Laptop recommendations

b52c4653883427fa​  What country are you in, and what's your budget?  A range is fine, and please list it in your currency.  Let me know if there are any other considerations as well, for example weight or screen size.

England sorry. In my head a £500 laptop should run it but I’m way out of the hardware game and have been for some time so willing to accept that it might come to more than that

b52c4653883427fa​  What do you think of this one?

https://www.argos.co.uk/product/4460048

Its GPU is about as slow as a dedicated card can get these days, but it IS a discrete card and therefore faster than any integrated graphics chip you'd find in anything (new) in this price range.  The GPU should be able to run Sims 4 on at least a combination of high and ultra graphics settings, depending on how smooth your wife wants the game to feel and whether she uses custom content (and what kind).  It also has 16 GB RAM, which is important though not absolutely critical, and more than enough storage for Sims 4 and all associated user data.

If you don't like this one for whatever reason, let me know, and I'll list some other options.  However, gaming laptops are starting in the £800 range these days.  Even non-gaming laptops with 16 GB RAM, which is much more important in a laptop without a discrete GPU, and otherwise suitable hardare look like they're mostly £500 and up, although I did see a couple cheaper options.  So I'd like to know how much above £500 you'd be willing to go and what kind of upgrade would make it worth the higher price, e.g. a gaming laptop but only up to £700 or the best non-gaming laptop £600 can buy.

It’s going on a 0% cc balance transfer so 🤣

what if we are saying 17” display I’m not sure what exactly starts dedicating it is a gaming laptop as opposed to normal apart from high ram and big graphics cards?

b52c4653883427fa​  Lots of laptops are marketed as "gaming laptops," especially those from third-party sellers where no one is policing the product description.  But what the term really means is that the laptop has hardware capable of running somewhat-demanding games.  These days at least, that means a dedicated graphics card, and not one of the types tuned for professional workloads.  There used to be low-level discrete GPUs that didn't qualify as gaming-worthy, but those don't really exist these days.

The other feature that gaming laptops have is a more powerful cooling system, so the hardware doesn't have to throttle itself constantly to keep within thermal limits.  That's great for long play sessions but also means the laptop will run louder, at least in the price tier you're considering.

RAM and storage don't have anything to do with the designation because aside from not having enough of one of them, they don't really affect performance unless the components are very low-end.

While the fastest integrated chips can certainly run Sims 4 on high settings, they're not as fast as gaming-tier GPUs, and they don't come with the beefier cooling system either.  But plenty of players have a good experience on this class of machine as well.  It really depends on what the person in question is looking for.

£7-800 on a 17” laptop? What would you suggest?

b52c4653883427fa​  Unfortunately, there aren't many 17" laptops available at all, at least not in this price range.  (There are plenty of these in the high-end gaming laptop category, but I doubt you want to spend an extra £1,000 just for a slightly larger screen.)  There are a reasonable number of of 16" options though, including a few I'm listing here that are right on the edge of what's required to run Sims 4 on ultra graphics settings.  Again, this would depend on how your wife plays, what extra content she uses (if any), and how smooth she wants the game to be.  But a mix of high and ultra settings would likely be more than fine.

These two have the same processor and graphics chip, screens with equivalent brightness and quality, and 16 GB memory.  The more expensive one has twice the storage, but that wouldn't be necessary for Sims 4 alone.  Still, your wife might have a use case for it.

https://www.argos.co.uk/product/8029368
https://www.argos.co.uk/product/7956470

This one has a newer processor, although not any better as far as Sims 4 is concerned, but its graphics chip is somewhat faster, maybe in the 10-15% range for gaming.

https://ao.com/product/x1607aamb019w-asus-vivobook-16-x1607aamb019w-laptop--silver-111136-251.aspx

There are a few other options along these lines that are a little more expensive, still under £800, but they're not an improvement.  So I would consider these three first, and only look for others if you don't like any of them for one reason or another.  In that case, let me know what it is about these that doesn't work for you, although like I said, a 17" screen just isn't going to happen in this price range, that is unless you buy a used model, probably on a peer-to-peer site like Ebay.