While not a standout in the design department, this convertible is relatively lightweight and we appreciate that it comes with a backlit keyboard - something you don’t often see in laptops at this price point. Plus its bright 13.3-inch 1080p touchscreen is great for working in Google Docs and streaming on Netflix. It runs on an 11th-generation Intel Core i3 processor, has 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. That’s because it still has the best mix of specs and features that will suit most Chrome OS lovers. It’s been a couple of years since we named Lenovo’s IdeaPad Flex 5i our favorite Chromebook and it remains our top pick today. Read our full review of the Apple MacBook Air M1 $849 at Amazon $869 at B&H Photo $899 at Adorama Best budget Windows laptop: HP Pavilion Aero 13 Also, we’ve frequently seen the MacBook Air M1 drop to $800 or $900 when it goes on sale at Amazon and other retailers. It may be at the top end of our budget price range, starting at $999, but it will be money well spent. Battery life clocked in at nearly 16.5 hours in our testing, which will be more than enough for a full day’s work. The 13.3-inch Retina display is lovely, and it’s accompanied by a comfortable keyboard (sans TouchBar) and a spacious trackpad. It may not be the refined profile that the M2 machine has, but it’s still thin and light, and since it lacks a fan, it’ll be super quiet as well. The Air M1 has the classic wedge design we’ve seen in this family of notebooks for years, which some will appreciate. You’re still going to get impressive performance from the entry-level MacBook Air M1 that will be just right for most people as a daily driver. That hasn’t changed even after the launch of the M2 chipset and the latest Air powered by it. The M1 processor gave the Air blazing fast performance, with a responsiveness akin to that of an iPad Pro. The first machine with Apple’s custom system-on-a-chip, the Air M1 was released at the end of 2020 and proved that the company didn’t need Intel to power its notebooks anymore. There’s a reason Apple kept the MacBook Air M1 in its lineup even after coming out with the 13-inch and 15-inch Air M2 laptops. The best cheap laptops Best budget laptop overall: MacBook Air M1 Third-party retailers like Amazon and Walmart also have their own refurbishment programs for laptops and other gadgets as well. Apple, Dell and Microsoft all have official refurbishment processes that their devices go through before they’re put back on the market that verifies the machines work properly and are in good condition. Buying refurbished tech can be tricky if you’re unfamiliar with a brand’s or merchant’s policies surrounding what they classify as “refurbished.” But it’s not impossible - for laptops, we recommend going directly to the manufacturer for refurbished devices. Refurbished laptops are another option to consider if you need a new machine and don’t want to spend a ton of money. You’ll find at least one or two USB-C ports on the newest machines, which means you may need a separate dongle if you frequently have to connect to SD cards. Many laptops closer to $1,000 will have fewer ports than their more affordable counterparts (as counterintuitive as that may seem). A few of the latest models have 1080p webcams, but you may want to consider a standalone peripheral if you spend a ton of time on Zoom meetings.īe sure to check out the port situation as well. Any affordable laptop worth purchasing will have a built-in webcam, but most of them top out at 720p. We recommend picking a machine with a mostly metal body, a screen that has at least a 1080p resolution and a keyboard and trackpad area that’s relatively spacious. That should give you enough space for programs and files, plus room for future operating system updates.Īfter determining the best performance you can get while sticking to your budget, it’s also worth examining a few different design aspects. As a general rule of thumb, try to go for a laptop that has at least a 256GB SSD (this only goes for macOS and Windows machines, as Chromebooks are a bit different). The latter is a bit more personal: how much onboard storage you need really depends on how many apps, files, photos, documents and more you will save locally. For the former, we recommend laptops with at least 8GB of RAM anything with less than that will have a hard time multitasking and managing all those browser tabs. We recommend trying to find a notebook with the most up-to-date internals as possible, but know that if you pick a machine with a CPU that’s one generation behind, it probably will not significantly affect performance.Īlong with processors, you should also consider the amount of memory and storage you need in a daily driver. You might be able to find configuration options with the latest generation CPU chipsets, or you may have to go for one that has a slightly older processor. Arguably the biggest thing to look for in a cheap laptop is a decent spec sheet.
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