At home, a laptop is most often used to watch movies, surf the Internet, play video games that do not require excessive resources, check out photos, and work in a photo editor at a hobbyist level. For such tasks, you will not need a hyper-powerful gadget.
Of all the brands you can be more or less sure about buying laptops produced by Dell, Apple, Microsoft, HP, ASUS, Lenovo, Acer, as those are big and reputable corporations. Let’s see now, what important characteristics a laptop for home use should have, and review some useful tips for picking a device for yourself.
Characteristics of a laptop for home use
There’s a lot of factors that are somewhat relevant for picking the right device. Pay attention to these parameters of a consumer laptop:
- Full HD display with a diagonal of 15-17 inches will come in just about enough for it to be comfortable to watch movies, work with office documents, and play games you like. Also such a laptop is still quite compact – it’ll be convenient to take it with you on some trip.
- A glossy display is highly reflective – you can see everything that is opposite to it like in a mirror. This can create tangible discomfort during work and tire the eyes and interfere with photo editing or watching movies. However, a glossy screen surface has a brighter, richer color reproduction.
- It is better to choose the processor among models from Intel or AMD. Their power is enough for high-quality and fast work of the kind of programs that are usually used at home. It will be possible to keep several browser tabs open without them freezing regularly.
- The graphics adapter can be built-in. Its capabilities shall be enough. Discrete cards are significantly more powerful. They are installed in gaming laptops or gadgets used for working with heavy graphics programs.
- For standard tasks is quite enough to have RAM of 6 GB. However, it is generally desirable to get a laptop that has the option to add more RAM. If you need to edit photos in Photoshop and use other heavy programs, consider installing from 8 to 16 GB of RAM.
- In a consumer laptop you can use HDD and SSD disks simultaneously. Install the operating system on SSD, and leave HDD for storing files.
- If you want to watch movies from DVD disks on the laptop, you can choose a laptop with an optical drive.
Additional tips
There are other, less obvious things you can take into account as well. The laptop’s case, for example. What the case is made of affects the durability and appearance of the gadget. Metal looks solid, and it is durable. However, the surface in wintertime can get cold, which is unpleasant when using the touchpad or typing. If you opt for plastic, make sure that there are no cracks or squeaking. It is also important that there is no unpleasant odor coming from the gadget. It indicates that the case is made of low-quality plastic with hazardous materials.
As for the thickness of the case, if you are only going to use office programs, watch movies and surf the Internet, then the laptop can be ultra-thin without any downsides to it. This is a lightweight stylish gadget, which is convenient to take with you on walks and trips. If you need to perform heavy tasks on your laptop, the processor will heat up. Therefore, you’ll need a quality cooling system. And it takes up a certain space, so the gadget won’t be too thin in such circumstances.
Choosing a laptop for home use, it is worth visiting the website of the manufacturing company, and find out what laptops are available. Reviews on forums and websites about a particular model will help determine how good each model is likely going to be in practice.
Conclusion
The above-mentioned tips will be enough to choose a sufficiently good laptop for home tasks, studying or even light office work. You will also be able to use Photoshop – at an amateur level, and run games – on low and medium settings, most certainly. So you’ll be able to make an excellent choice for comfort and smooth handling of routine tasks.
And regardless of the choice, you will then need to properly handle and repair the device in case of malfunctions. When you need laptop repair, from simple maintenance to qualified MacBook Pro fix, contact reputable professionals and experts in the field.
