Hi folks, I'm helping a friend find a new Laptop.
I got the technical side covered, but it turns out my requirements are extremely rare for Notebooks.
So I figured I could ask you guys if you knew about a Laptop model that features the following:

Specs: (finding these is, surprisingly, rare enough)
CPU: i5 4x00U or 4x10U
GPU: none (using Intel HD on CPU. Though if everything else is met an additional GPU would be okay)
SSD: 240+ GB (no SSHD, which is apparently the problem)
RAM: 4-8 GB

other qualities:
price: =< 700€ (My best match was at 800€, which is too high)
size: 14"-17" (15.6" would be ideal)
battery: long life (ideally >5 hours)
quality: good / long lasting (no cheap crap, so no Acer, if possible . It'll be his main computer during university.)

nice to have:
HDMI
USB 3.0
resolution 1600x900 (low priority)

Gaming is not a priority.
For now, don't focus on the price range, as I just want to collect a few models that have the features described. I'll research prices on my own as this will most likely vary anyway from where you live.

Additional discussion:
It seems most Laptops still have pure HDDs , and if not most of them have SSHDs. Are those really that effective? Any relevant tests or anectodes?
And if they go the pure SSD route, why do most of them have only 128 GB?
From my point of view the ideal would be 256 GB SSD as prices have dropped that it can be reasonably implemented and for most Laptops users 256 GB is enough, while offering optimal performance and reliabiltiy.

Buy a relatively inexpensive laptop like this (I couldn't find the 320GB version with a German vendor): HP ProBook 6570b - 682€
Swap in an SSD: 240GB M500 - 93€
Total: 775€

HP's instructions on replacing the HDD on the above laptop.
Video showing how to replace the HDD on the above laptop.

You're probably better at finding prices and deals for Germany than I am, but my general point still stands.

SSHDs score about 2x better than HDDs on benchmarks, versus the 6x-8x performance SSDs have over HDDs. SSHDs aren't really worth the price/performance for most builds, and are only really useful for specific scenarios (mainly laptops where you can't have an SSD+HDD setup, but want better-than-HDD performance without spending SSD prices).

The reason most laptops don't have high-capacity SSDs is because SSDs are relatively expensive, so it would significantly drive up the price of the laptop, which when comparing the rest of the specs on the laptop would make it underpowered in comparison to other laptops within that price range.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Aug 30 2014, 5:49 pm by Roy.

Good idea. The Laptop you linked isn't Haswell, but I'll check if I can find more suitable models.

EDIT:
Looked around a bit and it seems none of the models at around 600€ pass my requirements for build quality, or the display is terrible.

Seems like we'll have to compromise somewhere. Maybe even get an Acer :shrug: . Will have to talk with my friend about that. In the meantime more suggestions would be welcome.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Aug 31 2014, 1:35 pm by NudeRaider.