The best cheap laptops

Looking for the best laptop for Windows or Chrome OS under $500? You and a billion other bargain hunters. As more people are working from home, it's difficult to find a cheap laptop under $500 these days. PC and accessory sales have spiked as workers have scrambled to upgrade their home offices. That, paired with supply chain issues also resulting from the coronavirus outbreak, has made laptops harder to find than ever. Despite that, we've pulled together a list of models that are still available for under $500. 

As long as you manage your expectations when it comes to options and specs, you can still get quite a bit with a budget model, including good battery life and a reasonably lightweight body. 

And the good news is that you also don't have to settle for a traditional clamshell laptop with a fixed display and keyboard. You can get a convertible (otherwise known as a two-in-one) -- a laptop with a screen that flips around to turn the screen into a tablet, to position it for comfortable streaming or to do a presentation. And keep in mind that all convertibles have touchscreens, as that's a prerequisite for tablet operation.

One thing you won't find: a MacBook or any other Apple laptop. Even an iPad Air will run you more than $500 once you buy the optional keyboard (though if you look for sales on the tablet or keyboard it might work out to less), which is above the budget.  

It's easier to find inexpensive Chromebooks than Windows laptops, making it one of the most popular categories of budget laptops on the market, though we're also seeing a lot more Chromebooks in the $500 to $1,000 range. That's because Google's Chrome OS isn't nearly as power-hungry as Windows (check the specs), so you can get by with a lower-end processor, slower storage and less screen resolution or memory -- just a few of the components that make a laptop expensive. 

But the flip side is that while Chrome OS isn't as power hungry as Windows, Chrome itself is unfortunately more of a memory hog than you'd expect, and if you go too low with the processor, the system will still feel slow.

Since they're cloud-first devices, you don't need a lot of storage built in. That also means if you spend most of your time roaming the web, writing, streaming video or playing Android games, they're a good fit. (To play Android games, make sure you get a model with a touch screen display.) 

For a cheap gaming laptop, though, you'll still have to break the $500 budget for performance. The least expensive budget laptops suitable for a solid gaming performance experience -- those with even moderately powerful discrete graphics processors, will run you closer to $700. Here are our recommendations if you're looking for the best gaming laptop. 

On the other hand, if you like to live on the bleeding edge, cloud gaming services such as Google Stadia will let you play games on laptops with specs that hit the under $500 mark.

Things to keep in mind:

1. While Chromebooks can run Chrome OS-specific and Android apps, some people need a full Windows operating system to run heftier applications, such as video editing suites. With that comes a need for a faster processor with more cores, more memory -- 8GB is the bare minimum -- and more storage for applications and the operating system itself. 
2. Solid-state drives can make a big difference in how fast Windows performance feels compared with a spinning hard disk, but they also push the price up. So if your budget can stretch a little and you want more storage, you may want to consider stepping up from base storage options to a 128GB SSD. 
3. In this budget price range you have to watch out for screen terminology when it comes to specs: This is why an "HD" screen may not always mean a truly high-definition screen. HD, which is 1,920x1,080 pixels to a screen, was retronymmed "Full HD" so marketers could keep selling you lesser-resolution screens (1,280x720 pixels per screen) as "HD." In Chromebooks, "HD" usually refers to a 1,366x768-pixel screen.
4. Pay attention to networking. Inexpensive models with older chipsets may only support Wi-Fi 3 (or 802.11b/g/n). Wi-Fi 3 is limited to 2.4GHz channels, which are slower and have a shorter range than more recent chipsets with Wi-Fi 4 (aka 802.11ac) 5GHz support. The specifications aren't always correct on the shopping sites, so if you see a model which doesn't seem to have Wi-Fi 4, double check on the manufacturer's site before ruling it out. Remember, Chromebooks are designed work predominantly over the internet, so Wi-Fi speed and stability is crucial.

Considering all specs and options from battery life to storage space, screen resolution, screen size, core processor performance and general machine and battery performance, these are a few of our top picks for 2020's best Windows laptops and Chromebooks under the $500 budget, along with their pros and cons.