Check this out - https://bit.ly/2ybYAO5 . I use this laptop. Same build and colour. Using since last 1.5 years. I use it for heavy-duty writing up to 9 hours per day. Best keyboard I have ever used for fast and precise typing. It is basically a poor man's Macbook. Similar design & light-weight. Never hangs even with 20 tabs open side by side. Can watch movies & good battery backup. I get 3-4 hours now.
Using ASUS since 15 years. Has never disappointed although I agree they are a very lazy company in India.
50K seems a lot for such a generic device. I've seen similar Asus laptops selling for 400-450 euros.
I highly doubt the durability of these mid range Asus offerings.
Nothing can come close to LG Gram, IMO. The 14 incher was available for around 64k on Amazon pre-COVID. I have had my eyes on the Gram 17 for some time now. Best bit is it also comes with 3 yr warranty.
The Asus Vivobook series also has good specs and could be had for 36-45k for an 8th Gen i5 and a 256/512GB SSD. Friend has an S14 for more than a year now and the laptop is sturdy enough to survive college use.
Nothing can come close to LG Gram, IMO. The 14 incher was available for around 64k on Amazon pre-COVID. I have had my eyes on the Gram 17 for some time now. Best bit is it also comes with 3 yr warranty.
The Asus Vivobook series also has good specs and could be had for 36-45k for an 8th Gen i5 and a 256/512GB SSD. Friend has an S14 for more than a year now and the laptop is sturdy enough to survive college use.
Was about to reply on the LG Gram discussion and viola. Same exact thoughts. I've been eyeing the LG Gram for quite sometime. Saw the gen 1 at a store. It was filmsy back then. Gen2 are quite good and I was tracking the prices on Amazon for the past one year. Price was hovering around 65k for the 15inch model just before lockdown happened. Was in two minds as it felt like they're going to launch the latest model and hence the deals on old gen.
Prior to this I had bought a Zenbook 13. Superb build quality and tiny footprint for the price. But sad that it had some BIOS issue, which wouldn't allow me to wake the laptop from sleep. I have to do a full restart to get it to boot again. Tried every workaround listed on internet and nothing worked. Gave up and approached the service center and no luck.
After a few heated mails with Asus, they've agreed for a DOA return as I've used the laptop for around two weeks. I've been told that a lot of zenbook 13 were returned with similar issues and that's the reason for quick approval of DOA.
Zenbook 13 indeed looks brilliant. Didn't know about this issue. It was on my radar too.
LG is doing a really good job on this gram series. It doesn't look flashy at all, the lid flexes a lot.
I wasn't confidant at all about the durability.
Asked Jerry on his YouTube video, he assured me, it's one of the toughest light laptop he has seen.
It's pretty amazing how LG made it so tough despite being so light with so much flex on the screen.
What's the material they used primarily for the chassis? Some magnesium alloy? It scratches a lot, but doesn't break or develops dings.
Hi all, I had bought a Zenbook 13 (UX333FN) from store last week. It was a sealed piece which was opened by me in store to verify if everything is okay. I tried to turn on the laptop out of the box and it didn't boot till it was connected to the provided power adapter. I had ignored this...
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Regarding LG Gram, I agree with what you had mentioned. Got similar feedback from friends. But the reason why I went with Zenbook back then was, LG Gram doesn't look like one where you had spent a premium. Specially after using XPS13 for a short while. HP spectre 13 too looked filmsy in store and the display was not as good as XPS 13. 4k XPS13 display is on another level though.
Buy ASUS ZenBook 14 Ryzen 5 Quad Core 2nd Gen 3500U - (8 GB/512 GB SSD/Windows 10 Home) UM431DA-AM581TS Thin and Light Laptop Online For Rs.57431 , Also get ASUS ZenBook 14 Ryzen 5 Quad Core 2nd Gen 3500U - (8 GB/512 GB SSD/Windows 10 Home) UM431DA-AM581TS Thin and Light Laptop Specifications &...
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How about this one? Should be available for order soon. I am no expert, but people are going crazy over ryzen 5 over internet. Though personally I have never seen a single one in the wild. Looks very good for the price, but it`s AMD and my experience with a >10 year old AMD laptop from hp ( DV something) was terrible.
AMD must have improved, but hp remained unreliable over a decade (it possibly has the worst resale value, even worse than Dell)
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Since we have 2 identical Grams, I decided to buy another thin and light laptop to replace one Gram. In the process tried to remember what I have experienced so far.
