Used Laptop Buying Guide 2018

Used Laptop Buying Guide

Buying a laptop can be a confusing and sometimes daunting business, so hopefully this guide will help you with technical jargon and some of the things to look out for when deciding on the perfect laptop for you. Refurbished laptops can save a lot of money on new ones so hopefully this guide will help you decide an what is important for your requirements

Screen size
This dictates how big and heavy the laptop will be. Laptop screen sizes tend to range between 12” and 17”. Probably the most popular screens are 14” and 15.6” screens. A 12” screen laptop is lightweight and often well under 2kg they are also small and very portable in size. At the other end of the spectrum are 17” screen laptops, these tend to be used for CAD and gaming, and are usually over 4kg so tend not to be lugged around too much. Typically a lot of customers prefer the mid range sized laptops with 14” or 15.6” screens which are both lightweight and portable.

ProcessorThe processor is the brain of the laptop. Generally the faster the processor the faster the machine will run. Also the newer the processor the better for example a 2.5GHz Intel Core i5 4^th Generation processor would be better than a 2.5GHz i5 ^3rd Generation processor as each generation brings more efficient and faster processing capability.
Memory (RAM)
This is the temporary storage that a laptop uses when running windows and other applications. Having more memory works in conjunction with the processor. Having more memory helps your laptop run quicker and smoother. Most laptop have 4GB RAM which is fine for many but increasing the memory to 8GB would give an additional performance boost.

Hard driveThis is the amount of storage the laptop has. Broadly the more storage you have the better, but this also depends on usage. For many users a 120GB hard drive would probably be sufficient but for others who are wishing to store a large amount of photo's and video a larger drive of 500GB or maybe even 1TB would be better.
SSD Hard drive
SSD stands for Solid State Drive these use memory chips to store data and doesn't have and moving part like a traditional hard drive. The big advantage for a SSD drive is the time to load windows which is much faster then a traditional hard drive. In operation again it helps the laptop operate much faster.
The downside to SSD drives is the storage capacity is not as large and typically SSD drives are either 128GB or 256GB. The SSD drives are also more costly so this needs to be taken into consideration.

Refurbished Laptop Versus New Laptop

Refurbished Laptop Versus New Laptop

Most of us would like a brand spanking new laptop straight out of the box and there are advantages to be had but there are many advantages to buying a used refurbished laptop.

Advantages to buying a used laptop

1) Cost 
Cost is the obviously one of the main advantages of buying used. A typical used notebook can be bought at less than £100 whereas the cheapest new laptop start from around £200 for something very basic and rising quite steeply for a well specified machine. The money saved here can remain in your bank account or be used for other life essentials. Then if you choose between new and used at the same price, buying used would enable you to get many more features than buying new such as a fester processor, larger screen or an SSD drive.

2) Quality of the laptop
Buying second hand on a budget enables you to buy a better quality laptop. Many of the used laptops in the market are ex business machines. Businesses tend to buy well made laptops from the top manufacturer such as HP, Lenovo and Dell. The models they purchase are the top models for example the Elitebook, Probook, ThinkPad and Latitude. These compare well to many of the new consumer laptops out there which don't have the same build quality and are not designed to last as long. Therefore buying one of these ex corporate laptops although they may be a few years old normally the build quality is much higher than buying a new laptop from the manufacturers cheaper offerings.

3) Your requirements
The majority of customers do not require the latest laptop for their needs. A refurbished used laptop maybe around three years old but will still run the latest Operating System and Office software well. So if you main uses will be browsing the internet, email, word processing and speadsheets it will work just fine for you. In fact an older machine fitted with an SSD drive and a Core i5 processor is likely to run a lot faster with quicker boot up times than an entry level new laptop

4) Environment
Many customers are concerned about the impact on the environment of th glut of consumer electronics we desire. Buying a used rather than new prolongs the life of a laptop which may otherwise be disposed of. Disposing of a laptop can put dangerous metals and chemicals into the environment. There is alos an environmental cost for buying a new laptop as this has to be manufactured using new resources.Our refurbished laptops
Thanks for reading the blog.  Our laptops can be seen at www.rectech.co.uk prices are between £89.99 and £399.99 please contact us if you require further help.