Buyer's Guide: How to buy the right laptop

From friends and acquaintances I'll often asked: "I wanted to buy a laptop soon, can you tell me there recommend something?”

There are several criteria and details, adjusted to the appropriate user, which should be considered when purchasing.

In the following article I will try to summarize briefly after which procedure lay a buy laptop can.

Display: Calculate Ideal Screen Size

First of all, you should definitely be aware, what screen size is right for you? The size of the display is often expressed in inches ("), the length is always based on the screen size (ie, the distance from the bottom left corner up to the top right-hand corner) refers. In the following, all common sizes are ascending, including utility models, described:

Netbooks and subnotebooks usually have a size between 10 and 12.1 inches and are suitable due to their small size, especially if you Move times in the cafe or at the university just quickly in surf internet or want to check email. These types of laptops are usually only as big as a book. For longer works, however, such a device, but not because of the small screen and the mostly poor performance, is suitable.

If one possesses at home already has a right desktop PC with a correspondingly large monitor and would like to work reasonably well outside the four walls and still be mobile, such a device is recommended with a screen size to 13 or 14 inches .Even the female sex, this laptop, not only because of the relatively low weight, especially preferred. So-called Ultrabooks, which are particularly narrow and thin, are often delivered with 14" or similar dimensions.

For those who want their laptop preferably used as a home computer or have no problem with transporting the machine to dimensions suitable for the 15-inch or larger. The price-performance ratio of this class of devices, due to the high sales volume, is usually better compared to smaller model classes.

To learn from the specified inch size, the actual size in inches you can use Google for translation by using their example, the following term: 14inches in cm.

Processor: Current generation

The heart of your laptop, the processor is immediately said how fast a laptop. Pay attention when buying that the corresponding processor, mostly from the company Intel or AMD, from a recent series or generation (eg Intel 4th generation i-processors). These are usually faster than their predecessors, despite the same number of cycles.

In normal market notebooks are mostly found i3, i5 or i7 processors. In normal everyday life, hardly aware of which of the three you actually possesses. In contrast to the i3 i5 has a turbo mode and can under heavy load automatically overclocks (made faster) be. An i7 brings again additionally more powerful than the i5, but you can find the best value for money in the i5 .

o    i3 : Bureau / Surfing/ Film

o    i5 : Office / surfing / movies / games +

o    i7 : Office / surfing / movies / games + +

Graphics Card: Do I need one?

In the current i3 to i7 processors have integrated graphics processors, called IGPs , usually available. These meet the requirements of older or not graphically complex games, such as "CS: GO" or "League of Legends". However, if you want the laptop as a gaming PC use, so a separate graphics card in the notebook is almost indispensable. But beware, some graphics cards cut in the benchmark tests, where appropriate, worse than the already integrated graphics processors. Look at best on various performance comparisons of graphics cards to find out the performance in comparison to the IGPs.

Ram: 4GB rich (almost always)

Normally rich 4GB RAM for a 0815 users. When you purchase the laptop however, it should be ensured that it is at least to DDR3 Ram is (eg: 1333MHz (1x 4096MB)). If you want to eventually install another RAM module. Only one Ram module on the appropriate size should be installed because the notebooks with usually only two slots available.

HDD: 500GB is more than enough, an SSD would be great

Meanwhile in laptops from 14 inches almost always a relatively large hard drive, usually 500GB installed. That's enough for more than 100 films FULL-HD per 4.7 GB or 100,000 images per 5 MB, so perfectly adequate for 95% of all users.

If it is possible, it makes sense to buy the laptop with a so-called SSD hard drive, or in combination with a HDD. Unlike normal hard drives here, the data are not stored by the magnetic disk, but electronically, as in the USB stick. Access times, write and read operations are here mostly shorter and energy-saving. The whole system works a lot faster then what you highly perceive just at startup.

Read customer reviews

Another important aspect of the laptop purchase is the feel, ergonomics and processing of a device. These criteria can, however, difficult to read out of the product description, so it is convenient to read customer reviews of other buyers. On websites, you will find interesting and helpful for almost all models reviews. At a product rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars by more than 200 customers you can be almost sure that the appropriate device will not be a bad buy.

I hope I could help one or the other lay on the purchase of a device.