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So, you’ve got a budget of £350 per laptop and you’re weighing up whether it’s better to buy new or buy refurbished. Right now, HP have got some cracking deals on. You can pick up a brand-new, and imaginatively named, HP Laptop 14” with Windows 11 for around £340 ex.VAT. Meanwhile, at ICT Direct we’ve got a refurbished HP 14” Windows 11 laptop priced at £310 ex.VAT. (Left/Top) NEW HP Laptop 14" (14-ep1010nax) £340.83 ex.VAT | (Right/Bottom) REFURBISHED HP Elitebook 840 G9 £310 ex.VAT £30 more for a brand-new laptop? It’s surely a no brainer, right? They have the same size screen, they both have Intel CPU’s, 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage. At first glance, they’re almost identical, and even photos of them look the same. But one is a 4-year old business class laptop, and the other is a brand-new consumer laptop. So, for comparison’s sake, let’s throw in the most affordable, new, HP Business-Class laptop money can buy too, again with an Intel Processor, 8GB of RAM and 256GB Storage: NEW HP 250R G10 £555.99 ex.VAT Eek! That price is a fair way beyond our budget! All because we added “business-class” to the description? This is taken from Misco’s website, as HP are only selling their most premium business class devices directly, but it is still a readily available budget business device. Unlike the other 2 devices, this has a 15.6” screen – the new 14” business-class laptops available all cost more than this, so I deemed the 250R a good comparison machine regardless. Somehow, you have to navigate which of these options is actually best value for money, so I’ve thrown them head-to-head (to-head?) in a breakdown based purely off HP’s datasheet’s and website, and third-party CPU performance benchmarks, and ranked them 1st, 2nd and 3rd. Surprise, surprise – in a blog written by a refurbished IT Salesperson, the refurb unit wins! So, don’t just take my word for it based on this chart alone, let’s get into the details of what this all means. Screen: NEW HP Laptop 14” Refurbished HP EliteBook 840 G9 NEW HP 250R G10 14” 1366x768 TN Panel 250 Nits Brightness 3rd 14” 1920x1200 IPS 400 Nits Brightness 1st 15.6” 1920x1080 IPS 250 Nits Brightness 2nd The HP Laptop 14” is the biggest loser here – IPS displays are far superior to TN Panels, and the Refurb 830 G9 unit pips the 250R with its extra screen real-estate, pixel density and much brighter screen. In fact, it has over double the number of pixels of the HP Laptop 14”! As I mentioned the 250R does have the larger display and if that is important to you, then it’s worth keeping in mind. CPU: NEW HP Laptop 14” Refurbished HP EliteBook 840 G9 NEW HP 250R G10 Intel Core 3 – 100U 3rd Intel Core i5 – 1245U 2nd Intel Core 5 – 120U 1st This turned out to be very close; there is not a lot of difference between these three. They all have a TDP of 15W; both the Core 5 and i5 have 10 cores and 12 threads; both the newer CPUs Turbo higher, but the Refurb has the higher base clock speed. Based on comparisons on cpubenchmark.net and technical.city, these are our results. Table data taken directly from https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/5948vs4733vs5892/Intel-3-100U-vs-Intel-i5-1245U-vs-Intel-5-120U RAM: NEW HP Laptop 14” Refurbished HP EliteBook 840 G9 NEW HP 250R G10 8GB DDR4 3200MT/s Not user-upgradable 2nd 8GB DDR5 4800MT/s Upgradable to 64GB Joint 1st 8GB DDR5 5600MT/s Upgradable to 32GB Joint 1st Another clear loser here – despite being 4 years newer than the 840 G9, the New HP Laptop 14” is using slower DDR4 memory, plus it’s not upgradable and is soldered to the motherboard! Given the RAM shortages of 2025/26 this is a tactical way to keep costs down. The 2 business-class devices are tied in 1st place as they both use much faster DDR5. If you need 64GB of RAM, the 840 G9 wins. If you don’t, the 250R supports faster RAM, so comes out on top. Storage: A 3-way tie! They all have 256GB M.2 NVMe drives, they’re all user-upgradable, they all support PCIe Gen 4. Ports: NEW HP Laptop 14” Refurbished HP EliteBook 840 G9 NEW HP 250R G10 1x USB Type-C (10Gbps, Power Delivery, DisplayPort 1.4b) 1x HDMI 1.4b Joint 2nd 2x Thunderbolt 4 USB Type-C (40Gbps, PD, DisplayPort 1.4b) 1x HDMI 2.0 1st 1x USB Type-C (10Gbps, Power Delivery, DisplayPort 1.4b) 1x HDMI 1.4b Joint 2nd They all have 2x USB Type-A (5Gbps) ports, and they all have a headphone/microphone jack too. But the 840 G9 has the higher spec HDMI port, and 2x Thunderbolt 4 ports, that’s double the USB-C and quadruple the speed in each! Wi-Fi: NEW HP Laptop 14” Refurbished HP EliteBook 840 G9 NEW HP 250R G10 Realtek Wi-Fi 6 3rd Intel AX211 Wi-Fi 6e 1st Intel AX201 Wi-Fi 6 2nd This one is straight forward. Intel Wi-Fi cards are better (and more expensive) than Realtek ones, and Wi-Fi 6e can support faster speeds than Wi-Fi 6. HP don't actually do us the courtesy of including what model of Wi-Fi card the Realtek one is! Build Quality: NEW HP Laptop 14” Refurbished HP EliteBook 840 G9 NEW HP 250R G10 Plastic Chassis MIL-STD-810H Tested Joint 2nd All-aluminium chassis MIL-STD-810H Tested 1st Plastic Chassis MIL-STD-810H Tested Joint 2nd Both new laptops are built of plastic – they’ve got a lovely silver coat of paint to look much like their EliteBook counterpart, but the 840 G9 is all Aluminium and built to last. It’s a premium feeling product, and there’s no paint to chip off. Charging: NEW HP Laptop 14” Refurbished HP EliteBook 840 G9 NEW HP 250R G10 45 W AC power adapter (recommended, sold separately Joint 2nd 45 W AC power adapter INCLUDED IN THE PRICE 1st 45 W AC power adapter (recommended, sold separately Joint 2nd I honestly hadn’t realised the whole laptop market was onboard with charging extra for power supplies and lucky for you, ICT Direct still isn’t onboard with it. All our laptops come with a charging brick. Price: HP Laptop 14” HP EliteBook 840 G9 HP 250R G10 NEW RRP: £499.17 Offer Price: £340.83 NEW RRP: £1000 Our Price: £310 NEW RRP: £555.99 Misco Price: £555.99 The RRP should tell you all you need to know – it may be 4 years old but the 840 G9 was valued at around the price of the other 2 laptops combined. It remains a top-end business class laptop, and the clear winner. HP’s top-end laptops today will set you back at least £1000, if not more, but they’re designed to last. That’s why we provide a 3-year Advance Replace Warranty to our managed customers, also included in the price, rather than as a paid return-to-base add-on from new. So, is the EliteBook 840 G9 the best offering for you? It’s the cheapest, and it wins by far the most categories when put head-to-head against new alternatives. It’s the toughest, with an aluminium chassis designed to survive the daily combat of school warfare. It’s easily customisable both at purchase and once in your hands – we can configure it to more RAM, or a larger NVMe; or you can upgrade it yourself further along the line. It feels daft to be typing this but... IT COMES WITH A CHARGER. There is only one more question to ask. How many can I put you down for?

