Summary
- Cheap laptops under $150 offer little value and compromise on quality, such as poor displays and slow processors.
- Opt for used or refurbished laptops for better quality and value.
- Used laptops offer superior performance and features compared to new laptops in the same price range, making them a more worthwhile investment.
If you urgently need a laptop for college or work, it’s tempting to scour the bargain bins at Walmart or scroll through the cheapest options on Amazon. However, these devices often compromise on key features, making them a poor long-term investment.
The Many Problems With Cheap Laptops
Generally speaking, there’s a direct correlation between the price and what you get with laptops. The market is very competitive, especially as you move down in price.
However, this article isn’t about affordable laptops in the $400 to $500 range; I’m talking about the bottom of the barrel here—new laptops that cost around $150 or less. This is really the lowest amount you can spend to get a new laptop. Some of the cheapest examples I could find on Amazon include the Acer Chromebook C738T, the ASUS E410, and the Lenovo 81MQ000JUS.
These cheap laptops have several things in common, so let’s go over them. For starters, they’re put together using the lowest quality parts and materials, so don’t expect them to survive a single drop from the couch. They often use horrible displays that sometimes aren’t even Full HD, and they don’t get bright enough for comfortable indoor use, let alone outdoor use.
On top of that, they’re powered by older, underpowered processors like the Intel Celeron/Atom or AMD Athlon processors with only two cores. They usually come with 4GB or less of aging DDR3 or DDR4 RAM, and the storage is barely enough to run your web browser and a few Word documents.
It’s not just specs—these laptops compromise on almost everything. Batteries are another part that tends to suck, so don’t expect more than one or two hours of battery life. And consider yourself lucky if the laptop even comes with other essentials like Bluetooth or a functional webcam and microphone.
I/O ports are another aspect where they cut corners, so don’t expect more than one or two USB ports. Cooling is another weak point, but the silver lining is that the underpowered processors don’t always generate enough heat to make it an issue.
A quote by Benjamin Franklin perfectly sums up the regret you’ll feel after purchasing a cheap laptop: “The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten.”
Frankly (pun intended), these cheap laptops are little more than manufactured e-waste, serving little use beyond tricking people who urgently need a cheap laptop into buying a subpar product.
I’d go so far as to say that you’re better off using your phone as a laptop instead. The only caveat is that you’ll still have to spend that $150 on a lapdock like this Dopesplay lapdock. Still, there’s an even better option.
Dopesplay Lapdock With Monitor, Keyboard, and Built-in 5000mAh Battery
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$95
This lapdock comes with a 5,000 mAh battery, full-size keyboard with trackpad, and a 1200p HDR IPS display. It’s compatible with a wide range of devices, including Samsung and other Android phones, mini PCs, the Nintendo Switch, and more.
Used and Refurbished Laptops Are a Much Better Buy
If you need a laptop and your budget is tight, just buy a used or refurbished unit instead of those cheap units that shouldn’t even be on the market. You’ll get significantly better value for your dollar and save the planet by doing so. In case you’re wondering about the difference between used and refurbished, a used laptop is typically more affordable, while a refurbished one has been tested (or repaired), making it a somewhat safer purchase.
Buying a used or refurbished laptop allows you to pick a more premium unit with better specs and build quality, such as a Dell XPS, Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon, or HP EliteBook. It might also be the only affordable way to get a MacBook, as the cheapest new model, the MacBook Air, starts at $999.
While the laptop’s battery health won’t be as good when it’s new, and the screen, shell, and keys might show signs of wear, you’ll still get a significantly better device. In fact, if your budget is around $250 or less, you should focus exclusively on used laptops, especially if you want Windows rather than ChromeOS.
I’m primarily a desktop PC user, so I only need a laptop when I’m on the go. That’s why I strictly limited my budget to $150 for my first laptop, and I ended up with a used Lenovo Miix 510. It wasn’t amazing, but it was fast enough for basic tasks like writing articles, playing older games, and watching movies.
