Which Lenovo laptop would you choose, and why/why not?
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Are either of these a “Hot Deal”? Which Lenovo laptop would you choose? Good points, bad points? Retired Army Vet friend has max of $400 to spend replacing his 8-year-old laptop that died, and wants to buy it locally, not online. I found two Lenovo brand laptops in his budget. STAPLES - Lenovo I5, 1 YEAR OLD DEMO, 15.6", 8 gig, $399.46 clearance, supposedly was $699.99, no warranty because it was their demo for a year. Sorry, didn’t get a lot of detail because no tech was available to talk with and my husband was in a hurry; OFFICE DEPOT (still OfficeMax here) - NEW Lenovo IP3, with I3 processor, 15.6", 8 gig, 1 TB HDD, media card, HDMT, VGA, Win10, WiFi, Bluetooth, can expand memory up to 20gig, 7 hour battery life, 1 year warranty, $379.99, supposedly regularly $489.99.
My friend is a retired Veteran with health issues and spends a lot of time at home. He uses the laptop for social media, connecting to TV to stream movies, YouTube tutorials, etc, uses more than one browser, streams live feeds (eagle cam, Outer Banks surf camera, etc.), uses video meet apps like Zoom, has an 2 to 3 year old inkjet printer, and takes the laptop on trips occasionally. He wanted one with a CD read/write so he could burn old family photos and videos to CDs, and occasionally edit the videos. At his price range, that’s not going to happen, of course. Advice, please? Thanks!
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@dionaea said in Which Lenovo laptop would you choose, and why/why not?:
Are either of these a “Hot Deal”? Which Lenovo laptop would you choose? Good points, bad points? Retired Army Vet friend has max of $400 to spend replacing his 8-year-old laptop that died, and wants to buy it locally, not online. I found two Lenovo brand laptops in his budget. STAPLES - Lenovo I5, 1 YEAR OLD DEMO, 15.6", 8 gig, $399.46 clearance, supposedly was $699.99, no warranty because it was their demo for a year. Sorry, didn’t get a lot of detail because no tech was available to talk with and my husband was in a hurry; OFFICE DEPOT (still OfficeMax here) - NEW Lenovo IP3, with I3 processor, 15.6", 8 gig, 1 TB HDD, media card, HDMT, VGA, Win10, WiFi, Bluetooth, can expand memory up to 20gig, 7 hour battery life, 1 year warranty, $379.99, supposedly regularly $489.99.
My friend is a retired Veteran with health issues and spends a lot of time at home. He uses the laptop for social media, connecting to TV to stream movies, YouTube tutorials, etc, uses more than one browser, streams live feeds (eagle cam, Outer Banks surf camera, etc.), uses video meet apps like Zoom, has an 2 to 3 year old inkjet printer, and takes the laptop on trips occasionally. He wanted one with a CD read/write so he could burn old family photos and videos to CDs, and occasionally edit the videos. At his price range, that’s not going to happen, of course. Advice, please? Thanks!CPU model would help decision here.
Also moving this to deal discussion.
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Back to Staples and Office Max with my retired Vet friend, and neither of these is suitable for his needs once we asked a lot more questions and dug down to the details. Thanks anyway, dangeRuss. And apparently I don’t have permission to delete this thread, or I would.
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@dionaea said in Which Lenovo laptop would you choose, and why/why not?:
Back to Staples and Office Max with my retired Vet friend, and neither of these is suitable for his needs once we asked a lot more questions and dug down to the details. Thanks anyway, dangeRuss. And apparently I don’t have permission to delete this thread, or I would.
What is he looking for? Maybe someone around here can help.
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He has a limited amount of money to spend (don’t we all?), so trying to keep it to around $400 plus tax (practically impossible unless we luck into a big sale). I think he might be able to go up to around $450 plus tax, though. He’s got a lot of health issues as well as a fair amount of insomnia, so he’s in his recliner a lot and depends on the laptop and a smooth connection with his TV across the room. He’s wishing for a fairly lightweight 15 Inch, SSD, 8 Gig, Win10, using it a lot for streaming movies and YouTube tutorials to his TV and for watching streaming live feeds from things like an eagle nest cam, the streaming surf cam at Outer Banks, Facebook and other social media, social meeting apps like Zoom, definitely at least a 1 year warranty included in the pricetag. Since no laptops these days come with a CD player/burner, my husband and I will surprise him with an external one for his birthday. It’s a major investment for him, so getting one that fits his needs is especially important.
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I personally would go with the one with 1 yr warranty. Laptops these days are made with disposable parts so 1 yr is about it’s lifespan. He may get more out of it, but manufacturers build it cheap on purpose.
I would have said https://www.walmart.com/ip/HP-15-6-Touchscreen-Intel-Pentium-Silver-N5000-4GB-SDRAM-500GB-HDD-15-bs244wm-Scarlet-Red/932224106 but it’s out of stock. $400 isn’t alot laptop wise, A dependable one will cost $1000+
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an external cd writer will serve his purpose.
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this might fit the bill, Y’all would have to upgrade to SSD in future though. But as a poor person, it’s easier to piece together than a lump sum. one below has SSD;
Dell Latitude E5570 15.6in Laptop, Core i5-6300U 2.4GHz, 8GB Ram, 256GB SSD, Windows 10 Pro 64bit (Renewed)
by Amazon Renewed
Price: $418.95 & FREE Shipping
https://www.amazon.com/Portátil-Latitude-i5-6300U-Windows-renovado/dp/B07GCRW5BM/ref=sr_1_3?crid=1ELSH3BLDAD2D&dchild=1&keywords=i5+15+inch+laptop&qid=1591964922&sprefix=i5+15"%2Cspecialty-aps%2C164&sr=8-3&srs=17871138011
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@frugalfreak said in Which Lenovo laptop would you choose, and why/why not?:
I personally would go with the one with 1 yr warranty.
