Things to conisder while buying a laptop

 What Specifications Should I see before Buying A Laptop

What laptop is best suited for me. How can i decide to buy a laptop? A better guide to buy a laptop.

What laptop should i buy?

With more than thousands of varities of laptops to choose. You should first see what are the requirments for your use and what can you do with it. Is it future proof for you?

Laptops vary greatly by CPU speed , graphics(internal or dedicated) , size , weight , driver support , storage , ram and some other things.

For some of you a good high resolution screen may be important and some require a high processor and best graphics power. But with these much specs getting the value for your money is also important.

Here are some factors you should consider before buying a new laptop.

SIZE:

Laptop sizes are tend to start with 11.6 inches and go all the way up to 17.3 inches. Many brands like DELL, HP , ASUS tend to offer threee display sizes : 13.3 , 15.6 , 17.3. But some offer some other sizes too.

If you want your laptop to be portable you will want to go to the smaller size laptops. They are lighter and smaller which can be placed in a small shoulder bag. But smaller laptops mostly don't have a dedicated graphics card in them , they are mostly offered with a integrated graphics card.

Ultrabooks tend to favour slim and lightweight form-factor over high end performance. For example we can look at ASUS Zenbook and Lenovo's Yoga are sort of ultrabools.

Notebook tend to offer a good mix of power and portability. If you are looking for notebools DELL XPS 13 and HP Envy x360 fall under this catogery.

Convertables expand on this by adding the ability to fold away the keyboard and use your laptop as a tablet. Some thing like Microsoft's Surface Go and Acer's Chromebook fall into this catogery.

The most important thing to consider is that when you buy a laptop you must consider things like a optical discs are not placable in small laptops they are avilable only in some big laptops. If you need for gaming you can go for the one with discrete graphics card and a bigger screen.

CPU:

For many users, an intel core processor offer the best performance when it comes to multitasking and multimedia tasks. Core i3 based notebooks are generally found in entry level systems, while core i5 make up to the majority of mainstream computers. Core i7 based systems are for those who want the best performance from their laptops.

Laptops running on core i9 processors are even powerful that laptops with i7. They are also able to compete desktop performances but they are at a higher prices.

Some vendors also offer laptops running with AMD's Ryzen processors. If you are a gamer this can be a paticularly compelling option without considering. These are currently far better than intel in the specs of gaming.

RAM:

In the old days more than 4GB of ram was better to get everything out of your system.

But these days you should consider buying 8GB of ram as a minimum. If you are a power user consider upgrading it to a 16 GB of ram. Meanwhile, gamers should think of upgrading to 32GB or beyond that if they want the best experience.

The more amount of ram you have it allows more number of applications to be run at the same time for more data to be quickly accessible to the system at anytime. This comes in handy for those who use more number of chrome tabs or applications.

The most recent generation of ram is ddr4 but ddr5 rams are expected to land sometime in 2021. As a rule higher the numbers are better than lower numbers here and most motherboards can only support a certain generations of ram. Thankfully since you are looking at buying laptop, you dont have too much to worry about.

THe number that comes after the DDR designation is a little more significant. That's the transfer speed. Similar to clock-speed on a CPU , this number measures default theortical transfer speed. Again, higher is the better.

Another detail to note is weather or not the Ram in your laptop is single or dual channel. In most cases, this might not make a huge effect but if you are trying to weight up your options, a laptop with dual-channel is generally preferred. This is because dual-channel ram are able to transfer a greater amount of data at once.

While having more ram is always going to be better than having less ram, most users aren't going to feel the difference between having 16gb and 8bgb unless they're running the kinds of ram-heavy applications were that 8GB or a secondary channel is going to make a big difference.

STORAGE:

Harddrives used to be all the rage, but these days they've mostly out of favour, especially for thin and light laptops. This is because they can be slow, somewat bulky, and produce a noticeable heat and noice.

A solid state drive(ssd), on the other hand, offers a lot more speed than harddrive, runs silently , and can be installed in a form factor that doesn't add too much weight and bulk to a laptop. 

Stick to an ssd for your new laptop and you will get the max power of your laptop, load things faster, store faster, boot your system faster.

 

If you opt for a dual-drive setup od hybrid setup, you'll generally want ssd with a minimum, of 256Gb of storage and a secondary drive with more than 1TB of storage. Alternatively, if your laptop only has a single SSD drive at its disposal, you ill want to make sure that if includes no less than 512 GB of storage.

The latest, fastest laptops also have NVMe ssd's which are even faster than traditional ssd's but are also expencive. If you are buying a new laptop you will require it atleast with one ssd.

SCREEN QUALITY:

since you'll probably end up staring at your laptop for hours, you'll probably want to make sure it's a painless as possible to do so. For this you'll need a screen that is comfortable to look and it feels natural.

A 1920x1080 pixel resoluton(FHD) should be considered minimum if you want a plenty of space line up windows and keep things in view. IF you splurge on simething a little sharper, you probably won't regret it though.

Selected modern laptops also now offer 4K resolutions. However these high-end display panels are generally costly add-on to an already expensive-product. 4k is an extra thats only really going to worth those who really need it such as content creation professionals.

If you are a gamer, it's also worth taking time to check the refresh rate on the display of any laptop. A faster refresh rate can often provide a sometimes provide a comepetitive advantage in games. Ideally you want something with less than 5ms response time or a refresh rate greater than 144Hz.

If possible, take time to go to a store and try to feel out the differences between different displays for yourself. If your eyes cant see a difference between a FHD and a 4k, it might not be worth paying the premium for the latter.

KEYBOARD QUALITY:

For long typing sessions, you'll need to get a laptop that has a confortable keyboard. You don't want to get a keyboard that packs every key under the sun because that can translate poor overall user experience when hunting for specifics like the arrow or delete keys. The keys should have adequate travel on the downstroke and snappy responsiveness when you let them go.

Make sure that the keyboard have a backlit. At face value, that might seem like a superficial detail but backlit keys make it much easier to see what you are typing in a dim lit environments.

BALENCE YOUR NEEDS AND BUDGET:

You need to balance these features with your budget and your needs, and you might have to make compromises. Rarely does a laptop come along that ticks all the boxes, especially when it comes to price.

Let me know in the comments that if i have missed any important specs to look when buying a laptop...