'Which Laptop should I buy?'

Backstory

I’ve never shopped for a laptop before.

Or at least, not one for myself. I’ve never really needed one other than school- and my various ‘jobs’ allowed me to find decent laptops to piecemeal together and get away with installing an SSD. I’ve basicially used shitty, secondhand laptops forever.

My previous job stuck me with an ‘i7’ dual core that had a questionable thermal paste job, but that aside, ran like garbage for a marketed ‘i7.’

The laptop will be for an internal support position. I have a rare opportunity of picking one out myself.

What I’m looking for

I am aware I’m asking a lot for this price, and I’ve also been considering the possibility that I may need to upgrade things on my own.

800$ max

Something with a quad core (prefer quad 8 thread). Hyperthreadded dual cores are off the table completely.

SSD -Type doesn’t matter, but at least 256.

minimum 8GB of RAM, but I prefer 16GB

HDMI output

If possible, docking compatible, but not required.

Hopefully 4 USB ports of any type, prefer at least two are 3.0 or better.

If windows 10, need the pro verison

The first thing that springs to mind when I read your requirements is an HP Elitebook, but they’re a bit more on the expensive side and typically have the U code dual-core CPUs in them.

If you’re not looking to buy in the next couple weeks, and this is more of a long-term purchase, the ThinkPad A485 might fit your use case:

https://www3.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-a-series/A485/p/22TP2TAA485

Have you tried looking at a used thinkpad? Only thing that will match that price with those kinds of features

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If you don’t mind refurbished, Dell Outlet has a few models that fulfill your criteria, but are annoyingly slightly over budget.

Inspiron 13

Latitude 13 2-in-1

Quite a lot on there right now. Might be worth having a browse.

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Acer Swift 3 is the only thing I can think of that comes close to the specs you’re asking for the price.

Yes. I’m not opposed to used stuff, I’m just not entirely sure how that will go over in the event that I need to service it for any reason. I have no problem putting something together myself as well- but this is bought and paid by my new employer, and I’m not so sure how’d they’d handle it.

@Zavar

That is actually where I started and the listed stuff you just put is on par with what I was looking at. Not sure about the three in one although that is something I wouldn’t mind having.

This also looks on par with what I’m looking for. So much added to the ‘compare’ list already, thanks guys.

I’m trying not to overthink this- but at the same time, I just left a place where I used a computer for over a year that I thought was total shit and don’t want to live that life again.

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Might be worth asking them as it could be the best deal. Will have docking, sdd, large amounts of ram, etc

The worst answer you can get back from them is a no

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There’s a couple of choices here: https://geizhals.eu/?cat=nb&xf=10929_Windows~10980_Windows+10+Pro+64bit~12823_8~12_8192~2991_240~82_allgsosd&sort=p&hloc=at&hloc=de&hloc=pl&hloc=uk&hloc=eu&v=e