Laptop under INR 1L · DIGIT-ARC

J

1) What is your budget? (INR or USD)
INR 80k to 1L (including extended warranty of upto 3y)

2) What size & weight consideration (if any) would you prefer?

Thin and Light; 12" - 14" screen

3) What are the primary tasks you will be performing with this notebook?
- movies, excel, mobile video editing
- NO gaming

5) Any typical configuration in your mind you're eying for ?
- Would like it to last at least 4 years, so would want to minimise risk of hardware obsolescence for non-upgradable parts

4) Are there any brands that you prefer or any you really don't like?
a. Like:
b. Dislike:

Weighing between going for Business series laptops (thinkpads/ latitudes/ elitebook etc) vs. regular ones, mainly keeping reliability in mind.

6) Anything else you would like to say?

Screen resolution (1080p (Full HD) )/ best display quality possible in the budget
Battery back up ( extended (5-7hrs) )
Purchase place ( Online (eg - flipkart, infibeam) / Local / Abroad (Canada) )

Additional inputs:
- Previous Dell Inspiron 7460 died within 3.5 years of purchase. During extended warranty period of 3 years, motherboard required replacement twice, daughter-board twice, keyboard once, hard drive once. Not sure if I had been unlucky or you simply can not rely on any brand for hardware quality. *Would appreciate opinion on this.*

- Would Canada offer any significant price advantage? Also, warranty status of Canada purchase in India.

- I can delay my purchase another 3-4 months if there is any major cycle change/ new launches are expected. Although this is endless.

Thank you!

I would recommend to look out for laptops with Ryzen 7 4800H and Ryzen 9 4900H combined with a GTX 1660Ti (Turing NVENC) or RX 5600M. Premier can now use hardware encoding on both NVIDIA and AMD GPUs.

Sub 14" laptops are not good enough thermally when they have this kind of power. They will thermal throttle and have low battery life (because you can't defeat physics)

Funny that gaming laptops are capable video editing laptops (except for maybe the screen which needs higher color accuracy).

W

@omega44-xt Canada & USA are quite similar in terms of laptops availability & prices or are there some differences.

whitestar_999 said:
@omega44-xt Canada & USA are quite similar in terms of laptops availability & prices or are there some differences.

Maybe 80% similar, but US surely has more options & better sales because of higher number of units sold.

Only 14" option is Asus G14, it is a hot laptop though. Better wait for 1-2 months to get all new models released, Coronavirus delayed launches of many new laptops with AMD Ryzen 4000 & Intel 10th gen CPUs. Some new laptops are surely on sale now. Target R7 4800H laptops IMO as that CPU is better than Intel's i7s & performs similar to i9 while generating lower heat.

Also, better to get a 15.6" gaming laptop with 100% sRGB display (usually found on those 144Hz panels). Non-gaming laptop options include Dell XPS 15 & Lenovo ThinkPads, but I doubt they will come in your budget of 100k, even when bought from Canada (yes, buying from Canada is cheaper).

Some manufacturers like Asus sells laptops with international warranty. Dell requires you to purchase their premium warranty. Ask Lenovo & HP for their exact T&C from CA as well as India support. Acer & MSI doesn't offer international warranty in developed countries, I think.

This looks like a good option, but has bottom vents blocked which leads to high temps on CPU+GPU load (not sure why Asus does it):
Amazon.ca Laptops: ROG Zephyrus G15 (2020) Ultra Slim Gaming Laptop, 15.6” 240Hz FHD, GeForce RTX 2060, AMD Ryzen 7 4800HS, 16GB DDR4, 1TB PCIE SSD, Windows 10, GA502IV-ES76

J

Thanks @SaiyanGoku , @whitestar_999 , @omega44-xt

Slight modifications:

1) What is your budget? (INR or USD)
INR 80k to 1L (including extended warranty of upto 3y)

2) What size & weight consideration (if any) would you prefer?

13.3" or 14", no bigger. Based on recommendations, I can see 14" is the optimal choice.

3) What are the primary tasks you will be performing with this notebook?
- Media consumption and work (excel/decks etc). Will be carrying it around a lot, so mobility and build quality is more important than video editing (which is good to have, but not the primary requirement)

5) Any typical configuration in your mind you're eying for ?
- Best possible screen for extended reading (books, web)

4) Are there any brands that you prefer or any you really don't like?
a. Like:
b. Dislike:

Open to options, hardware reliability and built quality being important (biased because of experience with current machine)

6) Anything else you would like to say?

Screen resolution (1080p (Full HD) )/ best display quality possible in the budget
Battery back up ( extended (5-7hrs) )
Purchase place: India options for the time being would help; Canada will depend on whether I will be able to travel in the next 3 months (quite uncertain amid Covid-19).

