After a new laptop.
Would like a Apple but can't justify cost.
Got a Sony Vaio which has been immense.
Budget about £400 but can stretch.
As always I guess it depends on what you want to do with it, but I recently got some HP machines for work and have been very impressed with them for the money. I think the build quality feels better than some of the more budgety Lenovo or Acer models which offer pretty good 'bang for buck' but I think can feel a bit cheap. The HP laptops also have anti-glare screens which I find much better than the glossy ones.
I try to keep my computers for at least 4 years (although the one I have at home is in its 6th or 7th year) so I try to buy the best spec I can afford at the time. So, if it was me for about £400 I would get the cheapest i5 processor model and swap out the stock hard disk drive for a 2.5" 250GB solid state drive, if you haven't previously used a computer with an SSD the difference in boot up and loading times will be amazing. It is a really easy job to do yourself and just slots straight in, but any computer shop or techie mates should be able to help. You can probably get £20-£30 for the unused HDD on ebay.
The following HP models are very similar in terms of their specifications:
HP 350 G2, Intel Core i5-5200U, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD, 15.6" screen (
£369.93 from BT or
£392 at ebuyer)
HP ProBook 450, Intel Core i5-5200U, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD, 15.6" screen (
£476.76 from BT but up to £150 trade-in/cashback or
£444.76 at ebuyer)
There are lots of 250GB SSDs at under £100. The Crucial MX200 series are not quite the fastest drives but have earned a reputation for being very quick and rock solid:
Crucial MX200, 250GB, SATA 6GB/s, 2.5", 7mm (
£72.88 from BT or
£75.46 at ebuyer)
The Probook is a bit lighter and has an extra USB2 slot, and comes in a bundle with various security features that you might not be fussed about. Both have 2 USB3 slots and can take extra RAM if you should need it.
The 5th Generation i5 processors are dual core each with 2 threads so they can act like a quad core. They have very low power requirements and feature a turbo mode where the processor can ramp up to 2.7 GHz from 2.2 GHz for more demanding applications. Either macine should be more than capable of running almost any desktop software and multi tasking. I am not an expert when it comes to games but I saw a youtube vid of someone getting 30fps on Battlefield 4 with this CPU and its built in HD5500 graphics , so I imagine that it would be reasonably competent at older or less demanding games.
Not quite as swish as your Vaio but perhaps better vfm?
Which of these two laptops is the best option for running football manager 2016, I'm pretty useless when it comes to laptops/computers?
. . .
Your links didn't work for me mate so I don't know whether the above is any use to you - I don't think FM is particularly demanding compared to shooters like BF4.