TR Forums

I have a sibling that's in need of a laptop; primary requirements are thin and light, and a hard budget ceiling of US$700.

This refurbished Dell XPS 13 9333 can be had for that at the minimum spec, which is effective.

My question is this- are there any better deals out there that would say provide an advantage within budget? In particular stuff like more RAM or a larger SSD would be nice, though the system as configured will work.

Thoughts? Thanks!

I don't have any other suggestions, but I can offer this: I own a 2013 13.3" Asus Zenbook. However, I used a Dell XPS 13 and really enjoyed it...the touchpad on the Dell is light years better than what is found on my Zenbook.

I'm horrified that there are touchpads worse than those on Dells...

Sorry I Don't have much to contribute, but darn...

FireGryphon wrote:

I'm horrified that there are touchpads worse than those on Dells...

Sorry I Don't have much to contribute, but darn...

I bought my Zenbook solely for travel, in situations when using a mouse or a larger machine would be impractical (such as on an airplane or cramped office meeting). The build quality and screen on my Zenbook are simply the best in class. However, the touchpad is so freaking bad, I often find myself avoiding using the Zenbook. In some instances, I'll pack my mega 17" laptop just to avoid the Zenbook. The touchpad is so terribly unresponsive. Plus, I have dry fingers, and sometimes the tip of my finger doesn't even register. Ugh.

I've seen plenty of good and bad touchpads- that's not a make-or-break thing as an external mouse is relatively convenient vs. a keyboard, and is likely to be used most of the time for actual work.

Outside of that, I can't see much wrong with this one; I was actually surprised to see a reasonably spec'd Ultrabook available anywhere.

The touchpad on my Zenbook UX32VD-DB71 is better than the one on my old G50VT was. However, I rarely use it because I nearly always have a much better solution available.

JustAnEngineer wrote:

However, I rarely use it because I nearly always have a much better solution available.

I love this little guy.

If your brother can wait 3 weeks to 1 month, I'd strongly recommend you go look at Toshiba's website, they always have good deals on their laptops! I bought one that I customized for just $400, their website always has deals & promotions on their hardware - I saved ~$250 on my laptop and I can get ~30fps in BF4. They are assembled somewhere in China, so that's why they take a while to ship (plus they had to assemble my preferred parts). I also recommend that (if you're inclined) to simply buy used RAM and install it into your bro's laptop yourself. They probably charge $50 for something you can find used for $10.

I took out the slow 5200RPM HDD, and installed a 120GB SSD. I then removed their 4GB of RAM, and installed 8GB. I probably saved $300 doing these modifications myself. ...The only issue with the laptop was that it came with Windows 8 installed, and when I went to install Windows 7 I had to learn how to disable Win8 from being the preferred OS in the BIOS. It took me a few days to get everything working properly, but I didn't know what I was doing