Best Budget Laptop: Quick Menu
I think the best budget laptops are good enough for basic work and play without feeling cheap. They don’t cost an arm and a leg yet offer decent performance, decent screens and battery life that’s good enough.
They aren’t all stodgy grey clamshell laptops, either. Many of the best laptops under $500 are Chromebooks or tablets with detachable keyboards, and if you’re willing to spend a bit more you can get an affordable Windows 11 laptop from the likes of Acer or Asus that feels premium.
I know because we’ve tested and reviewed dozens and dozens of laptops from top manufacturers to find the best options for those on a budget. This is our latest list of the best budget laptops on the market right now, based on our own hands-on testing and reviews. Some of these products may not be the latest and greatest, but they’re more than good enough for basic work and can be yours for as low as $500 or less.
Alex Wawro
Alex Wawro is a lifelong journalist who’s spent over a decade covering tech, games and entertainment. He oversees the computing department at Tom’s Guide, which includes managing laptop coverage and reviewing many himself every year.
The quick list
In a hurry? Here’s a brief overview of the laptops on this list, along with quick links that let you jump down the page directly to a review of whichever laptop catches your eye.
Best budget Windows laptop overall
We recommend the Acer Aspire 5 as a solid Windows 11 laptop that can be yours for under $500. Sure, the webcam sucks and the speakers aren’t great, but you’ll get decent performance in productivity apps, a responsive keyboard and 8 hours of tested battery life.
Read more below
2. Samsung Galaxy Chromebook 2
Best budget Chromebook overall
Samsung’s Galaxy Chromebook 2 is a premium Chromebook that will get you through a day of work or school for under $500. While its aging hardware and the limitations of ChromeOS make it less capable than the Aspire 5 it’s also cheaper, and the gorgeous QLED touchscreen and decent speakers make it feel premium laptop.
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The best budget OLED laptop
The Asus Zenbook 13 OLED is currently our top recommendation for a great budget OLED laptop because at $799 it’s a few hundred bucks more than most of this list, but in return you get an eye-catching 1080p OLED display (rare at this price), good performance and great battery life in a slim, lightweight package.
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The best budget gaming laptop
The $999 MSI Cyborg 15 is the most expensive laptop on this list, but we included it because gaming laptops run more expensive than most and this is the cheapest one we recommend since it comes with a cutting-edge Nvidia RTX 4050 GPU, a 13th Gen Intel CPU and a solid 144Hz 15.6-inch display.
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5. Microsoft Surface Go 2
The best budget Windows 2-in-1
The $299 Surface Go 2 ($359 with keyboard cover) isn’t the fastest or flashiest Windows tablet, but for under $500 it can serve you well as both a tablet and, in a pinch, as a weak laptop (assuming you purchase the type cover or connect a Bluetooth keyboard). It’s hardly mighty, but at this price it’s more than good enough as a basic tablet and productivity device.
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6. Lenovo Chromebook Duet 3
The best budget Chrome 2-in-1
Lenovo’s Chromebook Duet 3 delivers a great display, a decent port selection and enough power to get work done for under $500. It’s one of the best Chrome tablets you can buy, and the included keyboard cover helps it double as a surprisingly effective 2-in-1 Chromebook.
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The best budget laptops you can buy
The best budget laptop overall
The Acer Aspire 5 is a full Windows 11 laptop for under $500, and it’s exactly what you’d expect for a budget laptop: Nothing outstanding, but good enough to get you through a day browsing the web, doing basic work tasks or watching videos.
It’s not the sleekest or most stylish laptop on the market, nor will the entry-level model’s Intel Core i3 processor blow anyone away with power. And the 8-hour battery life (in our testing, at least) is just barely enough to get you through an average workday. But you’d have a hard time finding a better Windows laptop for this price.
Read our full Acer Aspire 5 review.
The best budget Chromebook
The Samsung Galaxy Chromebook 2 is a budget laptop that doesn’t feel like one, with a slick ultraportable design, a sharp-looking QLED touchscreen, and solid 8-hour battery life. It’s also going to sound great, plus its aging 10th Gen Intel Core i3 configuration still provides a ton of speed for Chrome OS.
We weren’t as happy with the vertical travel in its keyboard, which is a bit shallow. This creates a slight learning curve you’ll adapt to over time. But to get a Chromebook that looks this good (the Fiesta Red color option stands out in a sea of silver and black laptops) and feels this premium for under $500 is a great deal.
Read our full Samsung Galaxy Chromebook 2 review.
The best budget OLED laptop
The AMD-equipped Asus Zenbook 13 OLED is an excellent value, offering an eye-catching 1080p OLED display and exceptional 15-hour battery life in a slim, lightweight package for less than a thousand bucks.
Sure, the speakers aren’t amazing, the webcam leaves something to be desired, and there’s no headphone jack, but these are stumbling blocks you can work around. If you need a zippy little Windows ultraportable with a great screen that will last you all day long, you can’t do better than the OLED-equipped Asus Zenbook 13 at this price.
Read our full Asus Zenbook 13 OLED review.
The best budget gaming laptop
The MSI Cyborg 15 ($999) is a cyberpunk-inspired gaming laptop that won’t destroy your wallet. Packing a 13th Gen Intel Core CPU and an Nvidia RTX 4050 GPU, this laptop delivers solid gaming performance for $1,000. Toss in a 144Hz 15.6-inch display and you have a machine that’s a great entry into the world of PC gaming.
The laptop has a cool design, great performance and costs less than $1,000. The display could be brighter and a bit more colorful, but the 144Hz refresh rate is welcome. And while its battery life isn’t great, the Cyborg 15 also doubles as a good productivity device, so long as you keep it plugged in.
