How to choose a Good Budget Laptop under $1000

A $900 laptop these days won’t get you anywhere. Most of the time, these laptops feature low resolution, subpar processors and other missing components, such as optical drives.

However, Dell seeks to change all that with their Inspiron 14z, a wonderful budget laptop great for first – time laptop buyers, freshman college students and other people looking for a great budget laptop with complete features.

To give you an overview, for only 900 dollars, you get a 14 – inch screen, Intel Core i5 processor and even a dedicated graphics card.

Let’s take a closer look, shall we?

 

Design

With the Inspiron 14z, you get a look similar to their more premium XPS series, but with some differences. The corners of the laptop are more rounded, giving it a tablet – like look when viewed from above.

This laptop weighs 4.1 pounds with a thickness of 0.8 inches. Overall, the laptop is quite portable because of its size and weight. It’s also 13.7 inches long and 9.5 inches wide.

Display

Since this is just a budget laptop, don’t expect anything grand when it comes to screen features.

This laptop features a measly 1366 x 768 pixels as the native resolution. It’s also a glossy screen, making it prone to glare.

Overall though, the screen displays nice colors and is bright for its price.

Hardware

For 900 bucks, again, you get an Intel Core i5 processor. Dell makes use of the new Ivy Bridge processors, giving it improved performance. You get good results when it comes to overall speed.

Also, you get a dedicated graphics processor, giving you good performance when it comes to graphics – heavy applications, such as video games.

This laptop makes use of the AMD 7570M graphics card. AMD is known for making graphics cards that are less expensive than NVIDIA, but still perform really well. Dell helps keep the price down by using AMD graphics in this laptop.

In terms of performance, the 7570M gives adequate performance. CNET reports that in its native resolution, Street Fighter IV ran at 44 fps. That’s a respectable number coming from a laptop under one thousand bucks.

There’s also 8 GB of RAM so you don’t run into any problems while performing many tasks at the same time.

All in all, the main components in this laptop are more than capable for casual gaming and all around work.

In terms of ports, you get a modest selection. You get two USB 3.0 ports and an HDMI port. There’s also an Ethernet port and an SD card slot. That’s about it. While others may complain, this selection is actually good.

In terms of storage, you only get one configuration. You get a hybrid drive, which has 500 GB of hard drive storage and 32 GB of storage for the operating system. This ensures that loading times feel fast and impressive.

Conclusion

This laptop comes in several configurations. If you really don’t need graphics, you can trade down to an i3 processor with integrated graphics, or you can improve performance for 100 bucks (making this laptop $999) and make use of an i7 processor.

All in all, Dell has made a great budget laptop with average gaming capabilities.