Reddit mentions of ASUS VivoBook F412DA 14" Laptop - AMD Ryzen 5 - 1080p 8GB DDR4 RAM 256GB SATA Solid State Drive Backlit Chiclet Keyboard

Hi, if you can extend just over budget, the ASUS Vivobook F412DA is a good option for you. You get a very portable package, Ryzen 5 processor, 8 GB RAM, and a 256 GB SSD.

If you could add an extra 50 dollars to your budget, the Lenovo Flex 14 would be a good choice. That 12 gb of ram will really help you for lets say, chrome tabs. If your budget is under 500 firm, I would go with this Asus Vivobook. You should also consider Chromebooks, if your workload doesn't require windows as they are solid machines for basic tasks

I suppose you are going to be doing a lot of writing so I really do not recommend a laptop with only 1366x768 resolution screen on a 15.6" laptop. I recommend something with a 1080p screen to see more on the screen at once... things will be smaller, but sharper compared to 1366x768.

For $510 you can buy the following Acer Aspire 5 Slim laptop with a quad core i5-8250u, 1080p screen, 8GB of RAM and 256GB SSD. At 4lbs it should be easy enough to carry around. While it claims 9.5 hours of battery life that is usually an exaggeration, it might last that long if you simply turn it, decrease the screen brightness to the lowest setting and walk away. It's probably more like 5.5 to 6 hours with light usage. Read the user reviews to see if anyone comments on battery life.

https://www.amazon.com/Acer-i5-8265U-Keyboard-Fingerprint-A515-54-51DJ/dp/B07RF2123Z/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=i5-8250u&qid=1567041414&s=gateway&sr=8-4

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If you want to play some games from time to time or you want a smaller 14" laptop, then the ASUS VivoBook F412DA seems to be a good deal with it's specs... no reviews. It has an AMD quad core Ryzen 5 3500u APU, 8GB of RAM, 256GB SSD and a 1080p screen for $479. It has a Radeon RX Vega 8 graphics core which is roughly similar to a nVidia 940m dedicated GPU from 2015. It's nowhere near as powerful as a GTX 1050, but considering it is integrated that is pretty impressive. The above laptop has an Intel UHD 620 integrated graphics core which is a bit less powerful than a nVidia 920m. It can play some light games, but not as well as the Vega 8. The Ryzen 5 3500u itself is probably 10% less powerful than the i5-8250u. Not that big of a deal

https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-VivoBook-F412DA-14-Laptop/dp/B07W7PWTL5/ref=sr_1_18?keywords=ryzen+5+3500u&qid=1567042210&s=gateway&sr=8-18

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Quad core CPUs are "in fashion", but if you want to save money you can drop down to a dual core processor. They are still fine for typical usage like watching videos and surfing the web, and still okay for playing light games.