I would never buy another hp product. Had too many problems across different arms of their business (laptops, printers, etc.)
I spent about 10 years working in IT and HP won the worst laptop in the world every year. They used to be designed to fail in about 1 to 2 years, depending on the warranty. That was about 10 years ago, but they were such shit back then that I will never buy a HP anything.
Lenovo and Asus used to be rock solid, probably still are.
Same. HP could stand for “heaping pile.”
As far as brands, almost anything in this price range is built as cheaply as possible to MAYBE last the warranty. No brand will be any better than the next until about the $500 mark.
I’d highly recommend buying a 2 year old used laptop, like others have said, an old business grade laptop would work perfect. Better build, better quality, better speed, better everything.
It’s… Not great. It’s on par with other $300 laptops, which isn’t saying much. 8Gb of RAM in current year isn’t really enough anymore, and the screen is basically the cheapest possible. You’re looking for a laptop with a screen resolution near 1920x1080, and ideally 16 Gb of RAM.
It’s gotten very hard to recommend laptops based on the brand name, since pretty much every brand has started pumping out crappy laptops to capitalize on the brand.
Like others said, try looking at business laptops, either surplus or liquidation sales. They’re not great either but at least you’re ideally not getting fleeced.
If you’re feeling adventurous (and I’m mincing my words, this won’t be a breeze if you don’t know much but you’ll learn a ton), the best bang for buck you can get in a portable format is a Steam Deck with USB hub + mouse and keyboard (could be travel size if you want). Can be had for less than $500, if you have the budget portable screens also exist, and for that price it beats any modern laptop under $1000. I understand that it’s not exactly for everyone though.
It’s a barebones one (hence the “Essential”), if your Toshiba laptop was a good spec, that one might honestly be better, if it was slow then this might be an upgrade. All depends on what you need out of a laptop.
Screen is 1366x768 so it will be hard to do much multitasking at all and you can’t view 1080p HD video at full resolution.
For the price in USD? I think it’s not good value. A used corporate surplus laptop would be far better. ~$200 would be a good value price for this spec.
A used corporate surplus laptop would be far better.
This is a good opportunity to shamelessly plug refurb.io - I’ve bought machines for my family there. If you can stand the occasional appearance blemish it’s a very reliable site.
A used corporate surplus laptop would be far better.
Absolutely, a 3 years old Dell that was $2000 can be had for like $300 sometimes on eBay
New laptops whose Black Friday prices are within the $200 - 300 US range that I think are a good deal:
Example from Amazon - a ChromeOS laptop
Example from OfficeDepot - a Windows “AI-enabled” laptop
Anyway if you go with any hp I recommend you cut out all the useless crapware that comes with it.
Don’t know if it’s a good deal.
As others here I will recommend also looking at other brands. I think that you get the best deal by buying used business laptops. They are cheap, good quality, built to last and often repairable.
Brand-wise I think Dell is OK, while Lenovo Thinkpads series T, X, W and carbon are even better choices, IMO.
EDIT: Spelling.
I have awful experience with recent T series ThinkPads.
My Ideapad 510S that I bought many many years ago is much more robust, and has lived through a lot of use and abuse. Meanwhile I treat my ThinkPads like precious relics, and they still keep breaking down on me for stupid-ass reasons. I bought ThinkPad because I thought it could last me at least a decade — that couldn’t be further from the truth. What a pile of trash. I guess they were good ten years ago.
Next time I’m gonna put good money into a laptop — and, as both charging ports on my T14s are currently failing, I’m afraid it won’t be long — I’ll get myself a Framework.
For the lower end of the price spectrum I sadly have no idea. I’m just here to warn everyone about ThinkPads. It has become my destiny in life.
Found the Thinkpad collector who is afraid of competition. Just kidding… 🙂
I haven’t had much experience with the newer models, so what you say may be true.
The cheapest framework is nearly five times the OPs link.
While “no laptop” is better than a HP I don’t see this link as helpful as all.
OP, I would check out used markets in this price range. While frameworks are awesome I haven’t seen them being refurbished yet and you regularly have business leasing returns from Lenovo for example that could match your budget.
I will not answer the “good deal” aspect of your question, as I have no idea of the laptop market on your side of the Atlantic. But what I can say is that I steer away from HP in general nowadays:
- The good HP laptops are great. But they suffer a little from the Adidas syndrome, making them pricey just because of the brand name. The HP pavilion from 15-20 years ago was amazing. Good hardware, good build quality, incredible audio. I owned 3 or 4 of them. The only laptop with which I’ve been more satisfied is my current non-HP daily driver.
- …but their cheaper line has always been awful in every respect.
- Their business oriented laptops are pretty good, but Dell is just as good if not better.
What’s wrong with the old one?
i think the old one is old
A little bit slow and takes forever to download hospital programs and stuff. Been thinking about it for years and saw the HP Essential and thought it my work. I don’t play games I just watch tv and movies.
might want to consider a reinstall of the OS first, or some linux if you are up to it.
A new laptop, even the best in the world, won’t make your downloads any faster.
I also back what everyone else is saying. Unless of course you can update your current laptop. What have you got? An extra stick of ram and an SSD can make an old laptop feel brand new, especially with an OS reinstall
A new laptop, even the best in the world, won’t make your downloads any faster.
I struggle to make sense of this. Most obviously, network cards have gotten better with time. It obviously depends on what you’re coming from and what you’re changing to, but of course a laptop upgrade could make your downloads faster?
The bandwidth of a network card would generally outclass your internet connection by an order of magnitude.
Gigabits per second network cards have been standard for at least a decade.
And then there’s your wifi too, if applicable, but even that is much faster than your general internet connection, unless you’re far from your router. A new laptop might help you get a better wifi signal, if it had a newer wifi protocol or stronger radio, but that’s also going to depend on your router.
But in front of all of that is going to be your modem. Depending on the quality of your modem that might be a bottleneck.
I feel like I can download files to my newest laptop faster than I can move them around locally on my older ones. But maybe I’m just getting old, and my reference points are dates. Or maybe I just don’t know what I’m talking about, that’s also likely.
In either case, thanks for the explanation!
Is it possible the hard drive is failing in the old one? I don’t know what the operating system would do if download speed surpassed write speed, but once it couldn’t hold it in ram any longer waiting to write I guess it would have to throttle it.
i’d choose a used business laptop, cheap and still good to go.
I bought a $300 HP i5 laptop from Walmart Black Friday sale three years ago, the battery drains when the laptop is supposed to be off, and now the HDMI port, and audio out don’t work, usb solves both these issues. Got the extended warranty for something like $29 for 2 years from HP when the 1 yr warranty ran out, but can’t be without my laptop to send it in for servicing. For $300 it’s been worth it, probably looking for another one sometime later this year. It’s cheap and it won’t last long, but it’s cheap. (*edit: just noticed this offering is an AMD chip, and I don’t fucks with those, so personally, I wouldn’t buy it, but that’s just me)