1. XPS 13- Possibly seen the most ( at least 5/6) The most compact and dense. Glorious screen, decent keyboard. The webcam has finally moved up to where it belongs.
Speakers are REALLY bad, HEADPHONE OUT IS VERY AVERAGE, a strange hum with sensitive cans ( unusable for music production, but it is possible the 2 units I tested for sound were faulty), PORT SITUATION IS JUST UNACCEPTABLE. NO CREATIVE PROFESSIONAL SHOULD DEAL WITH THIS KIND OF STUPIDITY. Windows itself is bad enough for music production with pathetic audio drivers, Dell is trying to irritate people even more. Apple at least has great OS and SW to help creativity.
2.HP Spectre 360- Too flashy, inside typical hp affair, nothing great, nothing too bad. But too many failure reports online, but seen only a single unit, personally can not trust hp (except older elitebooks)
3.Asus Zenbook - Used a Duo (non pro), fantastic implementation of the second screen, for my use, could open the mixer of the DAW in the lower screen with the track view in the main screen (almost as usable as a dual monitor Samplitude/ Pro Tools set up...amazing) HP out without audio interface is very good, the amp section is really powerful and fairly clean.
Slightly heavy and bulky compared to others (but totally worth it, for music production, basic video editing-but do not know about the GPU)
Seen only an older Zenbook, the design on the lid is beautiful, but everything else seemed very average.
4. Thinkpad Carbon X- Typical thinkpad with a thin body. Great keyboard, ports, ports, ports ( God bless Lenovo!!) Bad speakers but very clean headphone out ( did not measure anything but I am fairly confident about my ears and after years of recording in studios/ home do understand the difference between a clean and colored signal with known music)
The only downside seemed to be a slightly less sharp/ duller screen, but my eyes are not trained unlike ears.
This is still my pick over Zenbook Duo ( weight, build, proven reliability, and all of us must work on a laptop and I can not afford one only for hobby)
5. Huawei Matebook X Pro ( or similar)- This one is a strange laptop. They tried to copy everything from Apple ( never seen such shameless copy of another company`s design). Looks beautiful, screen quality is fantastic. BUT THERE ARE SOME MAJOR FLAWS.
I fully agree a squarish screen is great for reading, MS office etc. But this laptop is definitely not targeted for the business users. That screen is glossy!! It is a completely confused product, a business laptop with squarish aspect ratio with glossy screen.
Content consumers will hate the black bars, hardcore business user will hate the glossy screen. Audio producers/ engineers will have a tough time with lots of tracks with varying lengths, unusually tall mixers ( no one uses so many plugins on a digital mixer)
And the webcam is in the worst possible location. If anyone uses it as a business laptop and make Skype calls, he has to be more worried about shaving and cleaning his nostrils rather than a normal shave!!
And it is extremely fragile.
THIS IS THE WORST OF BOTH WORLD. It is probably the perfect laptop for people who does not need a laptop for anything. Oh!! The speakers are very good ( another confusing decision, great speaker for a supposedly business laptop) but the hp out is colored ( DT 880 sounds like M50, perfect for general people, but absolutely useless for monitoring anything)
IMHO, this over hyped laptop is not suitable for ANYONE.
6. LG Gram- Abnormally light, extremely sturdy ( the screen flex is very real but it adds to the overall sturdiness) I can not emphasize how sturdy this light laptop is. Looks like a very cheap laptop, doesn`t even have the LG logo on the lid( greatest feature for me), possibly the easiest to upgrade RAM, storage (the 2019 model does support the faster storage) even the battery. The battery life is absolutely insane in 14 inch models. No 4k, but the screen is pretty decent. Very stable and reliable overall.
Speakers are very poor ( complete garbage) hp out is possibly the cleanest of all ( though the amp must be weak), the lead scratches very easily.
Everything in this post is written from a home producer perspective. I have zero technical knowledge.I am new to Windows and my experience with the OS is very limited ( I do know about Macs as I was and still using OS X on a daily basis for more than 10 years)
This particular model has been around for quite sometime and for lesser price. It's the AMD 4000 series mobile CPU's that are causing quite a buzz. If one were to wait, it's better to wait for 4000 based laptops.
My bad, typical noob mistake, thought it was the newest AMD everyone is talking about.
Thanks a lot for the link, though I didn't understand the benchmarks completely, the battery life seems to be worse than 8th Intel mobile CPUs.
To my limited understanding, AMD's onboard graphics has always been better than Intel's counterparts. But now AMD is catching up ( even outperforming ) Intel's CPUs at a lower price point.
