I've been tasked to find a decent budget laptop, for no more than £500/600euro/$700
I've not even used a laptop in years let alone know what is good and what is bad for todays standards.

The needs are quite simple, basic web browsing, word processing etc. can handle images and mp3's etc. the normal stuff basically.
Two major things which are high priority are streaming/downloading and watching videos, and wifi/mobile internet connection.

The problem I have that is any craptop these days should be able to do all that, but what you can't establish from looking at specifications online is the other stuff, like build-quality, how good the track-pad is, how clear is the screen, how good the built in wifi is etc.

I literally have no idea who makes decent laptops these days, can anyone help me plz?

ThinkPad series were always of high quality afaik (as in reliable, not sure about other ergonomic stuff, havent touched em in a while)

Any toshiba.

as above, the laptops I'v had that I liked other than my macbook (which is like 100$ too expensive for your budget) is a toshiba (this one lasted a long time because it had great graphics) and Thinkpads back when IBM made them, I assume quality has dropped since IBM days and Lenovo taking over but they are still considered good from what I hear.

dell also makes decent stuff and have really great service if shit goes wrong at any point (they once priority mailed me new keys because my cat had chewed on them. for no cost, in one day).

fuck any acer shit.

my waifu got one of these for £230, sounds like its just what you need

All the Toshiba laptops I've owned have been admirable. And generally they put enough power inside them to actually drive the display at it's native resolution without much stuttering. Sadly they all die horrible firey deaths after about 2-3 years. That power they put in... too many horses in too little a box.

Right now I'm on an HP Envy and it's display is terrible. The display doesn't even get the colours right. Suppose for reasons we don't need to go into one takes a photo of some things and lets say they are light Green, Cyan, Turqoise, Light Blue, Lilac, violet and purple, the camera has a hard enough time displaying those colours because all cameras have shitty cheap LCDs on them even though it is actually taking the pictures correctly. When you put the image on the HP Envy it just gets worse, they all appear light blue. Upload those same images to the web, view on a different machine, the colours appear correct.
If the problem is one of colour calibration, then the remedial options are too hard to find, I've been through all the colour calibrations I can find and none changed anything.

The mousepad is ok and battery life is reasonable and mostly it seems to sort itself out, drivers were easy to find from HP.

Like any laptop it's specs on paper just don't translate into real world horses. Slow as hell. Has survived 3 foot drops onto wood while operational.

That's about all I know. I won't stray from Toshiba again.

I've had 3 Laptops (3 years ago) and can definitely recommend Toshiba. Had the most customization with the Graphic Settings without it taking a dump. Most other Laptops shit themselves if you try and increase the resolution past 1024x768 (a lot of them can't). Which is terrible if you want to run 2 clients on eve, Photoshop something, or just generally need the working space for something. It also lasted the longest and had the least pre-installed shit on it too. (This is something I hate Sony/Dell for, although Dell at least have decent customer service).

i always remember toshibas to fall to bits tho

http://www.ebuyer.com/351922-lenovo-b570-laptop-n2f25uk

this looks good, anyone got any hate for lenovo?

I hate the pros cheap series (T400 iirc) from lenovo, it's a lot like the old IBM ones except really bad, cheap plastic, hard keys feeling etc. they saved too much on that.

But the multimedias ones for general public are fine.

You can also have a look at the samsung 300E series, this brand has the best screens for the price imo. Sony Vaios are also a lot cheaper nowadays, I hate the brand but could be worth it idk.

I'd avoid HP like the plague, MSI do ok laptops in that price range but everything is average so I'd rather have a really good samsung screen for the same price.

I like Toshibas, really, I do. But like you said, they tend to burn out. The last Toshiba I had put out fire from its vent. Not air, fire. Always and forever. No matter what it was doing, fire. It only lasted about three years but they were good years.

And then I got a new Vaio at a hell of a discount because Best Buy is dumb. Something tells me you probably won't get anything like that, though.