Best budget laptop for 2024

There are a ton of models under $1,000 on the market at any given time, and a good portion of them cost less than $500. As long as you manage your expectations on options and specs, you can still get quite a bit out of a budget laptop model , including good battery life and a fairly lightweight laptop case. (If you’re replacing an old Windows laptop that no longer runs Windows, consider turning it into a Chromebook.)

Price

If the stats that Intel and PC manufacturers are throwing at us are correct, you’ll last at least three years with this laptop, so don’t skimp if you can afford to stretch your budget a bit to better specs.

Even better, consider a laptop with a replaceable battery (if you can find one), expandable memory (although memory is usually soldered to the motherboard), graphics card and storage, or all of the above. If you do, search the user reviews and comments for people’s experiences upgrading a particular model. Sometimes this requires proprietary components or access to difficult-to-reach locations in the system.

For one cheap gaming laptopyou’ll still have to break the $500 ceiling to support most games. The least expensive budget laptops suitable for a solid gaming experience (those with reasonably powerful discrete graphics processors) will run you closer to $700. Here are our recommendations if you’re looking for the best gaming laptop under $1,000. If you like living on the edge, cloud gaming services like Nvidia GeForce Now and Microsoft Xbox Game Pass Ultimate’s Cloud Gaming let you play games on laptops with specs that reach the sub-$500 mark.

One bright spot is that you don’t have to settle for a traditional clamshell laptop with a fixed screen and keyboard. You can also get a convertible laptop (also called a two-in-one), which has a screen that can be flipped to turn the screen into a tablet so you can stream or give a presentation in comfort.

You can also try to make your current laptop last a little longer. If you need something to keep you entertained for a few months, look for possible places to buy reconditioned machines and discover non-profit or education discounts if you qualify.

Windows, Mac or Chromebook

You won’t find cheap laptop prices for a MacBook or any other Apple laptop. At best, you can get the current entry-level MacBook Air for $999. You may be able to get it for less on sale, but it will never really reach ‘budget’ territory. Even an iPad will run you over $500 if you buy the optional keyboard (although it might be less if you’re looking for sales on the tablet or keyboard), which is above our budget here. A basic iPad with an inexpensive Bluetooth keyboard and an inexpensive iPad stand may be sufficient.

It’s easier to find cheap Chromebooks than cheap Windows laptops, making them one of the most popular budget laptops on the market, although we’re also seeing many more Chromebooks in the $500 to $1,000 range and more Windows laptops in the range of $500. These Windows systems are often repurposed Chromebook configurations that really can’t run Windows comfortably.

Google’s ChromeOS isn’t nearly as power-hungry as Windows, so you can get by with a lower processor, slower storage, and less screen resolution or RAM; just some of the components that make a laptop expensive. The downside is that Chrome and Google apps consume more memory than you might expect, and if you go too low with the processor or skimp on memory, the system will still feel sluggish.

While Chromebooks can run ChromeOS-specific apps and Android apps, some people need the full Windows operating system to run heavier applications such as video editing suites. With that comes the need for a faster processor with more cores, more memory (8 GB of RAM is the bare minimum, although 16 GB is preferable), and more storage space for applications and the operating system itself.

ChromeOS is also a very different experience from Windows; make sure the applications you need are a Chrome appAndroid app or Linux app before you make the jump. Because Chromebooks are cloud-first devices, you don’t need a lot of built-in storage.

That also means that if you spend most of your time surfing the web, writing, streaming video, or playing Android games, they’ll suit you well. If you want to play Android games, make sure you get a Chromebook with a touchscreen.

Mate

Consider whether it will be important to you in the future to have a lighter, thinner laptop or one with a touchscreen and good battery life. The size is mainly determined by the screen, which in turn affects the battery size, thickness and weight of the laptop.

Ultraportable laptops, typically 13 inches or smaller, are a rarity under $700. It turns out that making things smaller doesn’t always equal cheaper. You will generally find budget laptops in the sizes 14, 15.6 and 17.3 inches. Additionally, 11.6-inch Chromebooks are attractive because of their low prices. We only recommend this size for the youngest students.

In the budget price range, you have to beware of screen terminology when it comes to specs: an “HD” screen may not always be a true high-definition screen. HD, with a resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 pixels, is called ‘Full HD’, so marketers can call lower resolution displays (1,280 x 720 pixels) HD. For Chromebooks, HD usually refers to a screen with a resolution of 1,366 x 768 pixels. On the plus side, the boom in 14-inch laptops is trickling down to this price range, allowing for more FHD options in that size.

A common complaint we see is about “washed out” displays with poor viewing angles. Unfortunately, that’s one of the downsides: many of these use TN (twisted nematic) screen technology, which is cheap, but meh. Look for IPS (in-plane switching) LCDs that are better for angle viewing, brightness, and color.

Processor, memory and storage

Many Windows laptops in this range use AMD Athlon and lower A-series or Intel Celeron and Pentium processors to achieve the lower prices. We don’t recommend going with an Athlon instead of a Ryzen or a Celeron/Pentium instead of a Core: Windows is too heavy for them, and combined with the 4GB memory that many of them have, you’ll find they might be terribly slow at best.

SSDs can make a big difference in how fast Windows performance feels compared to a spinning hard drive, although thankfully old hard drives have become a lot rarer. Not all SSDs are equally fast and cheaper laptops usually have slower drives. If you need a smaller drive (in this price range they tend to max out at 256GB) you can always add an external drive or two (or five, for some of us) at some point or use cloud storage to get a to strengthen small internal drive.

For memory, we highly recommend 16 GB of RAM (absolute minimum 8 GB). RAM is where the operating system stores all the data for currently running applications, and it can fill up quickly (for example, Chrome is currently taking up 7 GB of my memory). Then it starts switching between RAM and SSD, which is a little slower. Many laptops under $500 have 4GB or 8GB, which combined with a slower drive can make for a frustratingly slow Windows laptop experience. Additionally, many laptops now have the memory soldered to the motherboard. Most manufacturers disclose this, but if the RAM type is LPDDR, it is soldered in and cannot be upgraded. Some PC manufacturers solder the memory on and also leave an empty internal slot for adding RAM. You may need to contact the laptop manufacturer or check the laptop’s full specifications online to confirm this.