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Question

College student laptop

by Aug 13, 2015 8:12AM PDT

Hello,

I've made another post about buying laptop before, but realized I wanted unnecessarily much for little money, so I'll try to be more precise with what I want to do with the laptop.

I need a laptop that is lightweight and has a relatively good battery life under $1000. I would do mainly programming and schoolwork on it, but also occasionnal playing of games like Minecraft, for which I'd need a good framerate. So far I've considered these laptops:

- Dell XPS 13 (non-touch)
It seems to be generally very good. Only it's price and non-extendability bothers me. Also it apparently has some problems with fans and keyboard.

- Asus ZenBook UX305
I especially like this one, mainly because it's very light and quiet and has a great battery life. It only seems that it wouldn't be capable of running a Minecraft at a stable playable framerate. If through overclocking or any other way it would be possible this notebook would surely be my choice.

- Dell Inspiron 15 7537
This laptop seems to be great all round, except it has only a hybrid drive and a worse battery life than the two others. Also it's 2 years old, so I don't know if it's really worth it.

I'd be glad if you could help me choosing which laptop of these would be best for me, or suggest any other.

Discussion is locked

7 Posts
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Answer
CNET really liked that XPS model.
by Forum moderator Aug 13, 2015 8:32AM PDT
http://www.cnet.com/products/dell-xps-13-non-touch-2015/
http://www.cnet.com/news/get-an-asus-zenbook-ux305-for-599-shipped/ shows a deal gone by but this model is still a bargain at 699.
Hybrid drives did help but not enough that I will talk them up. Let's ignore that item.

To me this the first 2 are great student laptops.

Let's dive into battery times. http://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-XPS-13-Early-2015-Notebook-Review.139382.0.html and skip down to battery times. As usual the battery time varies from 2 to 21 hours (TEN TIMES) depending on use.

I'm sure you knew that.
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Battery Life
by PrimeSudoer Aug 13, 2015 8:41AM PDT

Yes, I sure know battery life varies and depends of the usage, and I also know that the XPS has a slightly better battery life than the UX305.

But would the Asus UX305 (which I prefer over the XPS 13 mainly because of the price difference and fan absence) be able to run Minecraft with stable FPS after some tweaking (overclocking etc.)? If it would was possible, I would surely buy this one.

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No.
by r. proffitt Forum moderator Aug 13, 2015 8:46AM PDT

I've yet to see "stable FPS" on any PC to date. The FPS rate varies with the scene so for now, for today it's unstable. It won't matter which PC you choose if "stable FPS" is the goal.

That said I could take some high end gamer laptop with the latest 980m GPU then CAP the frame rate to say 30 and artificially get a stable FPS. Some may call that cheating.

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Wow.
by PrimeSudoer Aug 13, 2015 9:01AM PDT

By stable FPS I meant this: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/387963-33-dropping-stable but at a smaller scale, like 50-10 FPS, sorry if I wasn't explicit enough -_-
+ Minecraft limits the FPS to max 60 if you set it in the settings, but this is besides the point.

If the FPS stayed at 30+ most of the time it would be alright, so do you think the UX305 is capable of that?

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I'd have to research that.
by r. proffitt Forum moderator Aug 13, 2015 9:19AM PDT

Time for you to hit google and see if minecraft benchmarks are available for this one.

Remember that the complexity of the Minecraft world changes the framerate. http://www.minecraftworldmap.com/#/-1627/64/1486/-6/0/0 finds these maps that bog down on even high end gear. I think you do this part of the research. Minecraft does run on these models.

The UX305 is a series and it no fan design is not attractive to me. http://www.ultrabookreview.com/5868-asus-zenbook-ux305-review/ noted it will get warm to hot. Fans are good things. If you are going to game, get a laptop cooling pad.

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Answer
Macbook
by Aug 13, 2015 11:58PM PDT

well for me i would go to a macbook

2.5 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5 processor
4 GB DDR3 RAM; 500 GB Hard Drive
13.3 inch LED-backlit display, 1280-by-800 resolution
Intel HD Graphics 4000

Link simplified by moderator. The link is to amazon, but you can buy it elsewhere also, of course.

Post was last edited on August 14, 2015 12:44 AM PDT

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Nope
by PrimeSudoer Aug 14, 2015 12:26AM PDT

I don't like Apple products for few reasons.
One of them is their price and the second is that half of our class has them, I don't want to fall into this group.

At this moment I can't decide between the Asus UX305FA (non-touch, FHD, 8 GB RAM, Core M, 256GB SSD, $699) and Dell XPS 13 (non-touch, FHD, 4GB RAM, i5, 128GB SSD, $869)

Is the price difference really worth it? I'm worried about the XPS's RAM (4GB) not being enough as it is not extensible.

Currently these arguments I have for buying each of these two laptops:

Dell XPS 13
+ Has a backlit keyboard
+ Is more stylish
+ Is more powerful
- Only 4GB of RAM
- $150 more expensive than the Asus UX305FA
- Apparently makes a lot of noise

Asus UX305FA
+ Lighter, thinner
+ Makes no noise at all
+ Is quite cheap
+ Has 8 GB of RAM
- Intel Core M processor is not very powerful (worried for Miencraft mod development)
- No backlit keyboard
- Horrible touchpad

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