I think I'm wary of HP because my current one started to crumbled apart after the first year. Overheating, malfunctioning webcam, battery completely fucked up (it was never great, mind), screen with some funny colours depending on the inclination etc.
I've bought it fully aware it wasn't top at the time and it was one of those budget laptops (it looks fucking awful). Now I think the same might happen with the one I listed a page back: 8GB, 1TB, i5 for 430 pounds seems...strange, I don't know. I'd like to spend a little bit more and get real quality in return. Good hardware (keyboard, screen, battery). I do use laptopts fairly frequently - though not for games or audio editing - so those are my main concerns.
The 500 budget can easily stretch to 700 if justified. The thing is that I haven't been following those kind of stuff for a long while now, so I've become one of those costumers who are easy to trick. I used to have the patient to look more into what kind of i3 was better by looking at benchmarks and so on, but not anymore.