Sofa laptop

Guys, those that know me will know that I know jack about this sort of thing. I am a Victorian born in the wrong era.
Our Mac laptop has gone pop. Died. And already sold on.
I need a new (new-to-me) sofa-browsing laptop, that the banner ads on RB won't slow to a crawl, will deal with ebay just fine, and be able to stream and watch youtube vids and vimeo without buffering and stalling all the time.
Ideally I want small ish so it can go in my courier bag and travel.

Macbook air i5 seem to be available for around the £300 mark and seem "ok" ty my unknowing eyes (in the same way Altus still looks fine and dandy to a non-cyclist).
Does this come into the category, of "don't be seduced and be a twat, get something proper", or "yeah, it's a bit old and will be fine".

Happy to take recommendation from the RB crowd. Thoughts please.

Have to admit Chrome notebooks are appealing to me and I’ve been solidly Apple for years

Re:

To be blunt, any laptop produced in the last five years or so ought to be able to meet your needs - browsing and watching videos aren't especially demanding. It would have to be a spectacularly rubbish machine to fail at those tasks.

It's more likely that a poor network connection is the cause of any buffering issues. Adobe Flash might be the source of banner ad woes - it's a notoriously troublesome beast - but it's on its way out now. Anti-virus programs can also be resource hogs, and you would need one on a Windows laptop. Chromebooks look interesting and you could get a new one for the price of a used MacBook, so it might be worth taking a trip down to your local PC emporium to check one out before going down the used MacBook route.

One way or the other, though, a big American company will be keeping tabs on you to some extent. Get yourself some Linux skills if you want to avoid that.

Cool- cheers for the info!
Just pulled the trigger on an ex-display Toshiba chromebook with warranty for £150 delivered. Should meet my needs, as I have a heavyweight PC for proper number crunching stuff.
Cheers for the advice folks, I shall update the thread with thoughts once I get rolling.

Hmmm... that didn't go as expected... search continues....

What happened? Was lurking with interest.

Ex demo turned out to be in good shape, but with no battery whatsoever. As soon as the power cable unplugged, it turns off. First stab it seems suitable for my needs- chrome browser and gmail, which is all I need for the sofa.
REALLY light, and kind of like a macbook air, but £500 cheaper and a teeny bit more flimsy. For the money it seems cool.
Just going through the returns saga now- hope the seller is good with their 30-day warranty.

really light as it has no battery, which kind of defeats the point of a laptop really

Hope you get your money back though

Mark

or just buy a new battery...at leas then the battery is new

Re:

Do you need the keyboard?

Tablets are pretty good and something like a 10" Lenovo Tab 4 Plus 10 should be fine.
(Definitely the plus model).

You should be able to have a play with one in Currys, then see where is cheapest.

We have the 8" version Lenovo Tab4 Plus 8 and it is very nice. My 10"ers are old but the size is good to read.

Unfortunately prices bob up and down and I don't think they are at their cheapest.