Question I cannot decide between these two laptops, help would be so much appreciated.

Vicksty

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Hi everyone. I have spent days now trudging through laptop specs and deals and think I have narrowed my search down to 2, I am open to any suggestions however!

Requirements - for my 16 year old son (birthday present for the big 16!) for GCSE's and college. I want it to run as fast as possible for my budget but he has an Xbox one for gaming so that is not a consideration. I am aware though that he may like to play some of the PC based civ games. I would like lots of storage too.

Budget - £300 or under. I am trying to be realistic about what we can get for that money and get the best and most reliable machine.

I have found these two which look promising but can't decide (as I said though I am very grateful for any other other suggestions) I don't want to buy second hand. It is so hard making the decision with limited knowledge!

Buy HP 15in Intel Pentium 4GB 1TB Red - Bag, Mouse & McAfee at Argos.co.uk - Your Online Shop for Laptops and netbooks.

Tesco direct: Acer E5 15.6" Intel Pentium 8GB RAM 1TB HDD Laptop Blue

Huge thanks to anyone who can offer an opinion or suggestion?
 
I wouldn't touch that particular configuration of the HP with a bargepole at that price. Argos themselves do an identical machine with the more capable 3825U processor and twice as much memory and storage at exactly the same price:
Buy HP 15.6 inch Intel Pentium 8GB 2TB Laptop - Red at Argos.co.uk - Your Online Shop for Laptops and netbooks.

Unless your research has uncovered something substantially better about the one you linked (a higher quality screen for example) then I think you can discount that.

The Acer appears equally unremarkable for it's price. It's also 'currently unavailable' and given the age of the CPU that may be because manufacturing of that configuration has finished.

In terms of having a little oomph for gaming it's well worth looking at those models equipped with an i3 chip as they generally include integrated graphics that are twice as fast as the normal pentium chips (and even faster than that than the low powered N-series pentiums).

A lot of storage does mean you'll need to go for the slower hard drive instead of the faster solid state drive so it's only worth going that route if it'll actually be used.

Machines with 15" screens and lots of big numbers attached do tend to sell well, so there's rarely any chance to pick up the great deal you can sometimes get in less usual sizes and configurations. All the laptop chassis that fit your criteria are pretty similar so it's more or less a case of pot luck.

Hmm, maybe something like this:
Acer TravelMate P259-M 15.6" Laptop - Core i3 2.3GHz, 4GB, 500GB - NX.VDCEK.001 - CCL Computers

It's a little over budget at £320 and it's only got 500GB of storage which may be an issue if he really needs a lot but the HD 520 graphics included is 30-50% faster in many games than the HD 5500 in an i3-5005U:
Benchmarks

The HD Graphics Broadwell is the Pentium 3825U, the HD Graphics Haswell is the Pentium 3558U and the HD Graphics 405 is the N3710.

It does come with Windows 7 installed which is a shame, but it's got the licence for Windows 10 so he or you can download the installer from Microsoft's site and install without a problem.

Alternatively this Fujitsu A555 with an i3-5005U and three year warranty at £305 looks like a decent deal:
Fujitsu Lifebook A555 Laptop - Laptops at ebuyer

Even if the on site proportion of the warranty proves unavailable where you are (they're often restricted to major cities), three years is unusual at this price and you're not sacrificing a great deal or paying a great deal extra to get it.
 
Thank you for your reply. Much appreciated.

I did already have the first HP you included in my basket but it is not in stock anywhere and also not in stock for home delivery so that is a no go. I will have a look at your other suggestions now.
 

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