Comparing Prices of New and Used Laptops
To reinforce my argument, let’s compare a few real-world laptops. I’ll start with an example that I’m familiar with—my Dell Latitude 5420, a used laptop I got for $280. It’s an older business laptop from 2019, but that doesn’t matter because the specs are way better than a new $300 laptop. It’s powered by a flagship 11th-gen i7 CPU that handles basic work tasks with ease and can even do some light gaming, thanks to its Iris Xe integrated graphics.
The laptop boasts several other features, including a solid 14-inch 1080p touchscreen display, a 240GB M.2 NVMe SSD, 16GB of 3200MHz RAM, a versatile I/O, a solid webcam, and an excellent keyboard and large trackpad. While some new $300 laptops might offer a few of these features, finding all of them in one package is practically impossible.
The best new laptop contender I could find is the Acer Aspire 3 A315-24P. It features a newer AMD Ryzen 3 7320U CPU with Radeon 610M integrated graphics. According to its Geekbench score, the laptop achieves a single-core score of 1109 and a multi-core score of 3182, and the average 3DMark Time Spy score for the GPU is 594.
In contrast, my Latitude’s i7-1185G7 achieves a Geekbench score of 1615 in single-threaded and 4777 in multithreaded workloads, with an average 3DMark Time Spy score of 1439.
While synthetic benchmarks aren’t always an indicator of real-world performance, it’s still safe to assume that the laptop with the older i7 is slightly faster and is equipped with a significantly more capable GPU for 3D tasks like gaming and video editing.
As for the other specs, the Acer has faster LPDDR5 RAM, but it’s only 8GB and not upgradeable. It also has half the storage at 128GB and a slightly larger and possibly better-looking 15.6-inch display, but this reference model is without a touchscreen. To be fair, the Acer Aspire 3 A315-24P is still a perfectly capable laptop that can get the job done, so let’s look at a more extreme example instead.
I wanted to give cheap laptops my best shot, so I went hunting for the best cheap laptop that could still run Windows 11. I found it in the ASUS E410KA-PM464, a very popular laptop that’s currently on a clearance sale at Best Buy for only $130.99. It boasts a 14-inch Full HD screen and is powered by an Intel Pentium N6000, which has four physical cores, double that of the Atom and Celeron CPUs found in essentially every other new laptop under $150.
The laptop also has 4GB of DDR4 RAM, which you’re going to fill up quickly with a few Chrome tabs, and 64GB of eMMC storage (much slower than an M.2 NVMe). I won’t look into the other features like the keyboard, battery, and build quality, but I’m sure they match the price tag.
Now, let’s compare it against my eBay find: this $135 HP EliteBook 830 G5. According to the photos and specs in the listing, it has Intel Core i7-7500U, 16GB of RAM, a 256GB M.2 NVMe SSD, and Windows 11. Although Windows 11 has been installed and the RAM was upgraded out of the factory, it still counts.
The Geekbench score for this laptop is 1070 in single-core and 1993 in multi-core tasks, significantly higher than the Pentium N6000’s score of 606 in single-core and 1330 in multi-core tasks. This is before we account for the significantly faster NVMe and four times the amount of RAM, which you’re definitely going to feel in every task, from web browsing to gaming.
The EliteBook 830 G5 is just one example. I found several other awesome value laptops on eBay, such as an HP EliteBook 830 G6 with a touchscreen for $150, a Dell Latitude 5490 for $140, and a Dell Latitude 5500 for $130. The point is that you can find a used laptop for cheap that runs circles around new laptops within the same price range.
Where to Buy Used and Refurbished Laptops
Used laptops are abundant. Large businesses regularly purchase hundreds of powerful business-class laptops (which also have additional security features like a Kensington lock) at a time. When it’s time to upgrade their fleet of devices, they sell the old ones off for cheap, either in bulk to a reseller or individually.
You can find used models on sites like eBay and Facebook Marketplace, more specialized sites like Discount Computer Depot, but also retailers like Best Buy, Amazon, and Newegg. Even manufacturers sell refurbished units, such as Dell Refurbished and Lenovo Certified Refurbished.
Regardless of where you buy a used or refurbished laptop, you’ll nearly always find a significantly better deal compared to those cheap new units. Just be sure to check that everything on the used laptop works correctly before buying it, and confirm that it comes with a charger to avoid an extra expense.
