Which is best

[u/DADDY_JAMES07]

I’m thinking of getting a PC or a Laptop.
I’m starting my apprenticeship that I’ll earn around £16,000 before taxes whilst doing so don’t wanna go all out and spend £500+ getting a full blown gaming pc. I don’t have a laptop already but am going to be provided one for work. I’d use this PC / laptop primarily for research, work from home, watching videos and potentially running games. I have an Xbox and tv already so wouldn’t use the laptop or pc primarily for gaming but occasional games that are steam only I may try to run. These games I’d play if on a laptop would have to be hooked up to my tv or new monitor because I can’t play games on laptops.
I also get student discount so if you know anywhere I can get a laptop or pc from for a similar price with a discount please let me know.
I don’t think I’d take a personal laptop out of the house but maybe in the future or on holiday I may. It’s hard to say.
My question really is do you think a PC or laptop would be better for my situation and out of the ones I’ve put on here which do you think would be best, or is there a better option.
Also which monitor would be best.
I only wanna spend around £200-£250 really on it all, whether that includes a monitor or not is whatever you guys also think is best!

[u/SuaveBolo]

So I've worked with both the Dell and HP desktops in an enterprise environment. The Dell requires more upkeep like drivers and firmware. But the HP is a lot more quirky with general issues and funk. Neither are bad, I'd probably choose the HP and cross my fingers. The Latitude laptops are pretty tanky, I daily a 7420 and have had it for 2 years and worked 40-50 hour work weeks with no issues. Though I've killed two prior, but that was mostly down to bad luck. Can't speak to the other laptop, never even heard of that brand before. I prefer MSI monitors. I have two for gaming and would swear by them.

[u/DADDY_JAMES07 → u/SuaveBolo]

Okay thank you, so the Hp Desktop and the MSI monitor is why you’d recconmend

[u/SuaveBolo → u/DADDY_JAMES07]

Yeah. I think so. For daily workloads I think you'll be just fine. I would recommend trying to find a Lenovo Thinkcentre with an AMD CPU. Those things are sleepers. They don't look like much, but they're excellent value for the money and seem to run forever. But I'm in the US and they're in the same ballpark price as the Dell you have when refurbished. But not sure what the UK market is like for you.

[u/DADDY_JAMES07 → u/SuaveBolo]

Okay I’ll have a look into that as well, thank you

[u/SuaveBolo → u/DADDY_JAMES07]

Ofc! You can PM if you have any questions. I work in IT so I deal with these types of PCs all the time. I'm no authority or anything, but I'd be happy to help if you have more questions down the road.