Looking to get the Mrs a new laptop for her birthday and thought I'd get some input from y'all!

Looking to spend around 1k

She likes portability but I think she needs something kind of durable too.

Doesn't need to be able to play games, she uses it for data entry work, emails and watching shows etc

Ideal screen size: prolly around the 15" mark...... Any and all suggestions or anecdotes would be greatly appreciated. :)

Thanks!

I've had an Asus G550JK for the past year, it was around the price & size it sounds like you're after. I haven't really looked into what the latest equivalent model is but the build quality & the performance has been good so I'd recommend looking into it. I know you're not interested in using it for games but they have decent graphics cards so it can if you change your mind.

I would recommend a Mac above else simply for build quality but Asus or Lenovo for windows brand. Stay away from HP.

Get a business model laptop from Lenovo,Dell or Hp

The Dell outlet is where I would look first

I'm using a Lenovo Yoga which I bought used a year ago. It still works great, is pretty light and the touchscreen is essential after having gotten used to it.

Depends on her really. What does she look for in a laptop?

Personally, I prefer Asus. They make great laptops. I wouldn't get anything with less than 8mb of RAM and 1tb of HD. You should be able to get one for that price too, with 15". The other thing is get Windows 8.1 O/S (yeah its shite but...) then upgrade it to Windows 10. I'm banking on that being a resurrection for the old dinosaur that is Microsoft. Satya Nadella just seems like the right dude for that company.

Pro's:

A keyboard that feels like a keyboard and not some flat plastic thingo you type on madly

Decent price for good spec's

The cons:

Bad Customer Service if your laptop is faulty (this is rare mind you)

Can suffer from too much heat but yearly maintenance or cleaning of the fan works around that.

@isomeri: ya, really eyeing those up. I think that would be pretty versatile for her. How has your battery life been and what screen size do you have?

@edgekasey: 11" screen. The battery life has generally been fine. When streaming HD video the battery lasts around three hours, but if I'm just doing a bit of news reading and online banking I can easily double that. It's not too bad for some modest gaming either. I spent my train trip from Hamburg to Stockholm last summer playing Civilization V on the Yoga.

The MacBook Pro is a well made machine. I've also liked the Lenovo Yoga.

I'm typing this on my beloved and highly portable MacBook Air. It can do emails, data, video, and run Hearthstone: that's really all you need.

Are you dead set on the 15" size? From personal experience, I find 13" to be the absolute outside of what I'm willing to deal with for portability, and that's on a slim MacBook Air. I suppose I haven't handled any of the 15" Ultrabooks, but even my boss' 15" Retina MBP seems a bit large for lugging around.

If you are sure about the 15" size (either from research or personal experience), feel free to ignore my opinion; I hold to this because I also have 24" displays at work and home for when I need to do something serious.

Norm talked about some surprisingly high-quality $700 laptop on the most recent Tested podcast, I'm trying to find the model...He talks about it starting around 1:47, the Asus ux305.

I like MacBooks, but you probably aren't going to get what you're looking for without spending a little over $1000.

The keyboard is pretty important for data entry. Also, you should ask her if she uses the number pad a lot since many of the laptops won't have it to space out the keys better. I like my Lenovo y50 but it's huge and heavy and the number pad on it feel unnatural for spreadsheet data entry so keep that in mind. Of course, there are always after market keyboards you can get so it may not be that important. Wirecutter has some good recommendations that you can start looking into. Good luck duder.

Thanks for all the information everyone. It's all very helpful. I've definitely moved away from the idea of a 15" Leaning towards a Lenovo Yoga right now. Just have to pick the right one.

You seem to be looking for basic enough functionality that a macbook air would be ideal. In my own experience, Macs can last a long ass time, both because they're well built enough to be amongst the most durable products on the market, and because performance degradation over time is significantly less pronounced than in computers running windows.

If you're set against all things Mac, the Thinkpad Carbon X1 seems pretty impressive, based on the little time I've spent with one.

Dell XPS 13 is a solid choice.

If a Mac is within reason I'd definitely recommend one.

@edgekasey: If she doesn't need power, go for something really lightweight and thin and aesthetically pleasing. (I'm not as familiar with that range of PC laptops, since mine is like an anvil pretty much... but both Macbook Air and somehow regular Macbook even-more-so have really petite builds nowadays. Baseline models of Air are still in your target price range and would fit her purposes, but the regular Macbook line starts about $300 over. The improved specs and even more featherweight build may not be worth that premium for you or for her. In both cases you'd have to be amenable to more of an 11-13" screen size, but that's not as handicapping as it may sound. I'm writing this comment from an 11" screen right now, and it doesn't feel particularly small to me.)