The oxford dictionary doesn't define OOMF as a 12th Gen Intel i7 with 16GB of DDR5 and an Nvidia T550 GPU. BUT I DO. We've got our hands on some lovely HP ZBook Firefly 14 G9's with some cracking specs: CPU: i7-1265U (10 Cores, 12 Threads, Max Turbo of 4.8GHz) RAM: 16GB DDR5 Memory Storage: 512GB NVMe Display: 14" WUXGA (1920x1200) GPU: Nvidia T550 Mobile (4GB GDDR6) A Grade Refurbished Condition BUT WHAT DO THEY LOOK LIKE?! Nice eh? But that just begs one more question. HOW MUCH FOR AN A GRADE? £475 exVAT Reach out to me at [email protected] for a quote and if you're after several, many, or even lots, we can look into a volume discount.

(Posting in same forum as the original topic) Dear All, A you may or may not know, I was the lucky winner of the stonking main prize in ICT Direct's prize draw. http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows/200985-ict-direct-winter-upgradathon.html. In the same week, I also won the "weekly draw" of a to-be-decided bit of kit. As the draw was to help all the winners out (while providing us all with a bit of fun and drumming up some publicity for the lovely peeps at ICT Direct) I feel that I ought to spread the joy out a bit more and so I've suggested to @ICTDirect_Dave that the weekly prize (hey, I'm not a saint!) should metaphorically be "thrown back in the pot". After mulling over how best to do this, we couldn't make up our minds. It would save Dave (or me) a lot of work to just pick someone, but might lead to accusations of favouritism. I guess I could just have said "offer it to whoever on the QT", but it seemed somehow underhand. Plus (and this isn't coming from Dave!), why not get a few more eyeballs on their company? Whilst looking at the previous winners and responses to the thread it struck me that one member took the time to help others out by applying their Photoshop skills and sharing the results: @DJ-1701 so... POLL TIME! Do you think that @DJ-1701 should get a mystery prize from Dave, should those who've contributed to the original thread go in the hat, or would you rather it was an open draw? (Possibly with previous winners ineligible). Or something else (state in thread)? Poll closes at Midnight tonight in order to give Dave a chance to do a draw tomorrow if necessary.

Evening, A big thanks to John Graham at ICT Direct (a forum sponsor) for quickly providing a quote yesterday for a large number of machines which we ordered today. Excellent service and machines arriving next week. Recycled machines is the way forward everyone. So thanks John @ictdirect. Gareth