I would also go with a costco card which gives you another 2 years of warranty, although not sure what the policy is for refurbished stuff.
If he is doing staples recycling, which he should be, he would have a ton of recycling rewards this month (At least $120 by my count, maybe more). If you find a good in store deal on a laptop (I did maybe 6 months ago), you can possibly using a coupon on top of the rewards and then pay with a costco card for extra warranty (although I bet the covered amount would be the amount after rewards).
Really if you buy a laptop that dies after a year and you can get the full amount of $ back, that’s your best case scenario, since then you can just keep upgrading to a new one every year for basically free.
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I’ve been buying from https://www.dellrefurbished.com/ for many years. Either 6xxx or 7xxx for laptops. CPU performance has not really changed much for a long time. Check the Single Thread Rating at https://www.cpubenchmark.net/. Should be at least 1500. 40%-50% off coupons are pretty common.
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@c3 said in Which Lenovo laptop would you choose, and why/why not?:
I’ve been buying from https://www.dellrefurbished.com/ for many years. Either 6xxx or 7xxx for laptops. CPU performance has not really changed much for a long time. Check the Single Thread Rating at https://www.cpubenchmark.net/. Should be at least 1500. 40%-50% off coupons are pretty common.
OMG there is NO selection there, just 3 models in multiples. Are those off-lease computers from companies?
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@frugalfreak said in Which Lenovo laptop would you choose, and why/why not?:
@c3 said in Which Lenovo laptop would you choose, and why/why not?:
I’ve been buying from https://www.dellrefurbished.com/ for many years. Either 6xxx or 7xxx for laptops. CPU performance has not really changed much for a long time. Check the Single Thread Rating at https://www.cpubenchmark.net/. Should be at least 1500. 40%-50% off coupons are pretty common.
OMG there is NO selection there, just 3 models in multiples. Are those off-lease computers from companies?
I also have $120 off $600 for dell on at least one of my amex cards. Bought my current laptop using 2 cards with 2 of those offers.
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@c3 said in Which Lenovo laptop would you choose, and why/why not?:
I’ve been buying from https://www.dellrefurbished.com/ for many years. Either 6xxx or 7xxx for laptops. CPU performance has not really changed much for a long time. Check the Single Thread Rating at https://www.cpubenchmark.net/. Should be at least 1500. 40%-50% off coupons are pretty common.
Currently code DEAL4UDFS takes off 40% off items $400 & up
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Something like this looks fairly decent.
https://www.dellrefurbished.com/dell-latitude-14-7000-series-e7470-306425.html
Unfortunately it doesn’t have a USB-C port, which would be a deal killer for me. I am really enjoying all the docking stations and my 3 monitors.
I was even able to get several docking stations for free on facebook.
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@dangeruss said in Which Lenovo laptop would you choose, and why/why not?:
Dell Refurbished Dell Latitude 14 7000 Series (E7470)
Nice find, dangeruss. Looking at the What’s In The Box section, it shows “Tested/Functional Dell Battery (Minimal initial battery life is 1.5 hours, many models will exceed this.)” What on earth is this 1.5 minimal initial battery life? That is not long at all if you’re working off-grid.
And no, he doesn’t do cartridge recycling. He doesn’t buy much more than a few pens and pencils and maybe a ream of printer paper once a year, unless I give him some from my stash.
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@frugalfreak said in Which Lenovo laptop would you choose, and why/why not?:
OMG there is NO selection there, just 3 models in multiples. Are those off-lease computers from companies?
Selections change all the time. These are typically at least 2-3 years old. My primary PC is gen4 i5 ($200 E6440), purchased last year.
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@dangeruss said in Which Lenovo laptop would you choose, and why/why not?:
I also have $120 off $600 for dell on at least one of my amex cards. Bought my current laptop using 2 cards with 2 of those offers.
Dell Financial Services is specifically excluded from that offer.
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@dionaea said in Which Lenovo laptop would you choose, and why/why not?:
Nice find, dangeruss. Looking at the What’s In The Box section, it shows “Tested/Functional Dell Battery (Minimal initial battery life is 1.5 hours, many models will exceed this.)” What on earth is this 1.5 minimal initial battery life? That is not long at all if you’re working off-grid.
I have bought 4 laptops from dellrefurbished.com, always grade B. I have not encountered any battery issue. You can see the battery health in the BIOS setting/test. I also cycle it a couple of times to test it.
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@c3 said in Which Lenovo laptop would you choose, and why/why not?:
@dionaea said in Which Lenovo laptop would you choose, and why/why not?:
Nice find, dangeruss. Looking at the What’s In The Box section, it shows “Tested/Functional Dell Battery (Minimal initial battery life is 1.5 hours, many models will exceed this.)” What on earth is this 1.5 minimal initial battery life? That is not long at all if you’re working off-grid.
I have bought 4 laptops from dellrefurbished.com, always grade B. I have not encountered any battery issue. You can see the battery health in the BIOS setting/test. I also cycle it a couple of times to test it.
My battery on a brand new dell failed after about a year or two. Of course it’s not covered under warranty.
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@dangeruss said in Which Lenovo laptop would you choose, and why/why not?:
My battery on a brand new dell failed after about a year or two. Of course it’s not covered under warranty.
Depends on how much you use the laptop on battery. Mine is plugged in most of the time, with charging on at 50% and off at 90%. Even with minimal usage, a good battery probably would not last more than 5 years.