Read our full MSI Cyborg 15 review.
The best budget Windows 2-in-1
The Microsoft Surface Go 2 is a remarkably capable Windows 10 tablet that does double duty as a budget laptop replacement. On its own its a solid Windows tablet, with enough power for basic browsing and battery life that won’t leave you always hunting for a charger.
But the tablet really comes into its own when the optional Type-Cover accessory is added into the mix. That takes the entry-level $299 Surface Go 2 up to $359, but in the process turns it into a dinky laptop that’s surprisingly capable. But to keep things below $500, you have to put up with an Intel Pentium Gold processor, only 4GB of RAM and 64GB of eMMC storage. That’s hardly a mighty set of specs, but it should be enough for people who want a 2-in-1 device for reasonably lightweight productivity tasks — think web browsing, word processing, and firing out a healthy batch of emails.
Read our full Microsoft Surface Go 2 review.
The best budget Chrome 2-in-1
The list of great budget laptops is dominated by Chrome devices, and the Lenovo Duet 3 (or Lenovo IdeaPad Duet 3, depending on where you buy it) is the best Chrome tablet that can be yours for as low as $359. This is effectively a bigger, more expensive follow-up to the Chromebook Duet Lenovo released in 2020, a surprisingly capable and inexpensive Chrome tablet that’s still on this list.
We loved the original Duet for its great battery life, solid performance and decent packed-in keyboard cover, all of which could be had for roughly $250. Lenovo’s new 11-inch Duet 3 costs a bit more, but it also delivers a bigger, brighter display, more ports, and the added power of a beefier Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 chip. It’s one of the best Chrome tablets you can buy, and the fact that Lenovo includes the keyboard cover at no extra cost helps it double as a surprisingly effective 2-in-1 Chromebook.
While you can also consider the original Lenovo Chromebook Duet a good buy if you’re short on cash, those who can afford it will be well-served by this excellent Chromebook.
Read our full Lenovo Duet 3 Chromebook review.
How to choose the best laptop for you
It can be tricky to weigh up how much one can expect from a cheap laptop. You’re not going to get bleeding-edge performance or a super premium design. And you might have to make a few compromises on the display, such as how well it handles colors and how bright it gets. But that doesn’t mean you have to make do with a laptop that feels cheap; rather, you’re looking for one that’s affordable. So here are a few things to keep in mind when shopping for a laptop.
Battery life: Know how long you generally need your laptop to last without being plugged in before you buy. If you plan to mostly leave it plugged in at a desk then get whatever you like, because you won’t notice the limitations of even a laptop with bad battery life like the MSI Cyborg 15.
But if you need your laptop to last at least 8-10 hours on a regular basis without carrying a charger, say because you want to carry it for work or school, then you’ll want to pick something longer-lived. To ensure you don’t have to lug the power cable around I recommend a laptop with upwards of 10 hours of tested battery life (something we test in every laptop we review), like the Asus Zenbook 13 OLED.
Chrome or Windows? Unless you have a budget of $1,000 or more, even the cheapest MacBook Air will be way out of your price range. As such you’ll probably need to decide whether a Windows laptop or Chromebook better fits your needs.
Chrome OS offers a lightweight operating system that will run on even the most basic hardware, yet still offers a comprehensive suite of abilities and web-based apps to get a lot of day-to-day computing tasks done. Furthermore, it now supports Android apps, so if you just need to browse the web and use an occasional app you’re fine with a Chromebook like the Lenovo Chromebook Duet or Samsung Galaxy Chromebook 2.
Windows 11, on the other hand, requires a little more power to ensure it runs smoothly. But it supports a huge range of software, far more than Chrome OS can currently dream of. And it’s more capable, more customizable and more usable with touch than ever thanks to Microsoft’s ongoing efforts to improve the operating system. And if you’d prefer to stick with Windows 10, the Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 2 can often still be found on sale with Windows 10 onboard.
Clamshell or convertible: Budget laptops generally come in two varieties — traditional clamshell laptops or dynamic 2-in-1 convertibles. Clamshells are usually the cheaper of the bunch, and provide a traditional laptop experience with a keyboard and often a non-touch screen. But if you want a touchscreen device that can also double as a tablet, convertibles (like the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook 2) or tablets with detachable keyboards (like the Surface Go 2), are worth considering.
Don’t settle for less than 1080p: Unless you’re truly strapped for cash, you shouldn’t settle for most laptops with a 1366 x 768 display. That’s not full HD (1920 x 1080) resolution, which is effectively the standard. These days plenty of affordable notebooks start with a display resolution of 1080p, which will make a difference when it comes to streaming Netflix shows or staring at webpages for hours on end.
How we tested these laptops
To find the best laptop, we run every machine through a rigorous suite of benchmarks and real-world tests to gauge how it will perform during everyday use.
We measure the average brightness and color quality of each laptop’s display using our in-house light meter and colorimeter. For general performance, we run our machines through tests that include Geekbench 5 (CPU performance), as well as various 3DMark tests to measure graphics capabilities. We also run a file transfer test to measure how fast a machine’s hard drive is, and a custom battery test that has the machine browse the internet over Wi-Fi until it runs out of juice.
When testing Chromebooks, we run our machines through web-focused tests that include JetStream 2, a Web-based benchmarking suite that runs over five dozen tests designed to measure how well systems handle the kind of applications they’re most likely to encounter on the Internet.
When testing dedicated gaming laptops, we run benchmarks for popular games such as Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Far Cry 6 and Red Dead Redemption 2. For more information on our testing process, check out our guide to how we test.
