Laptop Best Buy Guide – December 2022

On the eve of the new year, there are again some introductions of new laptop hardware in the pipeline. It is said that at CES in early January it will be time for new processors from Intel and AMD, as well as new video cards from Nvidia. The possibility of Zen 4 and Ada Lovelace in a mobile form factor sounds interesting. More than what exactly is being announced, we wonder how many laptops will come with the new hardware and how fast, and whether manufacturers will not quietly drive past the lower segment this year. Laptops under $1,000 often still don’t have a twelfth-generation Intel processor, which was announced in the early days of 2022, but an eleventh or tenth-generation chip from 2021 or 2020. AMD’s Ryzen 6000U series for Ultrabooks has, even more, to offer in the proper launch. Almost a year after the introduction, there are exactly 17 notebooks with a chip from this series in our Pricewatch, compared to more than 300 devices with a Ryzen 5000U processor.

What will come next is always difficult to predict, but the older generations of Intel and AMD can often still keep up. Now that it’s almost Christmas and the time for big purchases has come, the discount promotions that are held these months are also a nice bonus. As always, in this Best Buy Guide we have summarized what we think are the best laptops at the moment.

The category up to 500 euros is an interesting one. You won’t find the fastest or flashiest laptops in it, but it is the category in which you can clearly see that you get a little more value for your money every year. Meanwhile, this means that for 500 euros you can get a laptop with a quad-core processor, IPS screen, keyboard lighting and a fingerprint scanner. You will find all this in a Lenovo IdeaPad 3 and those who read the Laptop Best Buy Guide more often will not be unfamiliar with this system.

We also found an azerty version of the IdeaPad 3 for the Flemish visitor, but that is a considerably worse deal. They are similar in terms of processor, RAM, and SSD, but the AZERTY version has no keyboard lighting, no fingerprint scanner, and is also equipped with a smaller 38Wh battery.

Exterior

The IdeaPad 3 is Lenovo’s second cheapest laptop line. That means that you shouldn’t expect too much from the outside of the laptop. The housing is made entirely of plastic and you can feel that when you hold the laptop. The whole gives a somewhat cheap impression. The print on the plastic clearly refers to a brushed aluminum housing, but that’s it because you can also twist the housing a bit if you want.

The plastic housing does not keep us awake; it’s actually exactly what you expect in this price category. Sometimes you can find a laptop for 500 euros where the back of the screen is made of metal, but you can forget about an all-metal housing.

Somehow it is also an attractive housing. It looks tidy and there are no lights or large logos on it. The lighting on it can be found under the keys and that is something you hardly encounter in this price range, especially if there is also a fingerprint scanner in the housing. That scanner is incorporated in the on-off button and there is a sticker to point it out to you because otherwise, you will quickly overlook it.

To connect peripherals, there are USB-A connections on the left and right of the housing, but only the left one is a fast connection that works at 5Gbit/s. The right one works at USB 2.0 speed. Next to that port is a card reader and you don’t often come across that anymore. The right side is also empty, but on the left you will find two connections. One of them is a USB-C connection, which works at 5Gbit/s and you can only connect USB devices. Screens won’t work on it and you can’t use it to charge the laptop. Finally, there is an HDMI 1.4 connection. It has the disadvantage that you cannot connect a 4k screen at 60Hz to it. If it works at all, it is by using chroma subsampling and that does not benefit the image quality.

Benchmarking

Lenovo provides this version of the IdeaPad 3 with a Ryzen 3 5300U processor, which is the fastest you can get in this price range. It is a processor with four cores and a maximum clock speed of 3.8GHz. The Intel counterpart that you will find in this price range is the Core i3-1115G4. Although it has faster cores, it only has two cores. In practice, you therefore benefit more from the Ryzen 3 5300U.

With all that smooth hardware, fingerprint scanner and keyboard lighting on board, you can wonder whether Lenovo has cut back on anything. That is the case indeed; the Wi-Fi card supports a maximum of Wi-Fi 5 and no Wi-Fi 6, as is currently the case.

You can see the difference between a laptop of 500 and one of 700 euros in various places in that laptop. Of course you can get a faster processor with a larger budget, but we also think that you should be able to see the price difference in the exterior and appearance of the system. Fortunately, the more beautifully finished laptops with a metal housing are now within the budget.

The HP Pavilion 14 is one such laptop. You can clearly see that this is a more expensive model than the budget laptop of 500 euros, which has plastic housing. The Pavilion 14 has a partly metal housing, is also somewhat thinner, and is of course equipped with smoother hardware. The particular configuration that caught our eye is the Pavilion 14-ec1750nd. It is equipped with a ‘renewed’ Ryzen 5 processor, 8GB memory, and a 512GB SSD. This model is exclusively available at bol.com, but there is also an equivalent that is for sale at other webshops: the ec1355nd. For this article, we looked at the 14-ec1350nd, which also has the same hardware, but a silver gray instead of dark blue housing.

Exterior

The Pavilion 14 is not made entirely of metal. The screen frame and the bottom are made of plastic, but that still makes it a pretty sturdy laptop. On the outside, it is also striking that it is equipped with everything you can expect on a laptop for this money. A fingerprint scanner sits on it, on the right side of the palm rest. The touchpad has a glass surface, as you would expect on more expensive laptops, and the keyboard is backlit. The lighting can be dimmed in two positions.

The webcam is located in the top edge of the screen and with a resolution of 1280×720 pixels it is adequate, but not special. Laptops from a euro or 1000 are increasingly equipped with cameras with a higher resolution, but that is not yet the case in this price category.

HP also mentions the collaboration with speaker manufacturer B&O on the laptop. The result of that collaboration is an application containing an equalizer that cannot really improve the meager sound of the small speakers. They produce a decent volume, but that says everything about the sound quality.

