Cheap laptop with high resolution screen

Thowllly

Regular
I'm looking to buy a cheap laptop/notebook/netbook, but I want one with a high resolution screen. There are lots of cheap netbooks/notebooks with up to 1366x768 11.6" screens, but if I try to find anything with higher resolution, the only cheaply available ones are 1600x900, 17.3". All other higher resolutions seems to only be available on much more expensive laptops.

I would have preferred either 1600x900 on a smaller screen, or a higher resolution on the same 17.3"; 1600x900 at 17.3" is only about 106 ppi, it's quite wasteful with so few pixels on such a large screen, IMO.

Is there any high ppi laptops that are also cheap (and available in Norway)?

If I have to go with a 1600x900 17.3" laptop the two cheapest ones available in Norwegian webstores, AFAIK, are:

- Toshiba Satellite C870-13D
- Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC-B824G32Mnks

(And for a little bit more: Toshiba Satellite C670D-11P & Acer Aspire 7560-433054G50Mnkk and many more, see http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php...ris_inkmoms&l=s101111868#rparams=l=s101111933 )

The Packard Bell one has 0.1Ghz higher clock (Celeron B820 vs. B815), while the Toshiba has 0.5 hours longer claimed battery life and is 0.5kg lighter, so of these two I would prefer the Toshiba. But I wanted to check first with you guys, maybe someone can point me to a great deal; a small & light laptop with high resolution screen?
 
Unfortunately, laptop makers for some weird reason think that we don't need new laptops with higher resolution. This sucks of course, since 3-4-5 inch devices offer similar or better resolutions. Meh.

What is cheap for you?

The highest resolution which I find is 1920 X 1080, and the cheapest 17 inch laptop is ACER Aspire V3-771G NX.M1WEX.024 Black 4GB for approximately 750€, and its variants with more memory, etc..
Then, DELL Inspiron 17R 7720 Stealth Black 8GB for 900€;
ASUS N76VZ-V2G-T1086D 8GB for 900ish €;

For your country prices may vary... but you can try. ;)

Oh, and you want a small one... :(

Then, Acer ULTRABOOK S7-391-53314G12AWS
which is 13.3 inches with Full HD 1080 resolution but the price is 1280 € :LOL:
 
Unfortunately, laptop makers for some weird reason think that we don't need new laptops with higher resolution. This sucks of course, since 3-4-5 inch devices offer similar or better resolutions. Meh.

What is cheap for you?

The highest resolution which I find is 1920 X 1080, and the cheapest 17 inch laptop is ACER Aspire V3-771G NX.M1WEX.024 Black 4GB for approximately 750€, and its variants with more memory, etc..
Then, DELL Inspiron 17R 7720 Stealth Black 8GB for 900€;
ASUS N76VZ-V2G-T1086D 8GB for 900ish €;

For your country prices may vary... but you can try. ;)

Oh, and you want a small one... :(

Then, Acer ULTRABOOK S7-391-53314G12AWS
which is 13.3 inches with Full HD 1080 resolution but the price is 1280 € :LOL:

The ACER Aspire V3 looks good, but unfortunately, 750€ is a bit expensive for me, I was hoping for a really really low price, like $500/400€ before taxes.

The two laptops I listed in my first post are even cheaper than that, and I can make do with only 1600x900 resolution, but I wish it was available on a smaller than 17" laptop. Everything I've seen with that resolution on smaller laptops have been outside my budget.
 
I see an Acer Aspire 7741 LX.PXA0C.001 3GB for 400 €, 17.3 inches with 1600 X 900. ;)

Acer is somehow preferable if you want best price.
 
Has anybody seen any benchmarks/reviews of laptops with Intel Celeron B815 and AMD A4-3305M? I can't find much. It looks like the Celeron has higher cpu performance. On the other hand the A4 scores twice as much in 3dmark vantage, I think, but it's still really slow for games. Has anybody got any gaming test with those cpus? I'm curious if the celeron is actually fast enough to play any games with...
 
Serious suggestion:
Don't buy the cheapest thing you can afford that (more or less) fills your technical needs, because it will be crap. Instead, wait longer, save some more money, and buy something decent.

