8gb DDR4, 256GB SSD (this model has soldered RAM so not upgradable, 256GB should leave about 80-100GB after installing all programs and games)

I have also found models with a Ryzen chipset Ryzen 3 7320u, Radeon 610M, 1x8gb DDR5 (non expendable), 512GB SSD at around 450. But think the Radeon 610m preforms much worse than the UHD counterparts in the intel models. (BUT I MIGHT BE WRONG!!!)

She will be using this laptop for about 3 or 4 years. When she goes to highschool and has to do more demanding school projects we will get her a more powerful machine.


Given the basic tasks and the games she wants to play. What would be the best laptop for my money. Is the cheapest model enough? Or will we regret underspending on the laptop because she will have low FPS and lagging games?
Again low-medium settings on SIMS 4 at 1080p are fine.

I live in the Netherlands so pricing might seem off compared to your country. The chipsets in this laptop model to equal other laptops in their price ranges.
Also, if she wants to start playing more demanding games later on we have my dedicated gaming laptop she could use parttime.

Thank you for your replies

 

[Misery]

most answers seem to come from people who all think everyone needs a super computer

Yeah this bit always baffles me. What makes it even stranger is that half the time, people who buy/build these huge mega-rig PCs wont *actually* use like 95% of the potential the things offer. But they want to HAVE them.

I see it a lot in the gaming community specifically but something tells me the trend goes way past just that.

On the note of Sims 4 though, be aware that the game is... not very well made. The listed base requirements for it are not very high, but if you were to actually give it just that, it'd likely choke itself to death (even on low settings) and turn the laptop into a furnace in the process. As a rule, anyone who really wants to play that one a lot needs something a bit beefier than whatever the minimum or even recommended requirements are.

I mean I love the Sims in general, but holy heck it is NOT made very well.

There are fixes to some of that game's issues, but that usually involves installing small mods into it.

 

[Outdated]

I haven't played with laptops or Windows for a very long time, but to me the "budget" one looks like the better deal just going by the stats on the processors. 8 gig of ram is about the bare minimum you'd want these days but an extra 200 Euros for an extra 8 gig is pretty poor value.

I'd go for the budget computer out of those 3, and if she gets more in to games as she gets older build her a decent gaming desktop and she can still keep using the laptop as a school book.

 

[kenaij]

Thank you both for your insight
It is fine if she plays the Sims 4 on lower settings as long as it is on 1080p @ about 60fps. Everything on low is fine.
She mostly plays starstable and Roblox anyways.
But it would be nice if she could play the Sims on her own system.
I was leaning to the budget system, but not if it means she cannot play the Sims smoothly.

 

[Streetwise]

Hi,
I have been looking around with this question but most answers seem to come from people who all think everyone needs a super computer. I figured there might be some tech savy people around here. I am not completely unfamiliar with computers and what does what in a system. So before I start. I know neither of these options are 'great' laptops. But we are working within a budget. Also my daughter is about to turn 10. She loves computers but does not do any high end stuff with them yet.
She has been using a very old laptop (i5 5200u) to get to know windows and play some games.

A quick summary of what she is going to do on the system.
- Schoolwork, mainly googling, MS word/powerpoint. Maybe some MS excel but no big sheets.
- Play games like Starstable online and Roblox, Sims 4 is about the most demanding game she is going to play. (Roblox and starstable at about medium 1080p, and Sims low-medium 1080p)
- Streaming some media like Netflix or watching videos on youtube.

We have been to a shop so she could pick which model (look) laptop she would like. And she picked the Asus vivobook 14". This model has a Numpad on the mousepad which she absolutaly loves.
View attachment 135298

Whatever it is going to be internally, she wants the laptop to look like this.
So I have been looking around and found 3 models. One of which is kind of outside of our budget.
My daughter saved up about 100 euros, and we want to spend about 300-350 euros.
She would also love to get the premium version of starstable which is 70 euros. So picking the cheaper model will allow us to give her that along with the laptop.
The models are as followed:

1: 525 euros (slightly over budget, and only this price when it is on sale)
i5-1235u, Intel iris XE, 2x8gb DDR4, 512GB SSD

2: 430-480 euros (on budget, no premium starstable)
i3-1215u, Intel UHD 64eu, 1x8gb DDR4, 512GB SSD (this model is upgradable to 1x 16GB DDR4 later on)

3: 350-380 euros (under budget, can add premium starstable)
i3 N305, Intel UHD 770 (I think), 1x8gb DDR4, 256GB SSD (this model has soldered RAM so not upgradable, 256GB should leave about 80-100GB after installing all programs and games)

I have also found models with a Ryzen chipset Ryzen 3 7320u, Radeon 610M, 1x8gb DDR5 (non expendable), 512GB SSD at around 450. But think the Radeon 610m preforms much worse than the UHD counterparts in the intel models. (BUT I MIGHT BE WRONG!!!)

She will be using this laptop for about 3 or 4 years. When she goes to highschool and has to do more demanding school projects we will get her a more powerful machine.


Given the basic tasks and the games she wants to play. What would be the best laptop for my money. Is the cheapest model enough? Or will we regret underspending on the laptop because she will have low FPS and lagging games?
Again low-medium settings on SIMS 4 at 1080p are fine.

I live in the Netherlands so pricing might seem off compared to your country. The chipsets in this laptop model to equal other laptops in their price ranges.
Also, if she wants to start playing more demanding games later on we have my dedicated gaming laptop she could use parttime.

