When picking out the best laptop for your budget, you don’t want to spend big money on features you don’t need. The best budget laptop models can handle all your everyday tasks like checking emails, scrolling through social media, typing up documents and more, and they can be available for less than $500.
Finding a good budget-friendly laptop is a lot easier than it was a year ago, although inflation has driven up prices some. It’s possible to find a good laptop under $500, but you may need to shop around and wait for a discount or a holiday sale. Otherwise, you may need to spend closer to $700 to get a laptop that’ll last several years. Also, you won’t find any current MacBooks at these prices: a new entry-level MacBook Air is $1,000 and you’ll have to hit a good sale or pick up a refurbished one to get a MacBook for less.
The good news is, we’re here to help. If you’re searching for a laptop under $500, we’ve tested and reviewed the best budget laptops you can buy right now. Not sure what to look for in a good budget laptop? Jump to the buying advice right below our recommendations. This advice is based on our years of testing and review experience if you want to continue your budget laptop hunt on your own.
Use these picks to sort through the competition. Because there are a lot of cheap laptops that aren’t worth it, try not to make rash decisions when buying.
Best budget laptops
The HP Laptop 17 is a good pick if you want everyday performance and a bigger display. It’s perfect for home office tasks, entertainment and just general computing. Battery life is also good at nearly 9 hours in our tests. Although the configuration we reviewed is $650, HP offers many configuration options so that you can balance price and performance to match your needs. It’s also frequently on sale for much less. And if you’d rather have a smaller laptop, HP makes both 14- and 15.6-inch models in this line too.
The Acer Aspire 5 continues to be one of the best laptop deals available. Available in 14-, 15.6- and 17.3-inch sizes, I am partial to the 15.6-inch size because it’s relatively compact and lightweight but still full-featured. Acer has a wide range of configurations to choose from starting under $500. This budget laptop also features a USB 3.2 Gen 1 USB-C port, two USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports, Ethernet and an HDMI port. The Acer Aspire 5 regularly includes a backlit keyboard and fingerprint reader for quick sign-ins — rarities at this price.
Asus’ Vivobook line covers a wide price range depending on the size, display quality and components. You can find them for less than $500 or over $1,000. The 15.6-inch VivoBook F1502ZA is in the middle at $600 and, like its price, the laptop’s features and components are decidedly middle-of-the-road. While its performance didn’t necessarily impress us, there were no deal-breaking misfires with the VivoBook 15, and it did have a few nice extra features like a comfortable full-size backlit keyboard, a fingerprint reader for easy sign-ins and an abundance of ports.
This Lenovo 13-inch Chromebook two-in-one has a full-HD display as well as excellent performance and battery life for the money, thanks to an Intel Core i3-1115G4 processor, 8GB of RAM and a 128GB solid-state drive. Battery life is great, too, at nearly 11 hours.
The Windows version of the 14-inch Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i is also an excellent value. Along with the latest 12th-gen Intel processors, Lenovo includes higher-end features like a Thunderbolt 4 USB-C port, an SD card reader, a 1080p webcam with a privacy shutter and a fingerprint reader. Plus, it reached nearly 11 hours of battery life in our tests. It regularly sells for around $700, but right now you can get it for just $450.
The HP Pavilion 14 is a budget laptop that looks and performs above its price. At 3.2 pounds (1.4 kilograms), the laptop can easily be a daily carry for school or work. It could also be a good home office laptop that can be easily connected to a monitor, keyboard and mouse at a desk, but also has a screen that’s comfortably large enough for full-time use. It’s just a solid everyday laptop with a clean design. The starting price is $650, and the configuration we tested is normally $800, but it goes on sale for much less sometimes.
The Lenovo Duet Chromebook (aka Chromebook Duet 3) is an awesome little 11-inch ChromeOS tablet with a detachable keyboard and touchpad. Its small size and performance aren’t ideal for full-time use. But the Chromebook Duet 3 is a good pick if you’re looking for an affordable ultraportable device to get some work done on the go, sketch or jot down notes in class, or do simple stuff like email, web browsing, gaming, reading and streaming video.
Budget laptop FAQ
Are laptops under $500 any good?
As a rule of thumb, resist buying out of desperation — don’t spend $500 because you can’t find a cheaper laptop deal available, for example. Buying a need-it-now laptop can be like shopping for food while hungry.
What are the trade-offs on laptops under $500?
As long as you manage your expectations when it comes to options and specs, you can still get quite a bit from a budget laptop model, including good battery life and a reasonably lightweight laptop body.
What to look for in laptops under $500
While Chromebooks can run ChromeOS-specific and Android apps, some people need the full Windows OS to run heftier applications, such as video-editing suites. With that comes a need for a faster processor with more cores, more memory — 8GB RAM is the bare minimum — and more storage for applications and the operating system itself.
The review process for laptops, desktops, tablets and other computer-like devices consists of two parts: performance testing under controlled conditions in the CNET Labs and extensive hands-on use by our expert reviewers. This includes evaluating a device’s aesthetics, ergonomics and features. A final review verdict is a combination of both those objective and subjective judgments.
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