The Best Bargain Laptops

The base model of Microsoft's Surface Laptop Go is available for less than 600 Euros already. The compact laptop comes in a particularly premium aluminum case unique for this category of affordable notebooks. The 12.4-inch 3:2 touchscreen offered good color representation. Keep in mind that storage is not upgradable, and the device lacks an SD card slot. The Surface Laptop Go is made primarly for simple tasks such as browsing the web, reading/responding to emails, or educational use.

Dell’s Latitude series is built specifically for day-to-day business and educational use. Latitude notebooks feature a robust and sturdy case, are subjected to a variety of torture tests, and tend to come with a matte display. The Latitude 15 3510 features a 15-inch IPS display and offers good battery life of up to 8 hours. The combination of Core i3 CPU and fast SSD should offer enough performance for daily tasks including office applications, mails, and browsing the web.

In Lenovo’s laptop line-up the letter V tends to signify particularly affordable laptops designed for simple business and personal expectations and applications. Accordingly, their primary intended use cases include browsing the web and office applications. Due to its large 17-inch display the Lenovo V17 IIL is most likely going to be used as more or less stationary desktop device at home. Its matte display performed adequately overall in regard to brightness, contrast ratio, and color representation. A Core i3 processor paired with a fast NVMe SSD ensures sufficient performance for simple applications.

Finding a notebook for less than $300 can be challenging since devices in this price range require a large number of compromises. The IdeaPad 1 11ADA is a small 11.6-inch notebook with AMD dual-core CPU and a meagre 64 GB of storage. We liked its mostly silent mode of operation as well as its matte display. Portability is limited due to its battery life of no more than 6 hours.

The Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 3 is a 11.6-inch convertible that can be purchased for around 300 Euros. It is silent and offers good battery life – an intriguing combination for not a lot of money. Unfortunately, the notebook’s performance is fairly poor, and it will take quite long to finish various tasks.

The storage device is based on eMMC technology and this quite slow overall. Thus, this cheap SKU is not necessarily worth purchasing. For around 100 Euros more you get twice the storage based on modern SSD technology as well as a faster processor. Most users will benefit from this upgrade.

What is often the first corner cut on inexpensive laptops? That’s right, the display. The Lenovo V15 is another prime example. Low contrast ratio, low brightness, and to add insult to injury the panel is based on TN technology with massive color deviations and loss of brightness when looked at from the sides. Battery life is rather poor and makes it very hard to recommend the Lenovo V15 to anyone.

The Chuwi LarkBook looks great on the outside but leaves a lot to be desired on the inside. The device can be imported for around $500 if risky bets and experiments are your thing. Previous Chuwi devices often suffered from keyboard and hinge problems, and its performance is too low for its price range.

HP’s 250 and 255 series includes a number of affordable office laptops for office and home use. The 250-series is built around Intel CPUs while the 255-series features AMD CPUs. During our review, we praised the HP 255’s quiet modus operandi and its matte display surface. Unfortunately, HP had to cut quite a few corners, which is particularly noticeable in the display. It features a PN panel with narrow viewing angles.

The HP 250’s highlight is without a doubt its selection of potent Intel CPUs. Unfortunately, the display ruins the overall package since it features an outdated TN panel with very narrow viewing angles. Even the excellent display finish cannot fix that.