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Advice Wanted

  • 12-01-2015 2:45pm
    #1
    dublindiehard
    Closed Accounts Posts: 172 ✭✭


    Hey All,

    My faithful 14" thin and light HP Pavilion DM4 will hit five years old later this year and it's come to a time where I need to start thinking about replacing it with something newer. It's been the best laptop I've ever had in 15 years of owning machines.

    I was going to replace it last year, but have been unable to find anything that I would consider worth replacing it with despite months of looking and still there is not much out there. Since all of the Pavilions are now cheap plastic junk and the Envy 15 range is a great machine (my partner has one) with the worlds worst quality screen (ridicolous in a premium product!) please don't suggest any HP laptops.

    Also is it me or is there a real tendancy to be a lot of crap screens in laptops at the moment, so many of the HD screens I've seen have awfiul colour reproduction and woeful viewing angles, it seems to be a step up in pixel numbers in a lot of laptops, and step back in terms of display qualities. Seems to be more of a focus on a cheap crap HD screen just to say it has HD when I'd far rather a crisp non HD screen.

    It seems that 14" laptops have basically all but vanished, but I find 13" too small for a keyboard and most 15" not portable enough, my budget will be around €750 euro to €800 euro and I'll outline my requirements below.

    Screen: 13" to 15" with touch and decent colours and viewing angles (Prefer 14")
    Form factor: Lgiht and portable as possible
    Processor: upper end of i3 or i5..
    RAM: At least 6GB, prefer 8GB
    Touchscreen Prefered
    Hard Drive: At least 500GB
    CD Drive Prefered to be included.
    Prefer Nvidia Graphics but may be tempted for high end dedicated.
    Prefer metal casing rather than cheapo plastic.

    I reckon you'll struggle to do it. I've been looking everywhere. All I really want is a newer version of my DM4, but any machine I can find similar to it seems to be either prohibitive in cost or with a useless cheapo screen.


Comments

  • #2
    dublindiehard
    Closed Accounts Posts: 172 ✭✭dublindiehard


    Also good battery life owuld be appreciated and decent sound.

    This is my old machine for comparison, I actually agree with the review that the screen is average, but honestly it's excellent compared to some of the stuff I'm seeing now

    trustedreviews.com/hp-pavilion-dm4-review


  • #3
    devnull
    Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators Posts: 11,802 Mod ✭✭✭✭devnull


    I have a DM4 myself right now, I had a spec with 4GB of RAM and just decided to toss another 2GB in there a couple of months ago to keep it going for a bit longer in the hope that something would come out that took my fancy, since I'm not going to buy unless something really meets my needs, which are not too far off yours.

    There are no decent 14" laptops around at the moment with a decent spec and a decent screen and with dedicated graphics, it tends to be only Chromebooks and business laptops that are 14" these days and obviously they are underpowered or not designed for home use so will have tiny sound and poor graphics, but on the flip side business spec machines should have vastly superior screens.

    I have an ageing desktop as well now (high end core 2 duo believe it or not!) and you know if nothing comes out in the future I may just end up buying a chromebook for travel and buy another desktop. Ideally I want to buy something to replace both and just plug the laptop into my HP Z24i monitor (the display in that probably costs about 10x more than the Envy 15's talk about opposite ends of the quality scale!) when using it at a desk and then use it to go when needbe.

    You know I'm not totally against getting a 15.6" but it has to be portable and light and also well spec'd, the Envy 15 is kinda great for my needs, but that screen is bloody awful and a complete joke, even the cheapest HP laptops have better screen than that, so I'm hoping they come out with a new range soon with better screens.

    Judging by the high level of HP discounting in PC world, I think a new range is around the corner so if you want to get a new DM4/Envy (since the current envy 15 is based on the DM3/DM4 series) clone with a decent screen, You may want to do like me and hold your horses and see what they release. SUrely they can't make the same mistake twice.


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