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So, you fancy buying one of the best laptops around, but don’t want to empty your wallet in the process? Take some crucial advice: Don’t let big brands with multi-million-dollar marketing campaigns fool you into thinking you have to pay upwards of $1,000 to get a quality device. The best budget laptop will compare favorably with that fancy ultrabook, and the average user won’t notice the difference.
You can actually get a brand-new laptop for half the price of a MacBook, and we aren’t talking about poorly made, subpar options that run slower than your smartphone. We’re talking about cheap laptops that are both high-tech and responsive, helping you write, browse the internet, store files, and more.
There’s a whole world of laptops to be had for cheap. Elsewhere, we’ve rounded up the best laptops for students and the best gaming laptops for any budget, but we wanted to gather all of the best budget laptops into one place. In this guide, you’ll find the best cheap laptops that are actually worth buying.
What are the most important things to look for in a laptop?
We need to set expectations right away: The laptops on this list will not come with the latest and greatest processors, graphics cards, or displays. You have to splash quite a lot for those features. For students or workers who just want something to get them through the day, things like ports and memory are more important.
Above all else, you want as much RAM, as much storage, and as high a processor speed as you can get. More RAM means the computer can handle more applications at once, more storage means you can fit more applications on it, and a speedier processor means it can work those applications more efficiently.
If you want to record audio with a microphone or use a mouse, you’ll need USB ports, and an HDMI port goes a long way if you like streaming on a TV or using a second monitor. Much to the annoyance of photographers and videographers, in-built microSD card readers are now a thing of the past, but you’ll be thankful for an ethernet port when your WiFi starts playing up.
What is the best cheap laptop in 2023?
We’ve checked out everything on offer and lined up a selection of the best cheap laptops around, including impressive devices from reliable brands like Microsoft, Acer, and HP. There’s something for everyone on this list, so we recommend taking your time and considering all of the options.
How we tested
We constructed this list through a mix of hands-on testing and online research. Both the Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 2 and Acer Aspire 5 were thoroughly tested in person and put through their paces across several days of non-stop use. We worked with them, wrote on them, streamed videos through them, and did anything else we could think of to push the limits of their functionality.
We chose the other laptops on our list for their impressive hardware specs and age, which suggests they’ll be well-optimized for the latest version of Windows. When researching devices online, we paid special attention to their processors (particularly the generation they belonged to) and maximum RAM, as these will most acutely impact their performance. We also took other factors, like the number of internal fans or whether their batteries could be replaced into account.
For the purposes of this review, we looked primarily for cheap laptops under $500, with one notable exception. In our hands-on review, we were impressed with the Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 2, so we included it despite the $619 price tag (which is still firmly in the budget category).
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