It’s distressingly easy to drop serious coin on a laptop right now. Manufacturers seem hell-bent on packing as much performance as they can into slimmer and slimmer packages, which drives the price way up. But you don’t always need a top-of-the-line laptop with loads of RAM and screamingly fast graphics cards if you’re just doing TPS reports on the train. Thankfully, we’ve hunted up some deals on budget laptops that give you the most bang for your buck. Coming in at under $500 on sale, these three machines are durable, portable and just powerful enough to get the job done.
Dell Inspiron 15 Laptop
$250 off makes this an ultra-budget laptop with decent performance
$399.99
at Dell
$649.99
Save $250.00
Dell’s budget machines are reliable portables, packing in solid if unspectacular components into traditional casings. The Inspiron 15 is exactly the kind of unobtrusive laptop you want for business trips or college classwork, with an AMD Ryzen 7 5700U 8-core/16-thread Mobile Processor running the show along with 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. Nice features include a 120Hz refresh rate anti-glare screen and lots of ports for peripherals. It’s not going to wow anybody, but these laptops last a long time and give great value for the money.If that’s not quite what you’re looking for then get your eyes on our picks for the best budget laptops of 2024.
Lenovo IdeaPad 1i Laptop
Solid specs and robust battery life make this a top pick
$379.00
at Walmart
$649.00
Save $270.00
This is a big $270 price drop on a solid Lenovo portable. We reviewed it in 2022 and had good things to say about the sturdy plastic build and solid keyboard and touchpad, something Lenovo machines are known for. Our review was also for the lowest-end configuration, and the one on sale is significantly better. As a budget laptop, the components aren’t spectacular, but the Intel Core i5-1235U processor gets the job done and 8GB RAM and a 512 GB SSD are pretty standard for this price bracket. Battery life up to 10 hours makes it a smart choice for traveling.
Acer Aspire 3 Laptop
A full HD touchscreen and a solid processor for 10% off
$369.99
at Amazon
$409.99
Save $40.00
Acer’s Aspire line is another set of solid budget laptops, and the 2023 Aspire 3 hits a very sweet spot between price and performance. Running off of the AMD Ryzen 5 7520U processor, it’s more than capable of running productivity software and even doing some gaming. We reviewed it and called it “a simple and effective budget laptop,” giving special notice to its extensive battery life and up-to-date WiFi support. This configuration ships with 8GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD, along with Windows 11 Home.
Recommended by Our Editors
Want to see a few more options? Then check out our rundown of the best laptop deals of 2024.
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