Cheap lappy with high-resolution screen - if there exists such a thing - will have a seriously crap screen, even though it may be high resolution. Brightness and contrast will be bad, color accuracy will be awful, viewing angles will be poor. Also, everything else in the laptop will be built of cheapest possible components with poor quality as well since the screen will eat a disproportionate portion of the sticker price.

You can't have cake and eat it, it's as simple as that. You will pay, when buying a cheap laptop. Just not with money. :p
 
AMD A4-3305M

Intel Celeron B815

Intel Core 2 Duo T6570

So, the T6570 is a comparable CPU to B815 with almost identical performance. Given that with C2D, even with slower models, there is no problem to run and play CS Source, then I tend to think that you will be able to play multiple games with it, with lower image quality settings, for sure. ;)
Nice to know, thanks :)

Serious suggestion:
Don't buy the cheapest thing you can afford that (more or less) fills your technical needs, because it will be crap. Instead, wait longer, save some more money, and buy something decent.

Cheap lappy with high-resolution screen - if there exists such a thing - will have a seriously crap screen, even though it may be high resolution. Brightness and contrast will be bad, color accuracy will be awful, viewing angles will be poor. Also, everything else in the laptop will be built of cheapest possible components with poor quality as well since the screen will eat a disproportionate portion of the sticker price.

You can't have cake and eat it, it's as simple as that. You will pay, when buying a cheap laptop. Just not with money. :p

Going for the cheapest possible option that fills my needs have worked out very nicely for me in the past :) Buying cheap does not automatically give you bad brightness and contrast or awful color accuracy (viewing angles might be poor though) in my personal experience. And you can buy a 17.3" 1600x900 laptop lcd panel from Amazon for $53, so a large screen is not that expensive.

Anyway, I can return it if I don't like it. But I will go a little higher, I was planning to go for an Toshiba Satellite C870-13D with an Celeron B815 w/ Intel HD Graphics, but now I think I'll go for the only slightly more expensive Toshiba Satellite C870-10L with an Pentium B960 & Radeon HD7610
 
Yes, there aren't special assembly lines where they make crappy LCD panels on purpose so they can end up in bad laptops. I used a bottom of the barrel ARM "netbook" (Windows CE, no apps and an Internet Explorer about as usable as netscape 4.x ..), the computing hardware is worse than low end smartphones but the 7" LCD panel was so crisp and bright :LOL:
 
Acer C7 Chromebook costs 199$
290wwhc.jpg


11.6-inch/ 1366 X 768 :p
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I've found a list of cheap laptops that were created with the student in mind http://www.mawista.com/blog/en/cheapest-high-quality-laptops-students/

But I don't know if it will suit your needs as it's hard to find a laptop with good specifications for little money. Companies are getting focused more on tablets these days.

I personally have an Acer Aspire V5 which I'm quite pleased with, it has an i5 3d gen processor and it works really well. I wish it had a better graphic memory but I was short on my budget.
 
Wow this Chromebook, although still "low res" is not that bad, a sandy bridge celeron 2GB of ram and a hard drive. It's even a dual core CPU, I expected a single core.

from reading some store's comments it even has a free RAM slot.
Buy one and wipe the OS.. if you're looking for a 1366x768 computer. I know I run my desktop at 1280x960 and don't really see how I could have less vertical resolution (more horizontal could be nice, 1600x900 probably but I'd have to auto-hide my bottom panel maybe)


Else, a friend was shopping for a powerful laptop (music stuff), 15" 1366 and 17" 1600x900 ones, he's getting a Lenovo that has an ivy bridge Core i7 QM for about 600 euros, with whatever nvidia graphics and 4GB/500GB, and windoze license, well that was quite an offer.
 
I recommend you Lenovo IdeaPad Y580

15.6-Inch 1920 x 1080
Intel Core i7-3630QM(2.3GHz)
750GB 5400RPM 16GB SSD
Nvidia GT 660M (2G DDR3 VRAM)
Any thoughts?

What's cheap?
Take a look at here, are these laptops decent for you?
 
Back
Top