What You Get for Your Money – Laptop Shopping Tips

Budget

HP

This is obviously the bottom price bracket: laptops between $300 and $600. These are budget laptops, which means you’re going to get less on the spec and design front.

Laptops in this price range typically have:

Last years’ processors, an Intel Pentium or base AMD processor (if you are lucky, you can find one with an Intel Core i3 processor)

No more than 4 to 6GB of RAM

320GB to 500GB of hard drive space

And a cheaper, mostly plastic build

These machines are fine for web surfing, word processing but not video editing or heavy gaming or lots of multitasking. The biggest thing you give up in this category is build quality: The screens are not very good, and the machines are made mostly of plastic. They will get the job done though.

Good choice: The HP Pavilion G6 for $359.99 is one of the better laptops you can get in this price range. It’s made entirely of plastic, but it’s perfectly capable, and HP did a good job on the keyboard. The $400 version gives you a Pentium processor, 4GB of RAM and 320GB of hard drive space.

Mainstream

Samsung

Moving on up are laptops between $600 and $900. This is where most mainstream laptops fall these days, and they offer the best balance of affordability, specs and build.

Laptops in this range can have:

Core i3 or Core i5 processors

6GB to 8GB of RAM

A bit more hard drive space, between 500GB and 1TB

Discrete graphics from AMD or Nvidia

A better build quality than the previous bracket

You will get much more power out of a system in this range. And like we’ve said, the make of the system will also be better than in the lower price range, but it’s more like a mid-range car – design might be good, but you might not get the leather interior and nicer dashboard.

Good choice: The Samsung QX411 is a great example of what you can get in this range. For $659.99 you get a Core i5 processor, 6GB of RAM and a 1TB hard drive. The laptop has a metal palmrest and a nicely arranged keyboard.

Higher-end

Apple – Apple a1245 laptop battery brand new 37WH Only AU $69.59

Welcome to the world of higher-end laptops, those that cost between $900 and $1,200. This is the ideal price range if you are looking for a higher performance machine. There are two types of systems in this range.

The first is the new category of utrabooks. Most of these cost $999. They don’t have CD drives, but they are thin, light and have fast hard drives called SSDs, or Solid State Drives. For the entry-level price, you get a Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD. You get less storage space than cheaper laptops because the drives are so much faster.

Then there are bigger, mainstream systems in this price range, which will have stellar graphics, higher resolution displays, and better-build quality. Typically, you’ll find laptops with Core i7 processors, discrete graphics and at least 1TB of hard drive space. It’s also where you really start to get a very nicely built system – much more metal than plastic. That’s really the biggest difference.

Good choice: The MacBook Air is one of the best examples of what you get for a laptop in this category. At $1,200 for the 13-inch model, it’s very well made, fast, and has long Apple A1322 Battery Life. While the Windows ultrabooks at $999 are made well, the Air has had the edge in build quality and in trackpad and keyboard comfort.