Laptop recommendation 800$ with good touch and feel

Question

I am looking for a new laptop for my mother. She does not want to spend more than about 800$, which makes my job a little harder, since I am only informed in the higher price ranges.

She will use the laptop for Youtube, Office, Photos, browsing the Web and the likes at home.

I think the most important features are:

• an SSD
• decent 15" screen, meaning good viewing angles, good colors as high of a resolution as that amount of money can buy (it seems to me that the display quality is the number one trade-off of cheaper laptops).
• usable trackpad

Battery life, raw performance, etc. are less important.

So far, the best laptops I could find was the Acer Travelmate P series and the HP ProBook 450.

Are there other laptops that would be worthwhile to check out?

\Edit: Unfortunately, a used laptop is not an option.

Thanks!

Answer 1

If you just want to do some light work such as web browsing, video watching and document editing, then you can just get a Chromebook. They do all these tasks but run very fast since it is a very light OS. The only draw back if that you can't run Windows programs on it (since its Chrome OS).The Acer Chromebook 15 is only around $350 and will run all those tasks fine. The screen is 1080p which is good enough for video watching.

The Dell Inspiron 15 7000 series is also a great choice if you want Windows. It is $750 with pretty good specs. The screen is also a 1080p display but is better quality (better colors). The screen is also a touch screen which is surprisingly useful and easy to use.

Answer 2

Buy a used 15" MacBook Pro.

• an SSD

The used market shifts quickly, but right now there's a Mid 2010 15" with 8GB RAM and a 256GB SSD on eBay for $499, buy-it-now. Preserved for posterity when the eBay page goes down.

Worst case, buy one with a normal HDD and install an SSD yourself. It's not that hard, and you can use any standard SSD. Plus, you now have an external HDD for use as a Time Machine backup.

• decent 15" screen, meaning good viewing angles, good colors as high of a resolution as that amount of money can buy

15" non-Retina Pros have a 1440x900 IPS (high viewing angles) display, and can run an external display or two without a hitch. I use my 13" on my desk every day, the quality is comparable to my Dell U2515H. It's also bright enough to be used on its own.

• usable trackpad

Apple makes the most usable trackpads I've ever touched. I haven't used a mouse in weeks; I use the trackpad on my 13" Pro and my external Magic Trackpad 2 (same technology). No one comes close in terms of feel and usability - even simple things like thumb/palm rejection are implemented flawlessy.

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You shouldn't have any problems staying well within your $800 budget, especially if you're not looking for newer hardware (which you don't need for the tasks you mention, a 2009 Pro would blow those out of the water).

They're made of aluminum, a.k.a. they're built like a tank. It's hard to actually damage one to the point you would notice it in daily use. I dropped (flung, actually) a 2009 13" Pro from a backpack about five feet in the air. It flew across the room, squarely hitting the corner a steel shelving unit. It left a nice dent in the casing, and I thought the edge-to-edge glass would be broken... nope, the casing absorbed the impact. That's a tiny dent, especially considering the forces involved. Another picture.

A common argument against Apple machines is that they're 'too expensive' - actually, they're cheaper to own over their lifetime when you take into account resale value (which Apple laptops hold, and no other laptops do).