Are you looking for a new laptop? Do you want to buya decent laptop and don’t want to spend all your money on a mac?

That’s what I was doing recently. It was time to get a new laptop, even though my Dell Studio is great and I love it. But it couldn’t cope that well with Creative Suite 5 so it was time for a replacement and it was time to get a decent laptop, that would cope well with Creative Suite 5. And obviously I wanted a good laptop for a reasonably price, something in a range of £1000.

As I was researching a new laptop, I knew I wanted a few important things:

• an aluminium body
• an i5 processor
• a graphics card with 1GB of dedicated RAM
• a good screen (ideally HD screen)
• at least 3 USB ports (ideally USB 3.0)
• BluRay drive.
• 14″-15.6″ screen

After doing a lot of research, I narrowed my choice down to two laptops: Dell XPS 15 and Hp Envy 14. Both laptops offer good value for money, and they offer many features. While choosing a laptop, I was also considering a MacBook, but quickly dismissed because of lack of many features I wanted (no BluRay, very high price for the specifications I wanted, no USB 3.0, low resolution screen). Both XPS and Envy offer high-resolution screen, however only XPS offers Full HD screen! Yes, with 15.6″ screen, there is an option for Full HD 1920x1080px screen!

From a design perspective, Hp would be an obvious choice, and I was slightly moving towards it at the beginning. It looks a bit better than XPS, it is a bit smaller (smaller screen), and a bit thinner – it does look a lot like macbook. XPS is a it different, more robust, slighly thicker, and it has its own look, not trying to copy macbooks, but creating their own design.

When I looked at the specifications, XPS was a definite choice for a few reasons: Full HD gorgeous screen, BluRay, USB 3.0 ports – features Envy 14 doesn’t offer. Finally, I decide I wanted features more than how the laptop looks and I went for XPS. And this was a very wise choice, I love it!

I have posted a video review on my YouTube channel, you can watch it here:

I hope you’ll find it useful. If you do, please post a comment.

Have a lovely weekend! 🙂