A personal computer has become a necessity in today’s world. A laptop is very popular due to the newer models being able to match the power of desktops. Portability is a huge advantage – allows people to go to the beach, park, or a coffee shop! Remote work boom that started in 2019 has pushed a larger number of people to switch to a laptop. So, the next obvious question is how to buy the right laptop for home, business, or gaming user? There is no straightforward answer as users come in all shapes and sizes, all levels of technical experiences. In this article, we try to focus on some basics for most common user types.
Most new laptops will work great in the beginning, but will not last long enough if it doesn’t suit the user’s needs. It really doesn’t matter how much you spent or which popular retailer you bought it from. What matters is how suitable it is your needs and usage. One cannot buy a laptop for home use and expect to fit it for business use.
Identify your user persona!
The first step is to determine how you will use your laptop. We believe that most users fall into one of the following three user personas.
Home User
A home user is someone whose primary use is web browsing, and maybe a couple of common lightweight programs, such as an email client or a word processor. This user may be mostly shopping online, or doing research or watching YouTube videos to try a new recipe or check their emails. A student trying to complete their school work using a browser or a word processor can fit into this profile as well. This is basically the most non-technical user we have out there, but is capable of using a laptop. All these users don’t need a lot of power on their laptop. 90% of the usage is browsing. With the advent of cloud computing, there is less need to get a powerful laptop for most users. The industry has been moving the resource intense jobs to the cloud.
Business User
For the purpose of this article, we’ll put users who use laptop for business or professional needs, into this bucket. This is a user that needs to use the laptop for multiple, potentially complex programs simultaneously. Such users typically need a number of business software programs such as Microsoft Office/Word/Excel (or Pages/Numbers for Mac). They will most likely also need a browser, or other custom or specialized software specific to their line of work or business. You can be a non-technical user and be a business user at the same time!
Gaming User
As the name suggests, this is a user who is primarily using their laptop for playing or developing video games. But we will slightly broaden this group to include users who perform video editing for business or personal use. Both gaming user and a photo or video enthusiast should, more or less have the same needs. These users typically run programs that are graphics hungry, and need smooth rendering and faster loading of large videos. Thus the screen resolution, frame rates, are the additional specs to look out for.
You probably appreciate now, why it is critical to buy the right laptop based on your user type – home or business or gaming.
To keep this simple, we recommend considering the three most important specs that matter – Operating System, RAM and CPU speed.
A Home User, is a user who primarily uses their laptop for internet browsing, may be uses an email client program such as Outlook, otherwise uses 1 to 3 lightweight programs, in general. A Business User uses a laptop for business or professional needs and they need to use the laptop to run multiple, potentially complex programs simultaneously. A Gaming User runs or builds video games or does a lot of video processing/editing.
Technical specs to consider based on the user’s needs!
Since this article aims to help all types of users, we will intentionally keep it light on details. Note that all of the below recommendations are specific to the year this article is being written in – 2024, although this might remain accurate for another year. Let’s discuss the three basic technical specs recommendations users should consider:
Operating System (OS)
Recommendations for a Home user
If you are a Home User and that means you mostly care about browsing and run a few light-weight programs, then your options are Google’s ChromeOS based laptops and Windows OS. However, be aware that the laptops running ChromeOS (also called Chromebooks) are designed as budget laptops, can quickly hit the limits of what they can do. However if you are split equally between ChromeOS and Windows, and there is not much of a price difference, then the right laptop for a home user is probably a Windows-based one. We don’t recommend Mac here only because of the price you have to pay for what you use it for. If that doesn’t bother you, you can certainly go for it.
Recommendations for a Business User
If you are a Business User (or see yourself going that route in a year or so) you still have choices but you should be able to get away with anything other than Chrome OS. The choices you have are Windows, Mac or Linux-based OS with a caveat that the Linux/Ubuntu based laptops may have limited support/compatibility for accessories and/or software. Apple Mac laptops are generally superior quality and work better for video or music applications. However, it is important to note that it may not be easy for everyone to switch to a new operating system than the one they have been used to. So, the right laptop for a business user can be either a Windows or a Mac.
Recommendations for a Gaming User
For a Gaming user (per our definition), the compatibility of most of your games you play should be considered. However as we mentioned before, Windows generally has the most compatibility with most programs. For video editors – all other specs being equal – we think the right laptop for a gaming user is a Mac. The reason is stability and quality of programs and the quality of hardware. But the downside of going with a Mac is you might start to notice you are sort of limited to Apple’s accessories/hardware in some cases. It can also mean a bit more expensive to maintain. On the other hand Windows is not a bad choice if you are new to MacOS and do not want to learn a new Operating System.
RAM (or Memory)
First off, let’s understand what RAM is. RAM stands for Random Access Memory also loosely called Memory. It’s a hardware chip that talks to your CPU (the brain of your computer) directly and transfers the data it needs. Both RAM and hard-drive store data but unlike hard drive, RAM does not have any mechanical parts to move in order to read or write data which makes it much faster and efficient. RAM is a temporary storage used when your computer is running and will lose its contents when you shut down your computer. A hard disk is a permanent storage that retains data even when you shut down your computer. The design of RAM makes it generally more expensive than hard-drive. Now let’s talk about how much of RAM makes sense to each of the user personas.