Am I being completely wrong?
What about desktop CPUs? Is it the same story ( specially when battery is of no concern)
Do VMware/ Parallel desktop etc.work better on AMD?
I don't have any Windows desktop ( run a virtual Windows 7 in Parallel desktop on a 27 inch iMac, only for Samplitude) it's s very tedious process of turning the VM on, transfer projects(to and fro) from Windows laptop to Samplitude, from there exporting to logic Pro etc etc.
Planning to build a Windows desktop only for Samplitude and Ableton. Is AMD is way to go? Sorry for hijacking the thread. Will make a new one.
Thanks all for keeping the discussion going on. I have resigned myself to accept that my budget will be overshot at least by a few thousands if I need to keep my compromises to a minimum.
Does anyone have any input about the Lenovo Ideapad S340 series?
Other than being a very popular laotop, think I've seen it somewhere, but never used it. But going by the spec sheet, it fits your budget, it is probably adequate for your purpose. But might be a tad heavy.
Once the lockdown lifts, you may be able to find the 8th gen CPU gram close to 50k, it's a very good deal. Most importantly, it is very easy to upgrade the memory and ssd.
Dell's are grossly overpriced in India and has the worst resale value in Europe. Somehow these people trust hp more than Dell.
Lenovo's support is decent and I would have more faith on Lenovo compared to Asus if you live in a smaller city.
Is it between Inspiron and S340? How about ThinkPad x280 ( saw some in very good condition @ eBay)
Acer Swift 3 SF314-55G - This is listed at 55K in Flipkart
Dedicated Graphic Memory Type
GDDR5
Dedicated Graphic Memory Capacity
2 GB
Processor Brand
Intel
Processor Name
Core i5
Processor Generation
8th Gen
SSD
Yes
SSD Capacity
512 GB
RAM
8 GB
RAM Type
DDR4
Processor Variant
8265U
Clock Speed
1.6 GHz with Turbo Boost Upto 3.9 GHz
Cache
6 MB
Graphic Processor
NVIDIA Geforce MX250
Number of Cores
4
OS Architecture
64 bit
Operating System
Windows 10 Home
System Architecture
64 bit
Mic In
Yes
USB Port
2 x USB 3.0, 1 x USB Type C
HDMI Port
1 x HDMI Port
Multi Card Slot
SD Card Reader
Touchscreen
No
Screen Size
35.56 cm (14 inch)
Screen Resolution
1920 x 1080 Pixel
Screen Type
Full HD LED Backlit IPS Display
Speakers
Built-in Dual Speakers
Internal Mic
Built-in Digital Microphone
Sound Properties
Stereo Speakers, Acer TrueHarmony Plus Technology
Wireless LAN
IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac
Bluetooth
v5.0
Dimensions
323 x 228 x 14.9 mm
Weight
1.35 kg
Considering the above two, the LG Gram Z990 (not the newer model posted above) which is listed for 76K is overpriced. If it comes down by 20K, worthy then.
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Was also considering the MSI Modern 14 A10M (listed at 53k), until someone earlier mentioned that their service is poor.
I would avoid Acer as they have pretty good specs compared to other mid tier laptops in the same price range but they scrimp on places which might end up hitting your experience in the long run.
In my experience among my acquintances Acer has been the crappiest among all brands albeit for mid range laptops.
I dunno anyone with a high end Acer Helios series.
I know a couple of people with the S340 and they are pretty satisified but none of them have hit the 3 year mark yet.
In my friend circle with similar budget to yours most people have gone with the Ideapad for thin and light and Asus TUF for gaming.
Do you need discrete graphics? To my very limited experience, it causes the maximum laptop failures after liquid damage.
S340 is the safest bet I guess. But if after sales service wasn't an issue, would go with MSI ( It's the lightest of the lot)
Yeah. I am impressed with the MSI laptop. Ticks almost all my boxes. Will get more opinions about its ASS before deciding though. Otherwise, it will be the S340 in all probability.
Asus provides great value. It is building military grade light laptops which are feature rich.
Currently using ZenBook Duo.
You can look into it's range of Ultra Books.
Please help me with one thing. I played with a Zenbook Duo for couple of days. While I could easily open the mixer section of Samplitude in the second display, it was not working with Protools/ Bandlab Cakewalk. Do you have access to any DAW to check? It is the only use of the second screen for me. Asus is not very popular in the country I live and almost impossible to demo one.
