this post was submitted on 23 May 2026
166 points (95.6% liked)

PC Master Race

21217 readers
497 users here now

A community for PC Master Race.

Rules:

  1. No bigotry: Including racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia. Code of Conduct.
  2. Be respectful. Everyone should feel welcome here.
  3. No NSFW content.
  4. No Ads / Spamming.
  5. Be thoughtful and helpful: especially when new beginners have questions.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I just bought this yesterday for my 16 year old son. He is in year 11, doing subjects heavy in maths and science. His old laptop was 8 years old and falling. I had a budget of $1200, reluctantly, as I knew that DDR prices and storage prices had gone through the roof recently. Typically, I have spent $700-800 on laptops for my kids.

I walked into a local retailer and this was presented as a laptop that had been ordered and not collected or paid for. Price was $1,999 firm.

After some negotiation, I walked out with it for $1,500. Way more than I was comfortable spending but it seems to be a good deal, unless I am missing something?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] fonix232@fedia.io 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That's a good deal for 1500 AUD. The Ryzen 7 250 might sound weak based on category alone ("two gens old", mid-midrange), but it's still a Zen4 Hawk Point 8C/16T little guy at 26-30W TDP, comes with a quite performant Radeon 780M (meaning you could game on it without the RTX, even!), and it easily goes toe to toe with the Apple M4 (regular base model, non-Pro/Max!).

What this means is that while the dedicated GPU is disabled, you should get pretty solid battery life - up to 5-6 hours I reckon - while also being able to game with slightly better performance than the Steam Deck, AND with the dedicated GPU - usually while connected to mains - you'll get proper performance around 90-120fps on high/est settings in most games.

Oh, and one more thing. You might've spent a bit more than you intended BUT you bought a more future-proof hardware at a steep discount (you spent 25% more than intended, the seller got 25% less than intended). That laptop will last you about as more in time as much more as you spent on it.

[–] KoalaUnknown@lemmy.world 2 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (1 children)

The 200 and 300 series processors are better than the new 400 series processors as they removed cores to cut costs.

[–] fonix232@fedia.io 2 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

The x50 hasn't seen any removed cores. Both 250 and 450 come with 8C/16T config, but the 450 has ~50% more raw performance based on benchmarks.

[–] KoalaUnknown@lemmy.world 2 points 17 hours ago

Except most laptop manufacturers are using the 445 which is only 2x zen 5 + 4x zen 5c.