Recommendations for a Home User
For Home users, 4GB RAM should be sufficient. However we recommend going up a notch, to 6GB or 8GB, if you are not seeing much of a price difference.
Recommendations for a Business User
Business users should not get anything less than 16GB. Alternatively, you can evaluate your current usage and determine what you might need. We have a detailed guide to help you calculate your current RAM usage in our blog post here. If you currently have 16GB and your programs are constantly slowing down, then may be you really need to go to the next level. Even if you have occasional slowdowns, we recommend going up another level because chances are you will install newer programs or upgrades which will likely grab more memory and more power from your laptop.
Recommendations for a Gaming User
For Gamers and video editors, a lot depends on the games or video processing programs. Check your software’s minimum requirements and use the highest RAM recommended. Otherwise, it is a safe bet to go with at least 32GB. Again, it comes down to how long you want to keep the laptop. If you go lower, you are likely going to need a new one in about 1-2 years or you have to upgrade your RAM if that is an option. Some laptops specs do indicate that RAM is expandable and that is something that should score high in your list.
CPU Speed
What is a CPU? CPU stands for Central Processing Unit. It’s like the brains of your computer. Simply put, it’s a chip that makes a lot of decisions to keep your computer running smoothly.
The leading manufacturers of CPUs are AMD and Intel, and they are both very good and in fierce competition to outdo each other! Which is great, because customer wins as they raise the bar for each other! However, we will be talking about the CPU speed and either of these two manufacturers shouldn’t matter much for this discussion.
For Home users, we recommend a minimum of about 1.2 GHz. Since this user is mostly browsing the web, there is not a lot a laptop needs to process locally.
For Business users, we recommend at least 2.0 GHz or above. A lot depends on the type of programs you need and how many are going to be run simultaneously. Let’s say you are a mathematician and need to run a program that is crunching a lot of large numbers. Then, it is very likely your program needs a lot of CPU cycles and you are an Advanced Business User.
Gamers and Video editing enthusiasts should stay at around 3GHz. Once again, if you find yourself using games or video editing software that have a higher CPU expectations then please go with that recommendation.
Additional specs for choosing the right laptop for a gamer.
So far in this article, we discussed basic technical specs one should look for. However, there are other important specs that can be considered. These mainly apply to a gaming user.
GPU
A GPU stands for Graphics Processing Unit. A GPU is basically responsible to ensure your videos and images render smoothly and efficiently on your laptop. If you need to edit your family videos, or you are a videographer or a gamer. Then, you want to pay attention to the GPU. Based on your laptop usage this can be either completely ignored or it can be one of the most important spec! The problem with evaluating GPUs is that it is difficult to compare. It’s not a simple number you can compare and tell larger or smaller is better. But we will give you some tips on what to look for.
If you are a Home User, you can safely skip this section. If you are a Business user or a Gamer, then you should understand the two types of Graphics cards – integrated and discrete.
- Integrated Graphics Card: An Integrated Graphics card is a chip that sits on the motherboard and shares memory and/or power. This works for most uses and helps keep the overall laptop cost down.
- Discrete GPU: A Discrete Graphics card is a card that is basically independent, has its own memory and often times its own power supply. These cards are generally more powerful as they have enough fire-power and are not sharing with motherboard. Consequently, they are also more expensive and tend to raise the price of laptop.
For a Business user, we recommend avoiding integrated graphics card, if you can help it.
For Gamers, we definitely recommend getting a laptop with a dedicated graphics card. It is very unlikely that you will find a laptop with integrated graphics card that will work well for you, long term.
If you want to dig into more details and understand how to compare the graphics cards, you can use the graphics card’s power rating, which is the amount of power it draws while in use. One school of thought is the higher the power, the more advanced and capable a graphics card is. As for the GPU brand, Nvidia makes some of the best graphics cards. They are also pricier and can raise the price of the laptop but we’ll caveat that not all Nvidia graphics cards are worth the money. For more detailed information on Graphics Card, we recommend this article: How to choose a Graphics Card
Screen Resolution and Refresh Rate
If you are a Home user, you can safely skip this section. The standard definition of screen resolution is number of pixels per square inch (PPI). All it means is a number to measure how dense and detailed a screen can show a picture or video. But it is important to note the screen can only show what’s coming to it. Meaning what you see in only as good as the quality of the content coming through, irrespective of the screen resolution. So it’s a balance!
Here are some common resolutions from lower to higher quality:
- 720p (HD – High Definition) – resolution of 1280×720
- 1080p (FHD – Full High Definition) – resolution of 1920×1080
- 4K (UHD – Ultra High Definition) – resolution of 3840×2160
Note that the higher resolution can use more power and run your battery quicker. So, it’s a balance esp. when you are on-the-go and you want your laptop battery to last longer.
Refresh rate is the number of times a screen is capable of refreshing an image. More common refresh rates at the time of this writing from lower to higher capacity are – 60Hz, 120Hz & 144Hz. If you are hooking up a monitor that has higher refresh rate, make sure your GPU and CPU are capable of producing images at such rapid rate. As for the laptop screens, one would think the manufacturer would have taken care of that, but you will be surprised!
We hope this article provided the information you needed to get going with finding the right laptop that suits your needs whether you are a home user or a business user or a gamer. You can always use our free search tool, PriceWired to search across multiple retailers with the same standard search criteria!