If you suspect you'll be holding onto your new laptop for a while, see if you can stretch your budget to buy a slightly more expensive laptop to accommodate more than 8GB of RAM or a processor with more cores than you were otherwise considering. Also, if there's something you really want in a laptop, like a touchscreen, a backlit keyboard, DDR4 RAM, an HD webcam, Intel UHD Graphics, AMD Radeon Vega Graphics or an HDMI port, check the manufacturer's specs closely to make sure it has it. If you need something to tide you over for a few months, dig into possible places to buy refurbished machines and explore nonprofit or educational discounts if you're eligible. You can also try to make your current laptop last a little longer. Even for a laptop, $500 can be a lot of money, and you'll likely be holding onto it for at least three years, if the statistics Intel and PC manufacturers hurl at us are correct. Buying a need-it-now laptop can be like shopping for food while hungry. Because there are a lot of cheap laptops that aren't worth it, try not to make any rash decisions when buying.Īs a rule of thumb, resist buying out of desperation - don't spend $500 because you can't find a cheaper laptop deal available, for example. Use these picks to sort through the competition. It'll also let you know what to look for if you want to continue your budget laptop hunt on your own. This advice is based on our years of testing and review experience to figure out what to expect from a laptop priced under $500. If you're not entirely sure what to look for in a good budget laptop - other than price - jump to our buying advice, right below our recommendations. If you're considering buying one, here are the best budget laptops you can buy right now. The 'spend more to get more' mantra doesn't hold true anymore, since you can get everything you need on a machine that's less than $500 these days. There are a ton of options for the best laptops under $500, especially with Chrome OS laptops (better known as Chromebooks).

You might be in the market for a budget laptop for your kid who's studying or for yourself to play games or to have an extra device for work.

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