The Best Notebooks For Less Than 300 Euros

If you are looking for a simple 14-inch notebook for less than 300 Euros, the Medion Akoya E4253 provides long battery runtimes, a matte IPS screen, and passive cooling, which handles the heat development pretty well. Sure, you cannot expect a lot of performance in this segment, but at least you can expand the storage if necessary and there are SKUs with more RAM if required.

The screen is a bit dark and the keyboard average at best, but the features including USB-C with Displayport and the low price create a pretty appealing laptop if you only need it for very basic tasks.

Chuwi is known for its extremely affordable laptops that sometimes offer features you would not expect in this price range. The LapBook Pro, for example, has a metal chassis, a decent keyboard including keyboard illumination, and an IPS screen with pretty good color gamut. You can also expand the limited storage via M.2 SSD and we like the battery runtime.

The Wi-Fi performance is average at best, the memory is cannot be upgraded and is a bit limited at 4 GB. The screen is glossy, pretty dim, and lacks contrast ratio. You should also consider that the Chuwi LapBook is not available in every country, so you might have to import it, which is more complicated in terms of purchase and warranty cases.

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 Asus E203MA is available in some configurations for less than 300 Euros, and the performance is sufficient for simple office tasks and web browsing. The device is equipped with a microSD reader, and it is really necessary to expand the 25 GB internal storage. The battery runtime in our Wi-Fi test is pretty good at 8:15 hours.

The display is the main issue here, because it is glossy and not particularly bright. You also have problems if you like to expand or maintain your laptop.

The Asus E203MA is still a good 11.6-inch laptop for simple applications.

The IdeaPad S145-15API is an inexpensive 15-inch laptop: The Athlon 3000 APU hardly gets warm and enables quiet working, and the performance is much better compared to Intel's Celeron or Pentium CPUs. You can even upgrade the laptop if necessary, but there are also some drawbacks: The display is a TN screen with limited viewing angles and a low contrast ratio. The battery runtime is not very long, either, so you will have to live with 4:30 hours in our Wi-Fi scenario.

Still: The IdeaPad S145 is a great offer for less than 300 Euros.

The LincPlus P1 is not really powerful, but that's not what the Celeron N4000 is made for: You get a decent keyboard with large keys, a sturdy aluminum chassis (!), the display manages a decent contrast ratio and there is no fan, so you always have a silent device. It is also possible to expand the storage.

You should not hope for a USB-C port though, which is not available. The webcam is hardly usable, either. You basically get a very affordable laptop that looks better than it really is. If the limited performance is sufficient for you, but you still want a good looking machine, the LincPlus P1 is still worth considering.

Chinese manufacturer Chuwi specialized in shamelessly copying successful laptops made by competing OEMs, and this time they chose a popular model made by another Chinese manufacturer. The Chuwi GemiBook is modeled on the Huawei MateBook 13 and available for an impressively low $300.

The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim is supposed to be a competitor for Chromebooks, but the APU is a bit slow for Windows 10. So you have to be careful not demanding too much from the system by limiting the number of active applications. This can be an issue in practice, especially since you only get slow eMMC storage.

In return, you get a matte screen, a silent and cool system, a two-year warranty, and a one-year license for Microsoft Office 365. We also like the keyboard, even though it is not illuminated.

if you don't need a lot of performance, you can have a look at the notebook, but everyone else will probably find better alternatives in this price range.

Thanks to its Pentium Silver processor, the Acer Aspire 1 offers sufficient performance for simple office and web browsing tasks. The 14-inch screen even has the Full-HD resolution, but is unfortunately pretty dim and does not provide stable viewing angles. You cannot upgrade the laptop, either, which is very painful considering that 44 GB of storage is not much. You do at least get a pretty fast card reader, so you can store some of your data on an SD card.

The silent cooling system is another advantage, so we can recommend the device for simple tasks or a secondary device.

The Chuwi HeroBook 14 looks like a high-quality Ultrabook at first, but a closer inspection quickly reveals that neither plastic materials, nor the stability of the case can keep up with more expensive devices. However, the HeroBook retails for just 279 Euros or even less, so the performance is actually decent.

You should not expect current ports; there is no USB-C, but a proprietary charging connector for the power adapter. The keyboard is not illuminated and the performance of the notebook is very low, especially in multi-core scenarios.

The battery runtime and the decent screen are definitely advantages and you will be happy with the Chuwi laptop if you don't have high requirements for the performance and appreciate the large keys of the input devices.