Laptops still remain one of the most useful and versatile tech products you can buy but we don’t all have a thousand pounds to spend on one. Budget laptops might be more limited in what they can do but you can pick up a bargain with one of these cheap models.
It’s possible to get a pretty solid laptop without spending much, especially if you’re smart and buy something during the current sale season. You can even get Intel Core i3 devices with touchscreens and SSDs, and we’re constantly keeping an eye on the best prices.
If your budget does stretch just a little bit higher, we’d recommend you look to our best budget (sub-$500/£500) laptops chart ; otherwise, here’s a selection of models below $500/£300 that will suffice for casual tasks and get you out of a tight spot.
Some will be available for a lot less and occasionally, perhaps with an additional voucher code, you might get one for under $100/£100. Just be prepared for very basic specs.
Best places to buy budget laptops
There are loads of places where you can pick up a cheap laptop including the following:
- Best Buy
- Newegg
- Target
- Tiger Direct
- Walmart
And in the UK:
- Amazon
- AO
- Argos
- Box
- Currys
- Ebuyer
- esupply
- John Lewis
- Laptops Direct
- Laptop Outlet
- Very
You can also go direct to manufacturers:
- Acer
- Apple
- Asus
- Dell
- HP
- Lenovo
- Microsoft
- Huawei
There are loads more good deals on all kinds of tech on our main deals site .
Best budget laptop deals in the US
Samsung Chromebook 4
From: Walmart
Was: $229
Now: $149 ($80 off)
Laptops don’t come much cheaper than this and although the Chromebook 4 from Samsung is basic, the discount is almost $100. Just make sure most of your files will be on the cloud – the SSD is only 32GB.
Best budget laptop deals in the UK
Asus VivoBook E510MA
Was: £279.99
Now: £210.17 (£69.82 off + Microsoft 365)
This full-size Vivobook is already cheap and you can save even more and get a year’s subscription to Microsoft Office 365 included too. A bargain if ever we saw one.
HP Chromebook 11a
From: Currys
Was: £199
Now: £169 (£30 off)
This already cheap and compact Chromebook is even more affordable in this deal. A perfect for students.
How to find a great deal on a budget laptop
We review budget laptops all year round, and our favourite model right now is the Asus E410 , which offers a great all-round experience, despite anticipated weaknesses such as poor maximum display brightness. The most affordable SKU can be picked up direct from Asus for £249.99, but Currys has it starting at £199.
The very fact that various SKUs exist of most laptop lines means you need to be careful of what you’re buying: that laptop you just read about in that glowing review may not necessarily be the same laptop you’ve just found at a bargain price. Check for things like screen size and resolution, processor model, and amount and type of RAM and storage.
For many people, those cheaper options will be more than enough for their needs, but it always helps to have some idea of what to look out for in the first place. This way, if you see a great laptop deal we haven’t mentioned here, you’ll be able to work out whether or not it’s a good buy.
Key things to look out for are the processor, memory and both type of storage and amount of storage. At under $500/£300, you’re unlikely to find anything higher than an Intel Core i3/AMD A-series or Ryzen 3 processor; if you do find a Core i5, snap up that laptop right away. You won’t find a better deal.
You’ll also see Intel Pentium and Celeron processors listed, and these are less powerful options often found in older models and Chromebooks/CloudBooks, but still more than capable if your needs are basic. By that we mean you’re looking for something that’s good for homework, replying to emails, browsing the web or social media, and watching the odd video.
These setups come with integrated graphics, and you shouldn’t expect to find a dedicated graphics card at this price. Your laptop will be more than capable of playing YouTube and movies, plus some casual games, but if you’re really after something capable of higher-fidelity gaming we’d recommend upping your budget to £500+ and going for a Core i5 as the bare minimum.
At this price, you’re most likely to find 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD, although at the budget end of the market you often find solid-state storage is swapped out for a traditional mechanical hard drive. The upside to this is more storage space; the downside is they are slower, a little noisier and more fragile.
The size of the screen and the overall design of a laptop are going to be purely personal choices. You’ll find everything from 11in to 15.6in screens at this price point; a handful with Full HD (1080p) displays but most with HD (720p) screens. Smaller laptops are typically going to be more readily portable, but it’s easier to get stuff done on a larger screen; especially if you’re wanting to watch videos, play casual games or work with spreadsheets.
Don’t overlook Chromebooks , with which your children may well be familiar from school. The difference between these and traditional Windows laptops is the operating system that’s installed on them; with Chromebooks instead using Chrome OS. You’ll also find CloudBooks, which run Microsoft’s pared-back Windows 10 S.
Author: Chris Martin, Managing Editor, Tech Advisor
Tech Advisor Managing Editor Chris got his break as a reporter at infamous site The Inquirer and has been with us for more than 12 years. With a BA degree in Music Technology, audio is his specialism, but over the years he has reviewed all kinds of gadgets, from smartwatches to mesh Wi-Fi to coffee machines.
Recent stories by Chris Martin:
- Every concept device we saw at MWC 2025
- Tech Advisor’s Best of MWC 2025 Awards
- Do foldable screens belong on a laptop? Lenovo thinks so with its latest concept
