The 5 Best Budget And Cheap Laptops – Winter 2023 Reviews

The best budget laptop we’ve tested is the Lenovo Chromebook C340 15 (2020), a 2-in-1 Chromebook. This 15-inch model feels very well-built, and its battery lasts a little over 12 hours of light use. You can get it with an Intel Pentium Gold or a Core i3 CPU; both are powerful enough to provide a smooth experience on Chrome OS. It’s only available with 4GB of memory, so you’ll likely experience slowdowns if you have tons of applications or Chrome tabs open simultaneously.

Its 1080p display looks reasonably sharp and provides plenty of space for multitasking. Since this is a 2-in-1 convertible, you can set up the laptop in tent mode for media consumption or flip the screen around and use it as a tablet. The downside is that the display doesn’t get very bright, so it might not be ideal if you often work in very well-lit environments. The keyboard feels great to type on for extended periods, and while the touchpad is a bit small, it tracks all movements and gestures well. It isn’t a fanless device, but it never gets hot or loud, which is great for quiet classrooms and offices.

If you need Windows and don’t mind paying a bit more, check out the Acer Swift 3 14 (2020). It’s a smaller 14-inch laptop, so it’s more portable, although that also means you don’t get as much screen real estate. It has longer battery life than the Lenovo, and its port selection is also better as its USB-C supports Thunderbolt 4. The main tradeoff is the webcam; the image looks extremely underexposed, and the microphone sounds staticky. You can get this laptop with an Intel 11th Gen. Core i5 or i7 CPU and up to 16GB of memory and 512GB of storage.