Your Guide on Choosing the right PC that suits

Image result for tips on choosing the best laptops
Choosing a PC from the hundreds in the market can be very difficult. Here are 10 tips to help you choose the right oneCompared to a desktop, laptops offer brilliant portability, but less flexibility.
Just deciding upon a budget and grabing whatever a big
manufacturer such as Dell or HP is selling for that price, is no guarantee. What if
the machine doesn’t do what you want? What if the keyboard or screen
isn’t right, or it doesn’t have all the ports you need? You can’t just
swap out your keyboard or plug in an expansion card as you can on a
desktop PC.

For this reasons, you need to think carefully about what you
need your laptop for before handing over your cash.

1. Pick a size
There’s no best laptop overall; it really depends on your own requirements and budgets, and size will play a big part in that.
Laptops tend to be divided into categories based on the
diagonal size of their screens, in inches. This is because a laptop’s
screen size also determines the overall size of its chassis. A laptop
with a huge 17-inch screen will be fantastic for work and gaming, and is
likely to feature a decent-sized keyboard to make typing easier, but
will be far bigger and heavier than a 13-inch model.



Asus ROG GL552VW


Gaming notebooks are technically laptops, but they aren’t particularly portable
You need to think carefully about whether you’ll be
travelling with your laptop or using it only at home; there isn’t much
point buying an ultra-light 13-inch model (£700 approx) if you’re going
to use it on a desk at home most of the time. Likewise, a 17-inch
powerhouse (around £650) makes a good replacement for a desktop PC, but
is unlikely to fit in a rucksack.




A 15-inch model (around £300 to £500) offers a decent
compromise between ease of use and portability: as long as it weighs
around 2kg or less, you probably won’t mind taking it on the train. If
you want something super-lightweight, opt for a laptop with a display of
11-13 inches.


2. Screen resolution


The size of the screen isn’t everything; resolution should
also be taken into account. The minimum resolution you’ll generally find
is 1,366 x 768 pixels. This is fine for the majority of tasks. It’s
even possible to work on two applications side by side with this many
pixels, especially since so many modern web pages reformat themselves to
suit the available screen space.



DEll XPS 13
The Dell XPS 13 has a high-resolution 13.3-inch screen, which means you’ll have to scale it up to see it clearly

On
laptops with smaller screens, a larger resolution doesn’t always mean
more space. When a laptop has a greater number of pixels in a small
area, the operating system has to scale everything up, or else text and
icons would be too small to see properly.





There isn’t a huge amount more space for applications on a
15-inch laptop with a 1,920 x 1,080 screen than on a 15-inch model with a
1,366 x 768 screen. However, the higher resolution does mean that text
and icons will be far smoother, and therefore easier to see.

To get an idea of exactly what it is you’re looking for in a
screen, it pays to go into a store and try a few out. Your eyesight and
working preferences will decide what sort of screen you go for.

3. Form factor
Most laptops still offer a traditional clam-type design,
with a screen that folds down onto the keyboard and touchpad. There are a
few that buck the trend, however. Some laptops keep the traditional
shape but add a touchscreen, which can be fun for creative tasks such as
drawing or making music. Others have a touchscreen that can fold back
behind the keyboard, turning the laptop into a tablet. Models such as
Microsoft’s Surface range and the various Asus Transformers have a
screen that detaches entirely, to make a proper tablet free from the
weight and bulk of a keyboard. 

Surface Book
The Microsoft Surface Book is the most expensive 2-in-1 you can buyThese specialist tablets are fine if you want to use the
specific applications that take advantage of a touchscreen, such as
design or music programs, but they’re far more expensive than standard
laptops. If you’re not 100% sure you what or need this flexibility,
you’re probably better off sticking with a normal laptop.



4. Keyboard
Due to the constraints placed on them by the laptop’s
physical size, laptop keyboards tend to be more varied than desktop
models. For a start, there’s room for a numeric keypad on only larger
laptops, and then only on certain models. 

Also, many laptops have small arrow keys, or backslash keys
that are on the right rather than the left of the keypad. Only some
laptops have Home, End and Page Up and Page Down keys, too; if there
isn’t a physical key for such functions, you’ll need to use a Function
(Fn) key combination instead. If you rely on these keys to navigate
around a text document look for a laptop where all these functions are
replicated by separate physical keys. 

New MacBook 29
The 12-inch MacBook has ‘Butterfly’ keys, but their shallow travel won’t suit everybodyLaptop keyboards can vary wildly in quality, too. Some are
unpleasant to type on thanks to horrid flex in the middle of the
keyboard tray when you type. If you’re unable to try out the keyboard
for yourself in a shop, we’d recommend that you at least read some
reviews to see if there are any major problems. After all, you’ll have
to live with a sub-standard keyboard as long as you have the laptop. 

5. Touchpad
The same is true of a laptop’s touchpad. This is one of the
foremost ways in which you interact with your laptop, so it needs to
work well. Unfortunately, many laptop touchpads are awful. There’s a
trend for making the buttons part of the main touchpad, which, when
implemented poorly, can mean your cursor jumps all over the place when
you perform a click. 

Surface Pro 4
The Microsoft Surface Pro 4 has an excellent Precision Touchpad


Plenty of touchpads don’t respond accurately to finger
movement, or have squishy buttons that make it difficult to determine
whether you’ve registered a click. Most modern touchpads support
gestures, where you can use two fingers to scroll or to pinch-to-zoom –
but, again, how easy these gestures are to use varies widely between
laptops. 