The Pavilion 14 is pretty well equipped with connections. On the left and right is a USB port that supports the standard transfer speed of 5Gbit/s. There is also a USB-C connection on the right. It does 10Gbit/s and you can also use it to connect a screen, but also to charge the laptop. The HDMI connection supports version 2.1 of the protocol, which is enough to drive 4k screens at 120Hz.

Hardware and Benchmarks

Our choice fell on Pavilion 14 because of the ‘new’ AMD processor it contains. ‘New’ is in quotes, because it is actually the same processor as the 5600U, but with a 100MHz higher turbo frequency, which is therefore a maximum of 4.3GHz. Fortunately, the 5600U, and therefore the 5625U, is still a very capable processor. It has six cores and twelve threads and is one of the fastest processors you can buy within this budget.

During the Christmas period you might want to treat yourself or someone else to a fast all-rounder that is well suited for gaming. In this section of the BBG we look for the fastest gaming laptop for less than 1400 euros. We ended up with the combination of an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 video card and a 45W H processor from Intel or AMD, plus a minimum of 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, put in a 15.6″ to 16″ housing. This makes such a device clearly larger and heavier than most laptops, but less unwieldy than a 17.3″ model.

Acer, ASUS, and HP sent us a laptop that meets the above requirements. In the Black Friday period in which this article was written, it was difficult to predict which laptops would remain available for the right price in the future. The Acer model, the Acer Nitro 5 AN515-58-56BL in full , is currently no longer for sale in the Netherlands for less than 1400 euros. Belgians can still buy it within that budget in a configuration similar to the one we tested, but with an Azerty keyboard: the Acer Nitro 5 AN515-58-500A . Conversely, the laptop is from HP, type number Victus 16-d1350nd, only available in the Netherlands for the requested amount. The ASUS laptop is available in both countries for well below the target amount, with the note that the Dutch version that we also tested, the ASUS ROG Strix G15 G513IM-HN073W , has a different processor. The Belgian variant ROG Strix G15 G513QM-HN027T-BE has a newer Ryzen 7 5800H processor.

Casing and connections

All three laptops have a housing with a slightly raised area at the back near the screen, containing a set of large ventilation openings. The ROG Strix G15, about 100 grams lighter than the competitors, has a rather busy design with many frills. The smooth plastic around the keys shows finger grease quickly. The laptops from Acer and HP, which weigh about 2.5 kg, have a slightly rough top on which this is less noticeable, especially with the HP Victus 16 with its sharp lines and dark gray color. In all laptops, the bottom of the housing is made of plastic, but the sturdiness is not that bad. The Victus 16 is the easiest to bend back and forth, with the laptop also giving the most when pressed in the middle. The Acer Nitro 5 feels firmer and the ASUS ROG Strix G15 is the firmest.

The screen lid of the ASUS laptop also feels high-quality. Unlike both competitors, it is made of metal. The screen part of the Victus 16 is not supported by anything at the bottom corners, which means that the part on that laptop appears to be the weakest. HP also built in a slack hinge; the screen flutters back and forth quite a bit when you bump the housing. With Acer and certainly ASUS, the screen stays in place much better. A pity with the ROG Strix G15 is the limited opening angle of the screen.

Disappointing is also the lack of a webcam, as is often the case with ASUS’ gaming laptops for some reason. At least the two competitors in this article still have a simple 720p camera. ASUS does offer the option to use your phone camera as a webcam via WiFi. You must install the Link to MyASUS app on your Android or iOS device. It works in itself simple, but the image quality leaves something to be desired. The slightest movement already produces a blocky image full of artifacts. ASUS has invested the budgetary space freed up by omitting the webcam into good speakers, with decent bass and good detail for a laptop. The Victus 16 lacks a bit in the low end, but otherwise sounds fine, while sound and maximum volume are disappointing with the Nitro 5.

The Victus 16 and Nitro 5 both have a keyboard with a numpad, but an integrated power button. ASUS makes the opposite choice: no numpad and a separate power button. The ROG Strix G15 is also quite rich with RGB lighting, with lights in the keyboard (adjustable in four zones) and in a bar at the front of the housing. The logo on the hood is illuminated in white. Acer also has an RGB keyboard with four zones, where the lighting through the partly transparent keycaps stands out even more. The Victus 16 is the only one without multicolored LEDs; the keys are only illuminated in white.

The ASUS keyboard has the clearest touch of the three, with quite a lot of travel. The touchpad also feels the best: a smooth, glass-finished surface and integrated buttons with a nice click. With Acer and HP, the touchpad is rougher and springs deep on click, which makes a bit of a cheap impression. The keyboard of both devices also has a weaker feedback, but at least with the Nitro 5 it sounds nicely muffled. With the Victus 16, the housing rattles quite a bit when tapping. The flat keycaps of this model also don’t feel as nice as the more rounded keys with a very slight dimple of the competition.

The three laptops all provide a combination of gigabit ethernet and ax WiFi, in addition to three USB-A, one USB-C, HDMI, a 3.5 mm combo port for a headset, and a separate power connection for the relatively large, supplied block. The USB-C port of the Nitro 5 is the only one that supports Thunderbolt 4. HP then builds in an SD card reader, which the other models do not have. With ASUS and Acer, both video connections, HDMI and USB-C, are suitable for 4k at 60Hz. The Victus 16 has an HDMI 2.1 port, which enables 4k at 120Hz. Conversely, this model’s USB-C port seems limited; we couldn’t manage to drive a 4k screen at 60Hz without 4:2:2 color compression. Perhaps it’s because the USB-C port on this model is connected to the video card, whereas the connection is via the iGPU on the other models.