Advice Please -Looking for Laptop for around £250? 15" screen size or bigger??

Discussion in 'Which Laptop should I buy?' started by bilabonics, Jul 18, 2024.

  1. bilabonics

    bilabonics

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    Hi All

    I currently have a HP 15-bs158sa (with a 15.6" screen) Core i5-8250U, slow 1Tb HDD.

    It's now lagging a bit (had it in 2009 i think) and takes ages to boot up....

    I'm looking to upgrade to new one and have a budget of £250 (could stretch to £300).

    Don't need much storage tbh as it will only be used for 500Gb would be fine i think (my current 1Tb is FULL of rubbish/junk and films etc and us only now up to 470Gb after 5 years and no clean ups..lol).

    Any advice would be much appreciated, screen size and boot speed/reliability are most important tbh.

    Thanks in advance.
     
    bilabonics, Jul 18, 2024
    #1
  2. bilabonics

    bilabonics

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    bilabonics, Jul 18, 2024
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  3. bilabonics

    JONAZAV

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    JONAZAV, Jul 27, 2024
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    bilabonics likes this.
  4. bilabonics

    bilabonics

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    I am in the UK.....Can't find the deal.
     
    bilabonics, Jul 28, 2024
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  5. bilabonics

    bilabonics

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  6. bilabonics

    Firewatcher

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    Spec doesn't look bad to me - a low cost option for you would be to put an SSD in place of your old optical drive and do a fresh install of Windows. Just doing that would vastly improve your boot speed and response times. You should be able to increase RAM up to 16GB if you find you still want to after installing an SSD. I have various Laptops dating back to 2009 that will boot to Desktop in @30 seconds running Windows 10 and the CPUs are all lower spec than yours. Just create a repair disk on a usb which you can use to do a fresh install - then do the disk change.
    Certainly worth doing. The clutter and fact that it will be an optical drive almost certainly explain it being painfully slow. Pete
     
    Firewatcher, Feb 28, 2026 at 5:46 PM
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    bilabonics likes this.
  7. bilabonics

    bilabonics

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    Thanks @Firewatcher.

    The way its running i dont feel ok doing that tbh.
    I ended up getting this as Ebay were doing money off plus purchased through cashback site.
    It was up for £410 but i had it for £348 (it was £50 cheaper for the 14" but my eyes have got used to larger screen and avoiding using glasses..lol).

    Lenovo ThinkPad P15s Gen 2 15.6" Full HD i7-1185G7 16GB RAM 512GB SSD NVIDIA
     
    bilabonics, Mar 2, 2026 at 9:05 AM
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