How to buy a laptop? It looks easy but knowing how to buy a laptop when you need it isn’t as simple as it looks at first. Not all laptops are made equally, and as the consumer PC market matures over decades, certain hardware will do some work more than any other laptop. There have been many differentiators between several types of laptops that are suitable.
There’s still a lot of overlap related to the requirements of a given user, but knowing exactly what you need is the first step in buying a suitable laptop. This can sound easier than facing laptops lined up at major retailers or categorizing hundreds of options from online stores like Amazon, Newegg, Box, or other major online retailers.
Don’t worry if you don’t know exactly what kind of hardware you’ll find. Whether you need a laptop or not, we’ll tell you how to buy a laptop that offers the best performance at a cost. Work or home, games or business.
How to buy a laptop: first steps
The first step in knowing how to buy a laptop is knowing how much you should spend on it. Laptops range in price from the very affordable Chromebooks to the more expensive MacBook Pro line, and even more specialized workstations that can cost you thousands of dollars or even a few pounds.
Setting a range of prices to spend will greatly help you select many laptops to consider and facilitate the process of buying a laptop.
Next, you need to evaluate your requirements. Specifically, what should future laptops do? If you’re looking for a professional laptop, are you planning to work with many multimedia files? Are you planning to work with an infinite matrix of spreadsheets and reports? Do you always need what you need to access LTE / 5G and the Internet?
If you need LTE/5G connectivity, you’ll likely have left out almost all of the available options after considering the price and possibly the correct 20 models. Finding a suitable laptop there is much easier.
If your needs aren’t too limited, you’ll have to do a little more, but don’t worry. It can’t be as confusing as it looks.
Windows vs Apple vs Chromebooks
The operating system you’re using on a laptop isn’t as important as it was 10 or 15 years ago, but it will be one of the most important factors to decide.
As the most popular app suites like Microsoft Office become more platform-independent thanks to cloud computing, the gap between Windows laptops and MacBooks is getting smaller year by year. We’re not completely there yet, but the difference between the two major operating systems in terms of the software available to most people is pretty much fine.
But Chromebooks are another matter. Chromebooks are an attractive option for many because of their very affordable price, but ChromeOS isn’t as powerful as the latest Windows and macOS releases, and the availability of locally installable software is better than you can find on Windows. Is also much more limited Or a macOS laptop.
But if you spend most of your computing time online and have almost no apps installed and running from the laptop itself, Chromebooks can save you a lot of money and are definitely worth investigating.
How to buy a laptop- Memory vs Storage
One of the main points of confusion for many buyers is the difference between memory and storage capacity. They should be identical because in principle they are similar.
But the difference between memory and storage is the difference between keeping a shopping list straight in your head when you’re walking down the aisle of a supermarket and writing it down on paper.
The more memory you have, the more space you have on your computer to run programs. The more memory (also known as RAM) mounted on a computer, the less it needs to refer to long-term storage for data and instructions to run programs.
This translates to faster, less running applications and other software instances of spinning hourglass cursors while the program is running behind the scenes. On the other hand, storage isn’t that critical to the actual performance of a laptop and can be expanded much more easily via external storage solutions such as external SSDs or flash drives. However, if you download a lot of multimedia content and games that individually use up a lot of storage space, the storage capacity of your laptop is important.
I can always get better performance if I use more RAM than a larger SSD or HDD capacity. At least for Windows or macOS laptops, you need a minimum of 8GB RAM, and if you play many games in Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Premiere, or plan to work with multimedia files, you need a minimum of 16GB RAM.
We don’t recommend less than 256GB of storage, but most people won if they didn’t plan to download the entire Steam library to their laptop in the hope that they could play all the games someday. `You don’t need more than 512GB of free space.
1080p vs 1440p vs 4K
When it comes to your laptop’s display, the resolution isn’t as important as buying a larger desktop monitor. As for the size said on the laptop screen, the difference between 1080p and 4K is negligible, so you can save a lot of money here.
If you need a high-quality screen, the 1440p range is sufficient. Need a laptop for professional graphic design, a high-resolution OLED screen with a greater color gamut and certification is sometimes appropriate.
Looking for the best gaming laptop for your budget, review the great display with a response time defined as a refresh rate of 144Hz or higher, typically 4ms or less in 1080p. Frame rate is generally much more important in games than 4K resolution, and the more often you play and the shorter the response time, the more flexible and attractive your gameplay will be.
Integrated graphics vs discrete GPUs
The last important hardware issue to consider is whether individual GPUs are needed. If you’re looking for a high-performance gaming laptop and plan to do a lot of graphic design or 3D modeling work, really consider choosing an individual GPU over integrated graphics.
If the laptop you are looking at lists Nvidia items in the graphics category or AMD Radeon RX GPUs, you will see that there are individual GPUs. Laptops with AMD processors can be difficult because AMD creates both the CPU and GPU. In general, most AMD discrete graphics are all labeled in the AMD Radeon RX 6000 series, not “AMD Radeon graphics”.
At any time, if you’re not sure, ask a customer service representative for an explanation, or if you’re shopping online, the product page reviews and Q & A section can check if a particular AMD laptop has an individual GPU can.
CPUs
When it comes to CPUs, almost all modern CPUs are fast enough to handle typical computing tasks without problems. But unless you’re considering a very basic Chromebook that checks your mail or Netflix streaming, I’d recommend buying a laptop with either an IntelCore or AMDRyzen processor, possibly the latest generation of Corei5 or Ryzen. 5 or higher, specifically 11000 series for Intel and 5000 series for AMD.
If you’re looking for a MacBookAir or MacBookPro, you can see Intel-based versions online, but Apple has switched to the Apple M1 chip. It is suitable for all but the most intensive computing tasks and is currently the only one. Processor options for new MacBookAir and 13-inch MacBookPro models.
If you’re looking for a gaming laptop and creative workstation, a Corei7 or Ryzen7 is your best bet and comes standard with high-end build Corei9 and Ryzen9 processors.
