It should work really well.

I am not the greatest on predicting the future, but it has plenty of cores and cpu power.

I know some people who buy Dell Latitude after a 4 year lease expires, and they have said i5 version 8 or 9 is plenty fast for streaming or productivity stuff like Office or Adobe Editor for PDFs.

Sounds great for general use. I know many people by Dell Latitudes returned from a lease with i5 version 8 or 9, and they worked great. Easy to add more ram or replace the battery if you needed all day work while unplugged.

I think for really simple stuff like Roblox it will work. It just cannot play the games with more graphics.

I bought a Ryzen 7 5700u, and it definitely can play the simple games like Minecraft and Roblox.

I saw some good youtube tests on a Ryzen 5 5500u. It seems especially good for Minecraft and the like.

It seems the Ryzen 7s on a budget machine are decent if you want to play basic things, especially if things like Roblox or Minecraft were good enough.

The newer version of what I picked up is a Ryzen 7 7730. It is decent on basic stuff.

I heard the Ryzen 5 5500u is supposed to be really good for gaming. It seems to have a great turbo mode. So, if you find a new or mint used budget laptop with that it should perform well if the ram is 16 or can be upgraded.

This Vivobook looked really good.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/sku/6542092.p?skuId=6542092

I have had good luck with the Ryzen 7 7730u and prior version.

I got an Ideapad 5 from Lenovo with a LCD FPS screen. It depends how much you care, but I find streaming video looks good. I sometimes watch Sunday Night NFL on Peacock, but the colors look good to me re all the uniforms and action looking the same as a 1080 tv…

Asus sells a lot of OLED laptops if that’s what you want.

I saw this review when I was shopping around. It looked pretty solid. Some think the HP hinges are a little weak, but I think likely some people are rough on things.

I have really liked the Lenovo laptops. I have liked several Lenovo Ideapads. I know that the Yoga 7i is a good 2 in 1, but I don’t know if it is actually better. I think both are likely good.

Here is the review of the older HP Envy. I saw the new one when ordering a refrigerator a month ago. It looked good to me.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/394830/hp-envy-x360-15-2021-review.html

the build on the last one looked good. I read PC World, and they really liked the Nitro 5 with i5-12500H and a 3060 gpu. This one from Lenovo looks like you would get similar good results. They tested it with some older games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider, but it seemed like the play was pretty good. I think they could get about 90 fps on a high setting.

I think for right now 8gb should be okay. I have 12 gb with an Ideapad, and I always have plenty of room. It is just hard to predict the future, but if you are doing basic stuff like office and Adobe PDF editor. I think you will be fine.

Maybe as an experiment do a short zoom meeting or cisco webex (I think those are free if they are short) with a friend and open up some pdf or office documents.

Many people would love an ultra lite. So, if you sell when you start needing super intensive software, I think the price would be good at ebay or FB marketplace.

That does look solid. The Ryzen 5 5500u actually is faster and better for games. Acer only recently stopped selling an Aspire 3 with a Ryzen 5 5500u. So, it should be available new.

Walmart had some good deals too that seem to be still be available. They had an Aspire 3 with an i5 version 12 at 400. They also had an Asus Vivobook with an i3-N chip, which is actually pretty good for about 375.

I also saw Staples had some nice Ideapad 3 models with i3 version 11 or 12.

I bought a Ryzen 7 5700u last year this time. It has really nice speed. It is very speedy on MS Office, Adobe PDF Editor, Zoom, light gaming, streaming video from Prime.

I do think replacing would help. I am in the US. You could pick up a decent model refurbished Dell Latitude from Dell elsewhere. When you had more funds you could resell the Dell and pick up gaming laptops later.

Dell Latitude with an Intel i5 version 8 for $350.00.

If in the US, I saw a decent Acer Aspire 3 with Intel i5 for $400. It looked decent.

Staples has good deals on Lenovo Ideapads.

The ram is super easy. Youtube likely has the same model being opened up.

SSD not that hard, but I have not done that specifically.

Adding ram should help the most. Going to 16gb with 2 8gb seems to help. Many swear by 2 twin sticks re dual channel ram eliminating bottlenecks.

Since your laptop is not that old, you could likely resell at a nice price if you wanted to upgrade to a Ryzen 9 and 4060 or 4070.

They have good prices on good brands. You can return to your laptop if it fails during the warranty. They have a good selection on HP and Lenovo from what I have seen.

I sometimes read r/sysadmin they thought that the 5000 or 7000 much better made than Vostro. So, I would do that. It is easy to ram to a Latitude. So, if you save some money with a 8gb order sounds solid.

One nice Windows machine is HP Pavilion with Ryzen 7730u and 16gb ram at HP.com.

Macbook more premium. The Ryzen 5 cpu is good. So, you are getting a decent budget laptop with nice speed from Acer, but I think the apple speakers and screen will be better for sure.