Which laptop should I get?

[dboxall123]

Hello everyone,

I have £400 to spend on a laptop. I've already decided to get a Lenovo ideapad with 17.3 inch screen. But I'm not sure which to get.

http://www.argos.co.uk/m/static/Product/partNumber/8628697.htm

This one has Intel i3 dual core 2.2Ghz processor, 4GB DDR4 ram and Intel HD 620 graphics card, and costs £380 (after being reduced by £50).

http://www.argos.co.uk/m/static/Product/partNumber/8656580.htm

This one has AMD A6 dual core 2.6Ghz processor, 8GB of DDR4 ram and ATI Radeon R4 graphics card, and costs £350, after being reduced by £30.

Both laptops have the same screens, speakers, hard drives, etc. I will be dual booting windows 10 and arch linux. I will be using it for mostly normal stuff,  writing assignments/programs, watching films, internet surfing, etc, and also maybe, if I have enough power, gaming with steam (star trek online looks really good!).

So, which do you think would be better? On the one hand, I could assume that the Intel laptop would be better as it's original asking price was £50 more, but the AMD has more processor power and more ram. I'd love to hear your opinions, thanks!

[denisehilton]

Instead of Lenovo I suggest a more reliable machine like Asus or HP. The material on lenovo machines doesn't look durable.

[camerongray]

I don't have any experience on either of those machines so can't comment on particular however one thing to mention is to take care with the screen resolution.  The resolution is what defines how much you can fit on the screen at once, not the size.  While those are both 17" they are only 1600x900 which is really quite low for that size of screen.  For a 17" (or even anything above 14" nowadays) I'd always go for at least a 1920x1080 (Full HD) screen otherwise you aren't really getting any benefit from the 17" screen, text will just be large and the machine will be cumbersome to carry around.   If you haven't used a 17" laptop before, it's really worth thinking whether it's a good idea as it WILL be cumbersome to carry around. Nowadays I'd also never buy a laptop without a solid state drive, you can always use an external hard drive if you need huge amounts of storage.

Personally, while it's not for everyone, if I have a tight budget such as yours, I'd always go for a refurbished business grade machine (Lenovo ThinkPad, Dell Latitude) over a more consumer oriented machine.  Sure it's not new but you can usually get more power for your money coupled with much better build quality and often greater battery life when compared to consumer machines.  I also find the business machines tend to play nicer with Linux through third use of higher end Ethernet and WiFi chipsets.