I'll also add, if you're looking for a really good $500 laptop. Buying an off-lease business laptop like Thinkpad or Dell Latitudes are the way to go. Also, enterprise devices are easy to upgrade since corporate IT support them. The downside to business laptops is that "gaming" laptops give you the most powerful bang for your buck. A topped out business laptop (64GB ram / 4TB HDD) would probably still have Intel GPU as the only option. That's why I want Thunderbolt 4 to become mainstream. I can have one of those spec'd out enterprise laptop and plug into a high end GPUs for gaming at home.
I'd buy something like this and throw it out in 3 years. Lenovo - IdeaPad L340 15 Gaming Laptop - Intel Core i5 - 8GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 - 256GB Solid State Drive - Black $420 Intel Core i5-9300HF 2.3 GHz Processor 15.6" 1920x1080 IPS Display 8GB 2400MHz DDR4 Memory 256GB NVMe Solid State Drive NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 4GB Graphics Windows 10 Backlit Keyboard Ports: 2x USB 3.0 1x HDMI 1x USB-C Lithium-ion Polymer Battery 4.84-Lbs https://www.bestbuy.com/site/lenovo...lid-state-drive-black/6419028.p?skuId=6419028
I've read it's early black Friday pricing. I actually bought it which is funny because I only looked because of this thread. It's flawed to be sure, but my Son will love it, and 48 fps on Battle Field V at Epic settings isn't bad.
That's like the best spec'd garbage tier throwaway laptop I've seen. Is there something wrong with it?
Just one memory slot and one 8Gb DDR-4 2400 memory chip. Memory can be upgraded to 16Gb but will always be single channel. It's last year's model with a Gen 9 processor rather than gen 10. Lots of plastic. No integrated graphics in the CPU although I'm not sure if that's needed with the GTX 1650. Launch price was like $850 so it was a middle of the road, lower-end gaming laptop from a year ago. It can play pretty much any modern game at 40fps or more. Perfect for my 11 year old. I think I can share my steam library with him.
Single channel ram and needing an immediate ram upgrade to 16GB does kind of suck. Probably still tolerable for many given the price though. I'm liking the X1 Extreme. It has a better keyboard than the already good keyboard on the X1 Carbon. And it's nice having a trackpoint again. My son ate the one on the other Thinkpad I was using. I think what has surprised me most is how cool and quiet it is. Laptops with discrete graphics used to sound like jet planes taking off and would always be scorching hot.
Relevant TLDW: tech reviewer goes through a big stack of laptops and says they're all trash except for the Thinkpad
Bought another laptop so I might return the Lenovo. This HP has pretty much the same specs as the Lenovo but $30 more gave me a dual channel memory option and an integrated GPU. I think the screen might be slightly brighter too. Processor: 9th Generation Intel® Core™ i5-9300H Display: 15.6-inch diagonal FHD, IPS, anti-glare, micro-edge, WLED-backlit Memory: 8 GB DDR4-2666 SDRAM (1 x 8 GB) Internal storage: 256 GB PCIe® NVMe™ M.2 SSD Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1650 (4 GB GDDR5 dedicated) Wireless: Realtek 802.11b/g/n/ac(2x2) and Bluetooth® 4.2 combo Keyboard: Full-size island-style acid green backlit keyboard with numeric keypad https://www.walmart.com/ip/HP-Pavil...m-msg-id=241ffb4e-dd37-4555-b5b5-5b3494d16f21
Single channel memory causes a massive performance hit in games. It's often around a 30-50 fps drop. I didn't know it was so big until I started watching some benchmarking videos. That single channel Lenovo laptop is basically gimped, which is why it's so cheap.