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so this is kind of how i imagine this whole thing went down some execs at best

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buy were sitting around going how can we help students get geared up with the

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hashtag best college yes in my imagination executives speak in hashtags

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laptops this year and some bold soul

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stood up and said let's have Linus give them the lowdown yay and that's what

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they did welcome to my top four laptops

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for back to school showdown drop a like on the video if you're one of the 30 000

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or so people who have been asking me to do one of these roundups for so long

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that you've actually graduated with your post-secondary degree already

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now i'm gonna start by explaining a little something something i don't really do the traditional top five or in

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this case top four thing where you rank

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a bunch of products from worst to best when it comes to stuff that i'm

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suggesting that you buy the only thing that you should buy is the best thing

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for your needs let's see how many people can guess uh where you can get all this

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stuff i'm talking about hey so why list four things to buy that aren't the best

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no instead i'll be tackling four different use cases and choosing one

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model that i personally picked out as a great choice let's start with number

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four for the ultimate bang for the buck shopper i'm calling this category super

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basic this is actually my first time hands on with an hp stream device and i

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gotta say while the 1366 by 768 tn

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screen takes me back to my college days and it doesn't feature the you know

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finest craftsmanship with the egyptian cotton keycap covers or whatever the

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build quality is certainly not as bad as

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some laptops that i've seen for twice the price and for 280 bucks you are

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getting a surprising amount of computer the one i picked out has a 13.3 inch

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display a celeron n2840 processor 2 gigs

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of RAM and 32 gigs of onboard solid-state storage and yeah those

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aren't amazing specs or anything but for 280 bucks you also get a free year of

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office 365 a hundred dollar value so

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instead of spending twice as much on a machine that doesn't have the office

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bonus and hoping it'll last you effectively three times as long for the

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price you could just buy new ones every year taking advantage of the rapid pace

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at which modern technology evolves and then passing the hand-me-downs to a

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sibling friend or fellow student which isn't to say that buying something a

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little nicer won't yield some extra creature comforts if you don't mind

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keeping your devices for a little longer number three weighing in at a very

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reasonable 900 is the lenovo yoga 3.

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build quality gets a very significant upgrade with that sick 360 degree hinge

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design that is the calling card of lenovo's premium yoga lineup and there

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are some very healthy spec upgrades as well a 5th gen core i5 processor means

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more performance without sacrificing battery life eight gigs of RAM means

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more than three chrome tabs at a time it's more like six haha storage

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increases to 256 gigs of solid-state storage that's eight times the capacity

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of our bang for the buck machine not to mention that it's a lot faster and the

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display gets a nice upgrade to a 1080p ips panel which is way better for

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content consumption especially if you want to sit next to a friend while

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watching a movie thanks to its more vibrant colors and better viewing angles

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for screen size i stuck with 14 inch because from my experience as someone

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who legitimately carries a laptop in a backpack every day i find 13 to 14

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inches is the sweet spot for carryability if you don't really need

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the larger display which i guess leads us really nicely into number two the

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first of our more premium options MSI's ge62 apache pro while there are a lot of

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gaming laptops out there for folks who want to do more than just study few of

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them strike the balance between size weight horsepower and cost that the ge62

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is found it's big enough to handle cooling the core i7 quad-core inside but

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not so large that it's horrible to carry like MSI's bulkier gt72

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it's got 16 gigs of RAM for great multitasking performance and it uses a

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dedicated 128 Gigabyte SSD for the operating system with one terabyte of

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hard drive space for bulky files and games a less convenient but higher

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performance approach to hybrid storage

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now to be clear there are gaming laptops

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out there that are less expensive and also feature quad-core processors this

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ASUS model would be a great one to check out if you want a powerful CPU in a

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reasonable size machine that could pull double duty as a portable workstation

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but for me to truly consider something to be a gaming laptop i need to see a

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gtx 970m so that's why i went with a

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1500 option for the all-rounder gaming

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box which speaking of expensive i guess

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leads us pretty well into number one a product whose inclusion in this list

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will definitely leave some of you scratching your heads after how much i

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rained on its parade in my launch review the microsoft surface pro 3. i picked

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out a 4th gen core i5 dual core equipped model with 8 gigs of RAM and 256 gigs of

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solid-state storage that set me back a touch over 1200 although account for a

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bit extra because you're going to want to use a type cover accessory since it's

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not too useful for typing without that and the reason for it is that while the

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surface pro 3 doesn't do much for my personal daily workload thanks to its

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easy-to-use stylus responsive high-resolution touchscreen and flexible

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form factor that allows it to really be used as either a notebook or a notepad

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thanks to the included onenote software that lets you take notes markup existing

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documents or pictures that you take with the rear camera and sync everything to

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the cloud as you work and there's more good news if you don't want to pony up

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that much for the pro model unlike early step down models like the surface rt the

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third generation non-pro surface uses an Intel processor

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now for a similar if not as powerful Windows 10 experience that the pro has

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so you get that outstanding app compatibility which i guess wraps up our

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list here so all that's left is to give a big shout out to best buy thanking

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them not just for sending us the laptops that we asked to check out for this

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roundup but also for being really cool about it and not trying to you know

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guide us to the laptops that they wanted to sell leaving us instead to pick

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whatever we wanted off their site based on what we thought was right for our

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viewers so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do

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but if it was awesome get subscribed hit that like button or even consider

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supporting us directly by buying a cool t-shirt like this one or with a direct

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monthly contribution through our forum now that you're done doing all that

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stuff you're probably wondering what to watch next so click that little button in the top right corner to check out

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this video where we took a gtx 480 to see how its performance has evolved in

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the five years since it launched with NVIDIA's regular driver updates so i'll

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see you there and then i'll see you next time