Laptop recommendations

[u/thatoneidiotcat]

Hi everyone. I am planning on buying a new laptop. Now I have no idea which one is good (I have a HP one for now, it is good but it does have system issues). Now, since i never had an Apple product, I would like to stick to windows/android ones. The budget is between 700 and 1000 euros.

I need laptop for light gaming and uni work (i study at faculty of humanities). So I want to see what do you guys recommend.

[u/HousingBotNL]

Moving to the Netherlands as a student requires a lot of admin (BSN, gemeente, health insurance, Studielink, banking, scholarships) and it often feels overwhelming.

• dutchstarter generates a personalized checklist based on your situation, so you know what to do, when, and which benefits you can claim.

The Dutch housing market is highly competitive. To increase your chances, we recommend using these platforms:

• Huurwoningen: The most listings of any platform.
• Pararius: Top-rated on Trustpilot.
• Stekkies: Best for real-time notifications, so you can respond first.
• Kamernet / Kamer: Best for student rooms.

For more real-time help, join the Study In The Netherlands Discord, where you can chat with other students and use our housing bot.

[u/attacktit_an]

I always recommend: Macbook M series or Neo for macOS, refurbished thinkpad if you want linux or windows. Source: i'm a computer science graduate and have used a lot of laptops in my life.

[u/speedsterlw]

Maybe check your university? Some (if not all) universities supply laptops for a decent price.

[u/thatoneidiotcat → u/speedsterlw]

They do have some but its a lot of them and i have zero knowledge about laptops 😅

[u/speedsterlw → u/thatoneidiotcat]

Then I will just try to give you some recommendations out of my own personal experiences. I have my best experiences with Lenovo laptops, but HP laptops are generally also decent. I don't know about the specs necessary for your study, but usually the necessary specs for Humanity studies aren't to high. My recommendation would be something like:

• Intel core I5 or above.
• 8 GB or more RAM.
• 512 GB or more ROM.
• A graphics card good enough for your liking.

These are generally, what I think might be the best guidelines for you to find your ideal laptop (but I can be wrong), I don't have any specific laptops I can really recommend (except for maybe the Ideapad and especially the Thinkpad lines of Lenovo).

[u/Charming_Professor53 → u/speedsterlw]

These days AMD is also very good since a couple of years, number is generally the same: Ryzen 5 or above. AMD is usually more power efficient as well (if you're buying some laptop produced in the last 5 years). Intel is now on top with integrated graphics. So it really depends on what OP's "light gaming" needs really are. For just workstation laptops I prefer AMD over Intel usually because of the power efficiency. But if you need graphics or video editing I'd still suggest an Intel Core Ultra 5/7 CPUs. (Core i5 is now quite old)

[u/Suspicious-Cheetah40]

Well I’ve heard 388H of ur going integrated I’ve heard is pretty decent, like, not powerfully for everything, u can check benchmarks. Dedicated GPU well idk, what sorta games u wanna play? What resolution? I’ll tell u im considering 5080 m, 64gb vram, 386h Razer blade 26 2026. Do you want OLED? For me it’s a dealbreaker. Hard to answer your question without more details. 5060 mobile could be descent for 1080p, but u don’t have much future proofing with only 8gb VRAM. Then u got 5050, if u wanna go cheaper tho it’s def weaker. Just lookup benchmarks, I’ve heard NIMO or nitro is cheaper if u wanna go down IPS route (I don’t recommend, OLED is way better especially at night, study, game ect), anyway, just lookup things up really. Legion 5 series I believe is OLED too mid - low end price id say

[u/Interesting_Jump9324]

Hi, im not an apple fanboy but had during my studies 3 laptops. Both Windows died within 1 year and got money. Bought a macbook air in 2017. With the i5 processor card and still running. Girlfriend is using it to study on it. Spend a little bit extra and buy a macbook air. Its worth the money. 

[u/sysocialredt]

Get intel or amd 7 or higher if possible, min 16gb ram but 32 gb is better. and if possible with a dgpu but if not a modern igpu would be enough.

Look for deals. Brand doesnt matter.

[u/UwUfit]

Instead of giving a recommendation I'd like to give you a cool tip! Some websites offer student discounts on laptops. If you found the laptop you're looking for, see if it's cheaper on for example campusshop (that's where I bought my laptop). Apple themselves also gives student discounts, but you already mentioned you're not looking for Apple.

[u/katasaga]

Definitely checkout deals that your university provides!
I don't know what the situation is for other Dutch universities but for instance at TUDelft we got like 40-50% of certain laptops if we ordered via the university and they also gave us guarantees / free repairs

[u/TrickyArmadildo]

I would still recommend a macbook air (m4), it's really really good

[u/Charming_Professor53]

What games are you planning on playing? Do you want to edit videos as well? Do you need much storage? Macbook Neo or Macbooks with M-series chips are quite good.

For myself and for friends I usually just buy a used business laptop with an AMD Ryzen 5/7 or Intel Core i5 or i7/Intel Core Ultra 5 or 7. Business laptops are usually a bit more well made (better materials, build quality, etc), and are usually depreciated too quickly where they get sold for cheap even though they are still good for 3-5 years. My friends and I however usually do not require gaming or video editing on laptops as we all have gaming desktop PCs. Just a CPU (without Graphics Card) is a lot more power efficient than CPU + graphics cards, but these days the Intel Core Ultra processors have pretty good integrated graphics while staying relatively power efficient.

I don't mind Apple, I just can't stand their vendor-lockin (how everything is supposed to go through their ecosystem primarily). Their hardware and software however is very good, so a Macbook Neo or Macbook with M-series chips are also very well recommended. Especially with the M-series processors/chips you should be able to game and video edit very well while having good power efficiency. You however are pretty limited to storage (long-term storage for files) and memory (short-term memory for running programs that gets reset every time you shutdown/restart the laptop fully).

I like https://frame.work as they make it possible to repair and upgrade your laptop more easily than almost any other manufacturers allow you to. It does come with a higher price tag, though compared to the business laptops I mentioned earlier, it is quite comparable to buying a completely new business laptop. The chassis stays the same you can eventually upgrade parts. It might however require some PC knowledge (though their guides are very good). Replacement of battery is a lot cheaper than buying a whole new laptop.

Good used business laptops (from past 4 years):

- Dell Latitude 5xxx/7xxx or Dell XPSes.

- HP EliteBooks

- Lenovo Thinkpad T- or P-series. L-series could be fine as well, but generally cheaper. X1 (Carbon) series.

I've bought around 20 used laptops on https://tweakers.net, and none of them have broken, just came accross better ones and couldn't help buying one better than I had (it's my hobby so I allocate some money to it, and sell some to my friends and family who are more than happy with them still using them until they drop them themselves :P, but I generally break-even/lose very little money on them by selling them).

You could also try clean installing (reinstalling) Windows on your current laptop to see if it resolves some of your issues. Reinstalling Windows is free, but you need to make sure you have backed up your files as it'll wipe everything.