You asked for a Laptop costing under £1000.
You told me that you needed a high performance laptop for high performance/speed in productivity. You also added the following additional information: Need a dedicated GPU. A2000 or better for CAD work.
It is important to know that the A2000 graphics processor is an expensive workstation orientated GPU. Choice 3 is the cheapest A2000 laptop I could find, more than double your budget. Instead, if you are buying for yourself and not deploying many laptops across a business, I recommend a gaming GPU. You will get similar levels of performance as the A2000 from the RTX 3060 but without the same workstation levels of support (this excellent 4 minute video shows the difference in price and usage cases between gaming and workstation GPUs).
You will perhaps need to investigate this yourself further, but the three choices below give you a good idea of the kind of performance you will get at (1) £900 with a gaming GPU, (2) £1030 with a low-end workstation GPU and (3) with a £2200 A2000. Gaming-focused benchmarks suggest that the RTX 3060 is the strongest of these three options, which is backed up by workstation focused benchmarks – the highest RTX 3060 (£900 below) laptop workstation benchmark at this site was 56,866 and the highest A2000 (£2,200 below) workstation benchmark was 52,636. The highest T500 (£1,030) benchmark was 41,643, a long way behind.
Like I said, because you have quite a specific use case, you might want to do a bit more research before taking the plunge, but from a performance point of view at your price point, I would recommend Choice 1, the RTX 3060-equipped laptop.
I searched a range of different shops for something that would suit your needs. I have chosen the three options below as the best ones to suit your requirements. However, we all have our own tastes (and of course, prices can change), so I have also included search links for each shop at the bottom of this page in case you’d like to browse further. In this case, you are looking for GPU (minimum RTX 3060 gaming or T500 non gaming), GPU memory (minimum 4GB but it would be much better if you are doing complex rendering to have 8GB or more), CPU (no lower than an i7 or Ryzen 7) and RAM (16GB minimum, more is better).
I always choose three options. These are usually (1) the best performing option within your budget (i.e. best suited to meet your needs for the longest possible time), (2) the cheapest option that still meets your needs effectively and (3) usually a wildcard option or a compromise between the two. If you are able to, I would usually recommend the first option as it is likely to be powerful enough to meet your needs for the longest before it needs replacing. However, I specify three choices so that you can pick the one that best suits your circumstances.
I do not work for or on behalf of any of the retailers listed below.
Prices correct as of 7th Mar 2022
1. Best overall performance: MSI Katana GF66 15.6″ RTX 3060 Gaming Laptop
£898.00
Key features:
CPU: Intel Core i7 11800H Processor
RAM: 16GB
Storage: 512GB
Graphics: GeForce RTX 3060 Graphics
This choice represents the best overall performance I could get from your budget. I chose it primarily based on its RAM, CPU and GPU, all of which are excellent.
2. Cheapest option: Lenovo ThinkPad P15s Core i7-1165G7 16GB 512GB SSD 15.6 I…
£1029.97
Key features:
CPU: 1165G7 Core i7
RAM: 16GB
Storage: 512GB
Graphics: NVIDIA Quadro T500
This choice represents the cheapest device I could find that contains a workstation GPU, the T500. I chose it primarily based on this fact, although the performance is far lower than Choice 1.
3. Third option: Dell Precision 5560 Mobile Workstation, Intel Core i7-118…
£2199.99
Key features:
CPU: Intel Core i7-11850H
RAM: 16GB
Storage: 512GB
Graphics: NVIDIA RTX A2000
This choice represents the third option – The cheapest A2000 laptop I could find. I chose it primarily based on its all round performance and the fact it has the A2000 you requested.
Why did I choose these for you?
It is important that you understand what the components of a laptop do so that you can make an informed choice. Here is my very basic explanation for each:
- CPU: The brain of your laptop. A better one makes your laptop faster.
- RAM: Your laptop’s short term memory – more of this means it can cope well with doing more things at once.
- Storage: How much space your laptop has to store files, photos, apps etc. More storage means you can store more stuff.
- Graphics: Your laptop has a graphics processor (GPU) responsible for how things appear on the screen. A better GPU will mean your device will cope better with more complicated graphics, such as in 3D games.
If you would like to browse the shops I searched for yourself, here are some links that will take you directly to the search results you require:
Some of the links on this page are affiliate links – that means if you go on to buy after clicking one of them, I may receive a small payment. This is how I am able to provide this service for free. It does not affect the price you pay, nor does it affect the recommendations I make – I will always recommend the best I can find to fit your usage, regardless of what shop it is from or any affiliation.
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