Nowadays, many laptops come with Microsoft-approved
Precision Touchpads, putting an end to years of mediocre Windows laptop
touchpads that were massively outclassed by those found on Apple’s
MacBooks. If you do pick up a laptop with a poor touchpad, there’s
always the option of carrying a USB travel mouse in your bag, which
brings us to…

6. Connectivity
A laptop has limited room around its base, so has far fewer
ports than a desktop PC. For this reason, think carefully about what you
need to plug in. For a start, some laptops have as few as two USB
ports. If you have a printer and a mouse plugged in and want to grab
some photos off your camera, you’ll need to unplug something – unless
your laptop has a built-in SD card reader, as many do. Many current
laptops have at least one USB 3 port for faster data transfers, too.

Larger laptops tend to have at least three USB ports, which
will be fine for most people. Also bear in mind that many modern laptops
don’t have built-in DVD drives, so if you want to read and burn discs
then you’ll need to budget around £20 for a USB model – and make sure
you have enough 

spare ports.

 Asus ZenBook Pro UX501VW ports
The Asus ZenBook Pro UX501VW has a decent selection of ports

USB 3.1 ports are starting to appear on the latest high-end
laptops. These ports are usually of the smaller Type-C variety, but they
open up a world of possibilities when it comes to transfer speeds and
peripherals. A single USB 3.1 port can host a load of high-power and
high-performance peripherals such as displays and external hard disks
via an external dock, which can be expensive but extremely practical. 

Also consider networking: Although all laptops have built-in
wireless networking (if you have a fancy 802.11ac router, check your
laptop’s wireless chip supports AC, so you get the best transfer
speeds), not all have an Ethernet plug. We find this is an issue mainly
when travelling, since some hotels offer poor wireless connections but
fast Ethernet networking in each room. USB-to-Ethernet adapters are
available for as little as £10, but bear in mind that this will use up
one of your precious USB ports.

Video outputs are important, too: HDMI is the most common
video output on laptops, which will serve to connect to most TVs and
monitors (if not 4K models – very few laptops have the necessary HDMI
2.0 connector). Only some business models now have VGA outputs, which
you may need to connect to an office projector in the boardroom.
HDMI-to-VGA connectors cost less than £10, so this isn’t a big deal. 

7. Performance


Hopefully by now you have an idea of what the outside of
your laptop should look like, so now it’s time to worry about the
innards. First up is RAM. Unless you’re buying a seriously cheap laptop,
opt for at least 4GB, so you don’t have to worry about how many browser
tabs you have open at once. If you’re going to be editing video, you’ll
ideally need at least 8GB, although this amount of RAM is now common
even in inexpensive laptops. 

MSI Dragon
You don’t need a beefy gaming laptop to get things done, but it helps

Processor choice is trickier. You should aim for at least an
Intel Core i3 processor, which will comfortably cope with web browsing
and office work, and consider a Core i5 chip for more intensive tasks
such as dealing with large images and editing and encoding video.
Laptops with Core i7 chips are expensive but super-quick, so are worth
considering if you want the best possible performance.



Be aware that not all Core chips are created equal – special low-voltage versions can muddy the waters. See our Core i3, i5 and i7 Explained article for more detail.
There are, of course, AMD-powered laptops on the market, but
these are still much less common. Look for an AMD A8 or A10 processor
to make sure you’re not getting an underpowered laptop.





8. Graphics
Most laptops rely on their processor’s integrated graphics
chipset, usually called something like “Intel HD Graphics”. This can
play simple 3D games at low resolution at low to medium detail settings,
but if you’re serious about games then you’ll need a laptop with a
dedicated Nvidia or AMD graphics chipset. It’s hard to determine how
quick a graphics chipset will be from the model number, so we recommend
searching for graphics benchmarks online to see how a chipset performs
in the latest titles. 

Only very expensive laptops can play the latest games at
very high detail levels, so if you have the space it may be worth buying
a normal laptop and a gaming desktop PC (or a games console) instead.





9. Battery life
Along with size and weight, this should be a priority if
you’re planning to travel with your laptop. It isn’t always possible to
get a seat on a train or in a café near a power socket, after all.
Small, light laptops generally offer superior battery life to larger
models, chiefly due to being equipped with less powerful low-voltage
processors and a smaller screen.

Again, read reviews to see how long a laptop’s battery will
last; expect five to seven hours for a general-purpose 15-inch laptop,
and eight to 10 hours or more from a small, highly portable one. 

10. Storage
Finally, we come to storage. As is the case on a desktop PC,
an SSD will make your laptop boot faster and feel far quicker and more
responsive, so is worth looking out for if you can afford it. Unlike on a
desktop PC, you can’t just buy a small SSD for your operating system
and stick in 

 cheap hard disk for your personal files.

 Upgrade laptop to SSD 16
It’s not hard to upgrade your laptop’s hard disk to an SSD. Read our guide to find out more

The vast majority of laptops have room for only one disk, so
you need to make sure it’s big enough. Some very cheap netbook-style
laptops such as the Acer Aspire One Cloudbook 14
have 32GB of storage, which is barely enough for Windows 10 and some
downloaded updates. We’d recommend a minimum of a 120GB SSD, and that’s
only if you store most of your files in the cloud.

If your laptop is destined for home use and storing
gigabytes of photos and music, you should opt for a model with at least
500GB storage. Some have hybrid “SSHD” drives, which combine a slow
mechanical hard disk with a small SSD cache. These drives store
frequently used data, so can speed up boot times and make the programs
you use most often load faster. They’re a good compromise if you can’t
stretch to a large SSD.

Nowadays, high-end laptops have SSDs that use the
PCI-Express (PCIe) standard. These are often several times faster than a
regular SSD and can make a huge differene to performance.

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