between lenovo and acer which should i prefer..looking for 16 GB models.
If you can pick either one take lenovo and don't think twice. If you got two laptops with the same specs and one is more pricey, depending on the brand, more often than not it's always going to have better build quality and will last you longer. And potential skimp out on some stuff like one will have CL19 RAM while the other is fitted with CL22 etc. If you want the most dependable and easily serviceable option (which imo acer servicing esp in india is far less dependable and is inconvenient) then I'd limit myself to Lenovo, HP and Dell. Dell is the most obvious brand to avoid here because for whatever reason as far as I can tell its similar quality, similar specs, similar lastability and more expensive as compared to lenovo and HP by a pretty large margin. HP I think the only thing you need to cautiously avoid is laptops with hinge issues.
There's a lot of wobbly hinge related issues on some HP models. My victus is perfectly fine and unless I flick the monitor there's nothing to worry about even in buses and stuff but I rejected the HP G series iirc (double check this) cause it had a really wobbly hinge. And like wobbly enough to move around if I say dropped a bottle somewhere on the same table. The same line of laptops is always safe though afaik so omen and victus both don't have this issue for sure.
Lenovo is the most issue free among the 3
Most of their options you won't have any particular trending issue like the other 2 so its a somewhat safer bet if you're not as researched I would say but with solid research HP will potentially get u a cheaper option for the same specs and build quality.
Basic idea I can tell you is avoid the ideapad gaming series. The ideapads are great the legions are great the ideapad gaming is just really average for most of the models and you could coin flip a random victus in the same price range and it would turn out to be a better option. Lenovo LOQ is brilliant depending on the model and far better than ideapad gaming models regardless of price range but that's out of your budget.
Build quality wise specifically I think the best metric to establish a minimal baseline is just walk down to their store and find out which laptops are online retail only and are not kept in stores (HP G series and lenovo thinkbook also iirc). These are usually their flimsier models which aren't that good so they don't keep them in stores cause they're average in build quality and won't last as long esp on display and naturally they don't want to put the budget mid options in showrooms and stuff. Instantly rule them all out.
After that I think you can safely pick something good, the best option you'll find after some narrowing down. You're probably gonna end up with HP or Lenovo. Asus is also a good brand and should be your tertiary option. They're essentially the runner up imo. MSI Acer and any others are quite unreliable esp from a servicing standpoint. This is all info I dug up from 2 months of research that I did for my current laptop which I bought less than a year ago.
My HP victus was 47k. Its a ryzen 5 5600H and an RX6500M. 8/512 and its 2x4GB dual channel expandable to 16 as per spec sheet 32 as per anything I could find online. So if you can extend your budget a little over or happen to have card discounts to drop it further (mine was from reliance digital I picked it up at the store) this is probably the best laptop you'll get at that range. I didn't find anything else anywhere with these kinda specs and its a victus so build is really good this thing is very sturdy and fairly light.
Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 5600H,RAM: 8GB,Internal Storage: 512 GB,Storage Type: SSD,Operating System: Windows 11 Home,Microsoft Office included: Yes and more in the HP Victus 15-fb0153AX Gaming Laptop (AMD Ryzen 5 5600H/8GB/512 GB SSD/AMD Radeon RX 6500M/Windows 11 Home/MSO/FHD), 39.6cm (15.6 inch)
www.reliancedigital.in
When I bought it there was an additional offer to either get a keyboard and mouse free with it or a 5k ish TWS. I wanted the keyboard and mouse but since your budget is tight, between card discounts if any and selling the free TWS this will probably be a great option if it fits in your budget.
If not and if you don't care about the graphics card and don't mind slightly lower specs (CPU basically) then try to fit a lenovo thinkpad in your budget, I don't think I found a single sturdier laptop than that and its competition even for high end laptops.
Even the E and L consumer series are wayyy sturdier than most any other option in lenovo or HP in that range.