Thank you for your replies

Go onto eBay, some people will buy what you want and never get it out of the box! or open and never use, I got a 10 inch android tab for about £30 off, plus! taking it out of landfill

 

[kenaij]

Go onto eBay, some people will buy what you want and never get it out of the box! or open and never use, I got a 10 inch android tab for about £30 off, plus! taking it out of landfill

Thnx. Will check it out.

 

[Ronald Zeeman]

My latest is an HP best price do not play games have desk top in my home office wife now wants to upgrade her ten year old tablet. last time I bought a HP was a calculator in college.

 

[FilterFreq]

I might be out of touch, but I get this feeling pretty much anything off the shelf could handle these tasks. I even have a clunky desktop from about 7 years ago that still plays the Sims just fine. That, Minecraft, Roblox and others probably fall into the lo-spec category of gaming as it is, so it's probably pretty difficult to find a system that won't run those nowadays, since that's all kind of standard. As well as streaming video and handling text processing, etc.

The only reason I'd avoid eBay or Amazon's secondhand market (personal decision) is because of all the frankensteined-together desktops and laptops I've bought throughout the years. They usually boot up once or twice just fine, but then they start to sound like a jet engine taking off, no visuals, etc. Fun hobby project to get it working again for sure, but I don't think that's what you have in mind here. Just a word of caution.

Most refurbs in today's market are just gambles. They're gambling on you not sending it back, really.

 

[Boogs]

I'd generally say that laptop gaming is about the most expensive way to do Windows games, and the better the machine (more powerful cpu and graphics etc) the worst value for money it'll be.

But that said, I'd take care with the cheaper end of things - the 256G HD maybe be a little on the small side (though this depends a lot on what she does with it). Worse, a limit of 8G ram may be a mistake, and especially if it's running Windows 11 (and even if it's Windows 10, that may go end of life in a few years). I'd ensure you can at least upgrade ram to 16G.
But judging how well games will run just from the limited specs here is very difficult. The very best thing is finding a chance to try one out, but I don't know if you have any shops amenable to letting you test a display model and try some internet based games?

Just based on those three you described, I'd be inclined to go for the middle one, mainly based on the better graphics and expandable ram (compared with the cheapest).

@Outdated's suggestion of getting a PC later if games become more of a thing for her is a good option, especially if she get's into tinkering with computers, as you can upgrade parts - graphics cards, ram, disks, etc etc, and keep updating it gradually (just an updated graphics card can make it seem like a new machine) in a more affordable fashion.

 

[717]

Lest have a look at the system requirements first:

Schoolwork: I am confused by this, do you mean generic school work or this Apple software?
Schoolwork requirements.

I am going to assume, by your own list of options, that you mean generic school work… because I don’t like Apple products.

I am ignoring the system requirements for Office and the internet browser, if you are talking games then the machine will have more than what this programs need.

Starstable: It looks like if you can run Win10 you can run this
Upgrade Alert: Desktop System Requirements | Star Stable

Roblox: This game does not support Linux, so that is out of the equation, we are realistically left with Win10 and Win11. DirectX 10 or higher, processor with clock speed of 1.6Ghz and it hates old AMD… 1G Ram and a joke of storage.
https://en.help.roblox.com/hc/en-us...mputer-Hardware-Operating-System-Requirements

Sims 4: reccomended Intel i5 or Ryzen 5, 8G Ram, 51G storage and 1G GPU with basic specs for the video card… so far the highest system requirements…
https://help.ea.com/en/help/the-sims/the-sims-4/the-sims-4-system-requirements/

Considering that your girl is going to be stuck with windows, lest have a look at those requirements too…

Win10: Windows 10 system requirements - Microsoft Support

Win11:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...irements-86c11283-ea52-4782-9efd-7674389a7ba3

Now lest look at your 3 options, And because you did not give the brands, if any of the options is HP that is trash and should be deleted from the list. If any of the options is Dell, then you add extra points for that, and if it is Dell Latitude, then just buy that one… even if is second hand, it is still better.

A bit overkill
1: 525 euros (slightly over budget, and only this price when it is on sale)
i5-1235u 4.4GHz, Intel iris XE, 2x8gb DDR4, 512GB SSD

Sims will run but it recommends i5… But still this i3 runs at 4.40 GHz… so it should be able to do the trick with no perceibable drop on performance, no idea what the graphics is in this machine.
2: 430-480 euros (on budget, no premium starstable)
i3-1215u, Intel UHD 64eu, 1x8gb DDR4, 512GB SSD (this model is upgradable to 1x 16GB DDR4 later on)

Another i3 this time with speed of 3.80 GHz… this is more pushing it to the side of minimum instead of recommended requirements, for Sim… still above minimum… the 770 gives 73 FPS on GTA5 so I think it can handle Sim… the RAM is OK… it does not say if the storage is HD or SSD...
3: 350-380 euros (under budget, can add premium starstable)
i3 N305, Intel UHD 770 (I think), 1x8gb DDR4, 256GB SSD (this model has soldered RAM so not upgradable, 256GB should leave about 80-100GB after installing all programs and games)

From those 3 options I would go with option 3, if the storage is HD then upgrade to SSD, I would keep it on Win10, dish the Office Suit and go for either Open Library or Google Docs.

For the same budget of your option 3 you can get all this… if you don’t mind it being second hand:
https://www.newegg.com/black-dell-latitude-7490/p/1TS-000A-0TJE5?Item=9SIA77GJXZ8789

That is well above any of the system recommendations, making it last longer before it obsoletes.

 

[Outdated]

Lest have a look at the system requirements first:

A helpful post but the original post was over a month ago now, he has probably already bought what he decided on and given it to his daughter.

No matter what decision he made, in the end I bet his daughter is pretty happy.