What do you think about Lenovo IdeaPad 720S-15IKBR 81AC001WIV?

[Max87]

Hello,

 

I'm planning to buy Lenovo IdeaPad 720S-15IKBR 81AC001WIV and i don`t know if this laptop good enough for my use in Affinity Designer.

This laptop comes with:

Intel® Core™ i5-7300HQ Processor, 6M Cache, 2.5 GHz up to 3.50 GHz.

8GB (8GB x 1) DDR4 2400 MHz.

512GB SSD M.2 PCIe. 

15.6” FHD (1920 x 1080) IPS display.

NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX-1050Ti 4GB.

I'll always run in the backgroud Bitdefender Total Security and pCloud or Sync (Don`t know if this cloud programes take any resources in the background).

I'm don't going to do animation or any coding. 

Do you thing this laptop is a good one for my use?

 

Thanks for your help.

 

 

[Dan C]

Hi Max87,

Welcome to the forums

Unfortunately I can't provide a definitive answer, as at the end of the day each choice comes down to your personal budget and workflow.

There are no glaring issues with the laptop you're considering, the more cores and faster clock speeds, the better. This goes for both general productivity and use with Affinity apps, as we use hardware acceleration for processing.
I'd recommend double checking if your RAM can be upgraded in the future, 8GB is plenty for light use but if you are wanting to multi-task whilst designing (Google Chrome being a horrible RAM hog!) then you may find yourself running short on memory and wanting to upgrade. However RAM prices are at an all time high at the moment so I appreciate this is budget dependent.

Everything else seems suitable for a well-rounded laptop, I would check what sort of hard drive space you currently use, and again check for upgrade-ability on system storage in the future, as I find this is one of the first things I upgrade with systems. Hope this helps!

[Max87]

Hi Dan C, 

Your answer was very helpful

Thank you. 

[MikeW]

4 hours ago, Dan C said:

...However RAM prices are at an all time high at the moment...

I remember $120 per megabyte RAM prices. 8 gigs of the RAM specified above can be gotten for prices from $85 to $120, depending upon the brand. So while RAM has edged upwards for the last year or so, it's only an "all-time high" in the very modern, recent time-frame 

This laptop is not as powerful as the above specs. It's maybe 5 years old now. The only thing it's got that's "better" than the above is the screen size at 17". It's also got 8 gigs of RAM, but it is less-powerful RAM, and it is more than adequate with Affinity software as RAM memory, though the more RAM and the faster it is the better Affinity software will operate when the system is running a lot of software as mentioned.

Mike

[R C-R]

9 hours ago, MikeW said:

I remember $120 per megabyte RAM prices.

I remember buying a used Commodore 1750 512 KB REU for something like $120-150 & feeling lucky I could find one at any price. It worked great with the GEOS operating system ... once the RAM disk it enabled finally loaded the OS from disk.

[MikeW]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

 ... once the RAM disk ...

I never had a Commodore. My first computer was an IBM/AT 286 clone that came with 2 megs of RAM and a hefty 20 meg HD. That was 1989. Two megs of RAM was more than the software I was running needed (mainly Ventura and WordPerfect). But I did buy another 6 megs of RAM and configured it as a RAM disk. I forget what I paid for it all, but it was somewhere around $4k or so. Heck, the Ventura software I bought was pushing  another $2k. WP was expensive at the time. Setting up that business in that time period was simply expensive.

Think about it. Today I could buy a decent Toshiba laptop like this one (only with better specs), all 3 Affinity applications, a lower-end Xerox Phaser and an OfficeJet, and and and ... and likely would be at $1k. Sometimes the good ol' days weren't.