Incredibly a whole two months has passed since Christmas and with it the worst of another winter. With the Christmas and January sales a distant memory you’re going to need to be shrewd to find the best laptop deals in March 2012.
Fortunately, there are still some great bargains to be had and in this our first post of March 2012 we’ve picked out the best of what’s currently available.
The deals below aren’t necessarily the most powerful or most fashionable laptops in their respective categories but they do represent the best value and offer you maximum bang for each of your hard earnt bucks.
Best i5 Laptop Deal – March 2012 »
1) Asus X53E-1136V
What we like – HDMI, i5-2430M, USB 3.0
Best deal – View Deal at Ebuyer.com
Details – For the second month running the Asus X53E-1136V tops our list of best value laptops. In fact, we can’t help wondering if the “V” at the end of it’s product code is the suffix Asus use to identify their best value products. The X53E-1136V is without a doubt the best value sub £400 laptop available at the time of writing this post.
The only slight negative to the X53E’s specification is that it has a 320GB hard which is relatively small by today’s standards. This is more than enough for the majority of users that spend most of their time browsing the web but if you’re planning on storing a lot of films and music on your laptop the HP Pavilion G6-1365 is a better choice. The G6 is slightly more expensive but has a much larger hard drive.
Key features include:-
i5-2430M - This is a second generation i5 processor and should not be confused with first generation items which have inferior integrated graphics chips. Second generation i5 processors can be identified by their longer product codes which have four numerical digits in the format i5-xxxxM, earlier first generation chips have three numerical digits such as the i5-370M.
Thanks to their “turbo” feature i5 processors are considerably faster than i3 items. This feature effectively enables the processor to increase it’s clock speed beyond it base speed at times when more processing power is required. For example the i5-2430M used in the X53E and the i3-2350M have similar base clock speeds of 2.4GHZ and 2.3GHZ respectively but when the going gets tough the i5′s turbo kicks in and automatically increases the clock speed up to a maximum of 3GHZ providing a significant boost in speed.
HDMI Socket - HDMI has become the industry standard connection type for connecting audio and video equipment and combines audio and video signals into a single lead reducing clutter and simplifying connection to external devices such as flat panel TV’s. It’s a feature that is often omitted in lower cost laptops but is present on the X53E.
USB 3.0 – Soon to become the standard for connecting peripheral devices, USB 3.0 is up to ten times faster than USB 2.0. Most laptops at this price point and many more expensive laptops are still shipping with only USB 2.0 ports. The X53E has both USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports.
Reliability – This is a consideration that is often overlooked when buying a new laptop and Asus typically feature in the top couple of positions in reliability surveys. Asus were building premium desktop motherboards for many years prior to entering the laptop market and know a thing or two about producing stable, reliable equipment.
Best i7 Laptop Deal – March 2012 »
2) Asus X53E-SX1330V
What we like – Fast i7-2670 CPU, Great Value, HDMI
Best deal – View Deal at Comet.co.uk
Details – Asus really seem to have hit the sweet spot between performance and value in recent months and the second in our top picks for March 2012 is another Asus item only this time it’s powered by an extremely quick i7-2670 CPU. The SX1330V comes in at just under £550 and you’ll struggle to find another i7 powered laptop that represents such great value for month.
Our only complaint is that the X53E-SX1330V only ships with 4GB of ram which isn’t small by any means but combining the SX1330V’s i7 with 6GB or even 8GB of ram will ensure that you are able to enjoy it to its full potential. This small gripe isn’t enough to knock it off it’s perch as our best value i7 laptop simply because ram isn’t expensive nowadays and can be easily upgraded.
Key features include:-
i7-2670 - This is a true quad core laptop that can process 8 threads simultaneously. Combine this with its 6MB cache and a maximum “turbo” clock speed of 3.1GHZ and the result is a seriously quick processor that provides masses of processing power. In fact, prior to buying an i7 equipped laptop we’d urge you to firstly consider the tasks that you’re likely to perform on your new laptop. If you tend to spend most of your time browsing the web and performing fairly basic tasks an i7 is likely to be overkill and there’s no point paying for power you won’t use. However, if you’re into CPU intensive tasks such as video encoding or 3D rendering and need something that can keep up when you’re out and about the i7 powered X53E is a great choice.
Best Ultrabook Deal – March 2012 »
3) Asus UX21 Zenbook
What we like – Looks fantastic, 17mm think, i5-2467M
Best deal – View Deal at Ebuyer.com
Update 28/03/12 – Amazon have now reduced the price of the UX21, visit Amazon.co.uk
Details – The Ultrabook revolution has firmly arrived on UK shores with models from Asus, Acer and Toshiba all hitting store shelves. Of the current crop the Asus UX21 represents the best performance per pound and sports a stunningly elegant chassis that’s only 17mm think and weighs just over 1KG. It’s not the cheapest Ultrabook currently available (See Aspire S3) but’s thanks to an impressive specification it’s the one we’d have. At the time of writing this post there were multiple retailers selling the UX21 for just under £800 but we’d pick one up from John Lewis simply because of the 2 year guarantee and 90 days phone support they bundle with all new laptops.
Key features include:-
i5-2467M - The UX21 uses a similar processor to the i5 X53E at the top of this page. It’s another second generation i5 that benefits from Intel’s HD 3000 graphics chip but has a much lower base speed of 1.6GHZ and maximum “turbo” speed of 2.3GHZ. Whilst this is a considerable 700MHZ slower than the i5-2430M above it means that the i5-2467M used in the UX21 draws only 17W, half that of the i5-2430M which in turn means that the UX21 can squeeze more than 4 hours of general usage from it’s minuscule battery.
128GB SSD Drive – The use of SSD drives in Ultrabooks is one of the features that currently separates them from traditional laptops. SSD’s are considerably faster than traditional drives and have no moving parts, this results in extremely fast load times, almost instant resume from standby and a generally snappy experience.
Looks and Design – Lets be honest, the Asus UX21 has taken some of it’s design cues from Apples popular Macbook Air