Thanks again!

If you want to edit videos sometimes with portability as the main requirement, wait for ultrabooks with R7 4700U (8 core CPU). With that you should be able to get better performance than 4 core i5 H variant CPUs. Its the best CPU for ultrabooks for performance that you will get for your budget even in India, might be priced 80k.

Otherwise, Asus G14 is surely the best performing 14" laptop.

J

Thanks @omega44-xt , will wait for a while in such a case.

J

Hi, any views on this machine from Dell (Inspiron 7490). Specifically on these:
- Price to config reasonable or not
- Similar models available form other Brands (waiting for new models with Ryzen 7 4000 series)
- Any major drawbacks/ limitations I should be aware of for this model

*www.amazon.in/Inspiron-7490-i7-10510U-Microsoft-Integrated/dp/B0842ZC928

W

JK2 said:
Hi, any views on this machine from Dell (Inspiron 7490). Specifically on these:
- Price to config reasonable or not
- Similar models available form other Brands (waiting for new models with Ryzen 7 4000 series)
- Any major drawbacks/ limitations I should be aware of for this model

If you are thinking that having an i7 will be a large advantage over i5 when doing video editing then I have to say that you will be disappointed because these all are 'U' version processors which have sever thermal restrictions preventing them from running at their full capacity for more than a dozen of minutes. Remove that i7 & the price is ridiculous for such config when you can get the below model from asus:

*www.amazon.in/ASUS-UX481FL-BM5811T...rds=zenbook&qid=1593163067&s=computers&sr=1-4

J

whitestar_999 said:
If you are thinking that having an i7 will be a large advantage over i5 when doing video editing then I have to say that you will be disappointed because these all are 'U' version processors which have sever thermal restrictions preventing them from running at their full capacity for more than a dozen of minutes. Remove that i7 & the price is ridiculous for such config when you can get the below model from asus:

*www.amazon.in/ASUS-UX481FL-BM5811T...rds=zenbook&qid=1593163067&s=computers&sr=1-4

Understood. In such a case, any visibility on Asus Zephyrus G14 availability in India? Also, ASUS service quality post purchase in India (doorstep vs. carry-in, hardware part replacement, TAT etc.)

Finally, I can see that I may have to compromise on size/ form-factor to maximize on performance.

Budget (80k to 100k) and other requirements remaining same, any three suggestions on 15.6" laptops?

JK2 said:
Understood. In such a case, any visibility on Asus Zephyrus G14 availability in India? Also, ASUS service quality post purchase in India (doorstep vs. carry-in, hardware part replacement, TAT etc.)

Finally, I can see that I may have to compromise on size/ form-factor to maximize on performance.

Budget (80k to 100k) and other requirements remaining same, any three suggestions on 15.6" laptops?

If you remove thin & light as a requirement, gaming laptops are cheaper & already available.

Buy ASUS TUF Gaming A15 Laptop 15.6" FHD 144Hz Ryzen 7 4800H, GTX 1650Ti 4GB Graphics (8GB RAM/512GB NVMe SSD/Windows 10/Bonfire Black/2.30 Kg), FA506II-HN152T Online at Low Prices in India - Amazon.in
This has R7 4800H CPU, which obliterates many desktop CPUs, it performs very similar to desktop R7 2700 & is better than R5 3600 (opinion based on Cinebench R20 score of ~4000, its a popular CPU benchmarking app). Just add more RAM & storage to it.

General performance reference:
R7 4800H ~ i9 9880H/10880H > R5 4600H ~ i7 10750H > R7 4700U > R5 4600U ~ i5 10300H/9300H > i7/i5 U CPUs (both 10th & 8th gen)

J

omega44-xt said:
If you remove thin & light as a requirement, gaming laptops are cheaper & already available.

Buy ASUS TUF Gaming A15 Laptop 15.6" FHD 144Hz Ryzen 7 4800H, GTX 1650Ti 4GB Graphics (8GB RAM/512GB NVMe SSD/Windows 10/Bonfire Black/2.30 Kg), FA506II-HN152T Online at Low Prices in India - Amazon.in
This has R7 4800H CPU, which obliterates many desktop CPUs, it performs very similar to desktop R7 2700 & is better than R5 3600 (opinion based on Cinebench R20 score of ~4000, its a popular CPU benchmarking app). Just add more RAM & storage to it.

General performance reference:
R7 4800H ~ i9 9880H/10880H > R5 4600H ~ i7 10750H > R7 4700U > R5 4600U ~ i5 10300H/9300H > i7/i5 U CPUs (both 10th & 8th gen)

Thanks @omega44-xt , this is helpful.