Indigo Renderer Forum

I'm looking for laptop upgrade for my wife. She's a graphic designer, she mainly used my Desktop PC for her works, but then I can't work on my projects. We have 7 old laptop Lenovo 3000 N100 , but it's not mean for design anymore, cause lacks of memory, has only 2GB Ram. Nowadays all programs works great on 8GB or more. Even OS takes 1GB or ram itself.

She mainly works with Corel Draw, Illustrator, Photoshop, Indesign.

Our budget would be £500-£600.

Could you help me whether should I use this special offer to get new laptop or not? In my opinion, for some laptops it's quite a good bargain.

While she is using my Desktop PC, I could her laptop. I found few laptops which I could use for 3d.

LENOVO Ideapad 500
We've had this Lenovo 3000 N100 for 7 sevens years, really reliable laptop. I hope this should be aswell.
Price £499.99
Save £100.00

Windows 10 (pre-installed)
- Intel® Core™ i5-6200U Processor
- Dual-core / Hyperthread
- 2.3 GHz / 2.8 GHz with Turbo Boost
- 3 MB cache
Memory: 12 GB
Storage: 1 TB
Graphics: AMD Radeon R7 M360 (2GB)
Resolution 1920 x 1080 (very good)

Link http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing/ ... 4-pdt.html

ACER Aspire F5-571
I know friends who had Acer laptops, not really reliable. Dunno about this...
Price £399.99
Save £200.00

Windows 10 (pre-installed)
- Intel® Core™ i5-5200U Processor
- Dual-core / Hyperthread
- 2.2 GHz / 2.7 GHz with Turbo Boost
- 3 MB cache
Memory: 8 GB
Storage: 1 TB
Graphics: Integrated
Resolution 1366 x 768 (poor)

Link http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing/ ... 2-pdt.html

LENOVO Ideapad 500
Price £599.99
Save £100.00

Windows 10 (pre-installed)
- Intel® Core™ i7-6500U Processor
- Dual-core / Hyperthread
- 2.5 GHz / 3.1 GHz with Turbo Boost
- 4 MB cache
Memory: 12 GB
Storage: 1 TB
Graphics: AMD Radeon R7 M360 (2GB)
Resolution: 1920 x 1080 (very good)

Link http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing/ ... 5-pdt.html

LENOVO Z50
Price £349.99
Save £50.00

Windows 10 (pre-installed)
- AMD A10-7300 Processor
- Quad-core
- 1.9 GHz / 3.2 GHz
- 4 MB cacheMemory: 8 GB
Storage: 1 TB
Graphics: AMD Radeon R6 Graphics (not much info about the graphics)
Resolution 1920 x 1080

Link http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing/ ... 0-pdt.html

TOSHIBA Satellite L50-C-22L
Price £479.99
Save £70.00

Windows 10 (pre-installed)
- Intel® Core™ i5-5200U
- Dual-core / Hyperthread
- 2.2 GHz / 2.7 GHz with Turbo Boost
- 3 MB cacheMemory: 8 GB
Storage: 1 TB
Graphics card: Intel® HD Graphics 5500
Resolution: 1920 x 1080

Link http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing/ ... 2-pdt.html

LENOVO YOGA 500
Price £579.99
Save £120.00

Windows 10 (pre-installed)
- Intel® Core® i5-6200U Processor
- Dual-core
- 2.3 GHz / 2.8 GHz with Turbo Boost
- 3 MB cache
Memory: 8 GB
Storage: 1 TB SSHD
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 920M (2 GB DDR3L)
Resolution: 1920 x 1080

Link http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing/ ... 7-pdt.html

Sorry for very long post. For the specs, I would chose one of LENOVO Ideapad 500 models.

Which one could you recommend?

for starters, eliminate Acer (for the same reasons as you), then eliminate all the remainder of units with "integrated graphics", try to stay away from AMD CPU's if you're a power user.

I don't have experience with the software you've listed your wife normally use, but my general rule is to get the best for what I can (barely) afford at the time, I like my machines to last a while.

Get higher clocked CPU's and better GPU's. I have no experience with recent AMD GPU's and their intricacies with various software, I have had nVidia GPU's for a good number of years since AMD seems to have issues with SketchUp.

From your list I'd pick:
LENOVO Ideapad 500
Price £599.99

Thanks Juju

Also be sure you get one with a decent display panel. IPS and full HD is a must even with 15'' display size. 1366 is just horrible !!

Actually 15" is the perfect size. I really like this shape. Thanks!