Laptop Features You Can Skip If You Are On a Budget
There are many kinds of laptop in the market. In fact, we are flooded with laptops with amazing features. You may be bewildered by them, but one of the big factor we need to consider is your budget. If you just need a laptop for everyday tasks, you can pass on these features.
Here is the list of laptop luxuries you can skip:
- Backlit Keyboard – Most laptops come standard with this kind of lighting. If you are the touch typist type, you do not need lighting to write in your keyboard. If you like games, then this will help you play in the dark. Yes, it is so cool, but not good for your eyesight, and totally unnecessary. Aside from this, you may have to pay extra.
- Higher than 1080P screen – You can save money by not getting a laptop with a “full HD.” True, that a screen of a 3840 x 2160 (4K) resolution can give you sharp images, but if the display is small like 13 to 15 inches, the sharp resolution will not matter. This is only ideal if you have a bigger computer monitor. Pushing more pixels demands more electricity and will affect battery life on your laptop. You can allocate your battery to more important things.
- Core i7 CPU – is needed for intensive tasks like transcoding videos or giant spreadsheet formulas. But if you are not doing that kind of job, there is no need to spend more. An Intel Core i5 processor balances price and performance.
- Discrete Graphics – When all you do is research and browse the web, you can pass on high-end video cards. If you do not do professional-grade video editing, 3D modelling or play the current games, then you do not need this feature.
- Infrared Camera/RealSense 3D – this feature works with Windows OS, and it is called Hello. It logs you in your laptop via your facial recognition. It is nice but again, not a necessity.
- Fingerprint Reader – it allows you to log in via Windows Hello. Putting your finger on a sensor is easier than typing your password. The latter is safer. Besides, Window 10 still needs to have a password.
- Touch Screen on a Clamshell Laptop – if what you want is 2-in-1 that either flips back or detaches itself to become a tablet, a touch screen is necessary. But, on a standard clamshell laptop, it is not necessary. It also lessen the battery life span by a few hours and this may cost extra. (Read more on: why it is not a good buy.)
- More than 256GB of Storage –Well, it is good to be able to multitask and launch app faster compared to a mechanical hard drive. However, based on the cost per gigabyte, SDD is more or less, 5 to 10 times more expensive as compared to hard drives. With the different services like the cloud storage, most people do not need more than 256 GB of storage.
- 16 or more GB of RAM – Most people only need 8 GB unless you are a graphic designer, or a professional video editor. Also, it could be costly to configure your laptop to more than 8 GB.