Hi everyone
My sister is starting as a Business Woman (Don’t know the exact translation) after the holidays. She will be doing a lot of business work (Office, SAP, Surfing). I have to buy her a notebook for school and for work. She doesn’t need a power house, but I don’t want a notebook that will be rely slow in a year or so.
She wants:
- Something under 1.5 Kg
- Something with at least 13’.3" screen
- Not more than 1.8 cm but with keyboard.
I thought about a MacBook Air but she will be using Windows only so I would have to install windows on it → lots of problems.
I saw this ASUS UX305FA-FC005H Notebook and the Lenovo Yoga 3 pro witch has Intel Core M. Is the power in the M enough for office use and more than a Atom tablet? Can you suggest something. Will be buying from this page: https://www.digitec.ch/en
Budget is -1500 $ or -1500 CHF
For the price Core M notebooks are at, I'd say pass on them. The yoga 3 pro is a cool concept, but its actively cooled core M which I find to be redundant. The point of core M is to be powerful yet low power enough that it doesn't need fans. So the addition of a fan on the yoga 3 is a turn off for me. I just bought myself a Hewlett Packard Spectre x360 and right now its my ultrabook of choice to recommend and use. I like the configuration with an I5 5200U, 8gb's of ram, and a 256gb ssd. Its powerful enough to last for years to come, which is where I think Core M will struggle. Core M's cinebench R 15 score is around 100 depending on the specific Core M part, and thats to low for comfort for me. The I5 5200U is more then double that. Link to the HP: http://store.hp.com/us/en/pdp/Laptops/hp-spectre-x360---13-4002dx-(energy-star)
The problem that I have with a lot of Core M products is actually the insufficient cooling. A lot of them have problems with thermal throttling. Considering that the yoga 3 has active cooling ( a lot of them try to get away without using a fan), it might fare better in that respect. That said, I don't actually know all that much about it because I don't much care for the smaller devices that Core M processors are found in. You can find some benchmarks though, I am sure. I would have to really look into their real world performance in the yoga 3 in order to say whether or not that one is worth it. Because of the thermal throttling issue, you really have to check on a per device basis. So look into that and see if the performance is good enough for what you need. That said, I don't think that there are small devices like she is wanting that have faster processors than Core M at the moment (assuming that it is properly cooled of course).
Any other good suggestions?
I would look at either the Yoga, the zenbook, or the XPS based on these results. From there, just find which one has the features and specs you like the best and fits best within your budget.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9104/asus-zenbook-ux305-review/4
wait for amd Carrizo, great price to performance(A10 w/ decent gpu for $500)
I don't need more then intel HD graphics. I don't care if its cheaper then Intel as the budget is 1500 $ and I prefer Intel in laptops (Desktop it doesn't matter ) any day of the week.
I was looking at MacBooks and at the Toshiba Kira 102 and a Surface 3 PRO or a Yoga 3, but I don't like the small screen size to work.
The ASUS UX305 is a good design utilizing Core M. It doesn't have much throttling going on. Laptops aren't getting much faster, but are getting better battery life. I wouldn't worry about it being obsolete.
email and web browsing can be done with a pentium3 it's not and never will be a cpu intensive task. so your sister could easily get by for atleast the next 3 years with an atom if that's all she's doing. however if she plans on watching netflix on her laptop then she'll probably want an i5.
i say wait for carrizo or wait for intels core m refresh, i have a 2014 core m dell venue 11, the battery life is amazing 5-6hrs use, does word excel and everything else just fine. i just wish i was able to run heavier apps though. but for 450 i'm not really complaining.
Try out lenovos trackpad before deciding I can't stand it.