Why Buying a Used Laptop Almost Always Makes More Sense: New HP Stream vs Used Thinkpad X1 Carbon

Today we are going to put our good old purple square nightmare up against a cheaper used ultrabook. I bought this HP Stream 11 from Walmart for a total of $189 (including taxes) and for less than that I was also able to pick up and upgrade a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon (2nd gen) for only $179. In this video I am going to conduct extensive testing on both of these sub $200 laptops to show you that your best bang for your buck is almost always going to be from a Used enterprise or high end used laptop.

Note: We don't include the cost of the OS in these videos because OS choice is dependent on the user.

X1 Carbon HD Images: (coming soon)

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#HPStream #Thinkpad #X1Carbon

[FroggyTWrite]

the thermal paste on the x1 is probably quite old and needs to be replaced

[grimgoreironhide]

I used to work for a college. I've seen a few buying the HP Stream because they liked the size and the price was affordable for them. After a few weeks of trying to use storage heavy engineering software, the students became frustrated and wanted to sell their underpowered laptops.

[Cereal.Fidgeter]

Even a refurbished t420 would be so amazing

[Diggy]

This pretty much mirrors my real-life laptop circumstances this year. For Christmas, my stepmother got me an HP Stream. Only 64 GB of storage, weak speakers, and the only redeeming qualities were the webcam and that it was convenient to carry for typing documents on the fly. A week ago, I bought myself a used ThinkPad x260 off of eBay for $109. 8GB RAM, 500GB HDD, solid speakers, and faster performance. I’m also purchasing another ThinkPad with no HDD to install an SSD with Linux Mint to tinker around with and get back into learning Linux.

[noodle]

2:58 not offended at all. Everyone knows the keyboard and trackpad of lenovo machines from that gen were absolutely garbage.

[alexboon]

WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?

WHERE IS THE CAPS LOCK KEY ON THAT X1 GEN2?
I MEAN INTERNET WAS ALREADY INVENTED WHEN THE GEN2 CAME OUT.

IM SORRY FOR THE CAPS BUT I CANNOT TURN IT OFF BECAUSE I HAVE A LENOVO THINKPAD X1 CARBON X1 GEN2.
I WISH I HAD A GEN1 OR A GEN3 OR LITERALLY ANY OTHER LAPTOP EVER MADE.

[BigjohnZ]

I didn't know that Lenovo had a touchscreen like a row for the function keys. This was made before Apple started putting in Touchbars in the newer MacBook Pros!

[zzyazy]

I bought a fully functional and fully loaded T420S Thinkpad on eBay for under $60, including shipping. Hi-res screen and USB 3.

[josephwinn]

As a Thinkpad fan I'd suggest avoiding the x40 era clickpad "experiment" to anyone. Thankfully Lenovo fixed it back in the x50 era.

[quirble]

Unfortunately it seems there is just this common "frown at used things" narrative today. My sub-$100 ThinkPad T430 despite having more processing power than the macbooks and other junk people use is constantly frowned upon by people who will always come up with an excuse as to why my machine is just bad. That's why so many people buy these "new" HP junk at retail stores, its because they can't fathom anything used.

[LaptopRetrospective]

Some don't like the keyboard on the X1C 2nd Gen but I found it very endearing even if it had a learning curve. I really enjoyed it when I had it in the studio.

[doogledoesstuff]

Also, great place to buy laptops if you live in Australia, is Gumtree.

Got an Acer Aspire with 8GB DDR4 RAM, Dual Core AMD A9, with dedicated Radeon graphics, for about $150.

Runs CS:GO at 60fps at Med/Low 1080p, runs Minecraft flawlessly, and you can get some good 1080p video editing done with Hitfilm.

Great daily driver, and you can get similar deals like that if you've got a good week to watch and wait for a good ad.

[maggini]

I gave it a thumbs up for the very excellent, barn-burnin' Lagavulin single malt at the 13:12 mark.

[Dojinshiii]

You could get an X220 for cheaper than the X1C and it can support 16GB of RAM.

[MrWirelesscaller]

The HP stream like all "cloud books" (MS lingo for their laptops with > 64 GB storage, there are windows tablets with similar specs) due to the limited storage space forces the need to purchase of additional storage (memory card, the "hd" is a fixed emmc chip on the mainboard). The only three options I think the HP stream is better on paper is weight, battery life, and built-in bluetooth. It should also have Office 365 for a year, but if you use Open Source like Libre, so unless you're a power user, I won't recommend HP stream.

[pointedspider]

I bought a used HP Elitebook 8440w back in 2015 for $125 on Ebay. I've only upgraded the ram to 8gb but I can put a quad core i7 and 16gb ram in it. Brushed aluminum finish... just a great machine

[GhastUnity]

Thinkpad guys might hate me but I bought a 2010 15” MacBook Pro for $175 upgraded the Ram & Storage and been using it daily for the last year and it’s been great 👍🏻

[eduardoavila]

Its a shame that the X lineup is aways overpriced where i live (and actually all thinkpads, but the X lineup about 3x more)...

I like thinkpads, just cant pay a price from a 4th, and maybe even 7th gen intel i5's for a first or second gen thinkpad.

[mesterak]

I bought a used T430 and love it. I upgraded the memory and threw in a large SSD, and it’s a beast as a daily driver and is good enough for light gaming.

[robinrai]

Got a Thinkpad Yoga 12 for 150 quid! Pen, 1080p IPS touchscreen 2 in 1, 5th gen i5, 8gigs of ram and an SSD!