Little bit of background, my wife has an Asus gaming laptop that’s always worked for her, but since updating from Windows 10 to 11 it just ridiculously overheats for no reason no matter what we try. The only halfway decent looking laptop in stock was a $1500 Asus TUF that had an RTX 5060 in it which I thought wasn’t worth it, so for shits and giggles I said let’s just go look at PC components. Welp, they had literally everything in stock and it wasn’t significantly more expensive than the laptop, so now she’s got a better computer than I do.

I’m looking for a laptop to buy for my wife that she can use for work. It would be used for social media, Microsoft office, Canva, and some very light video editing. Needs to be available from Best Buy as I already have a line of credit there and would prefer to stay under $1,000. Looking for something around 16” and needs to have a number pad. Just want something for her that will be fairly quick, good battery life, and usable for the next 3-4 years. TIA.

I just bought a dell G7 gaming laptop at bestbuy but I'm looking at them now online and seeing a difference in price, which of course is to be expected. But I've never made such a big purchase online. Can anyone tell me the pros and cons of buying online vs. buying at best buy? The guy that helped me talked to me for a long time, helping me decide what to get, but was it worth the 300 dollars?

If you had up to $550 for a lap top that would be used for basic functions, like taxes, resume updates and such, paying bills, and 3d printing. what would be a safe bet to go with from best buy. i have gift cards to there.

EDIT - I wont be doing any gaming, but it might be used for a garage golf sim if i ever have the opportunity to do that.