When it comes to shopping for the best cheap laptops, you can do a lot with $1,000. (Heck, even $500 cuts some mustard nowadays.) But you'll probably have to make some compromises along the way to stay below that price point.
That doesn't mean you have to settle for a total clunker that doesn't tick any of the boxes on your must-have specs list. It just means you have to shop a little smarter than someone with unlimited funds.
That's where we come in. The Mashable team is constantly reviewing new laptops with different operating systems and use cases, and we recommend several affordable machines that meet most, if not all of our performance and build quality standards.
Our top picks
As of Nov. 2024, we believe the best cheap MacBook is the 13-inch Apple MacBook Air powered by the previous-generation M2 chip. It's speedy enough for most people, it lasts all day, has an excellent keyboard, and it starts at $999 (though it's often on sale for well under $900). What's more, it just got a welcome base configuration bump to 16GB of RAM.
Among Windows PCs, the Lenovo Yoga 7i 14 (Gen 9) is currently the best laptop under $1,000 that we've tried. It has a peppy processor and a good battery life, it doubles as a tablet, and it starts at $899.99.
If you're really into Microsoft machines, look into the Surface Laptop Go 3. The company's current cheapest offering is a super portable notebook with a chic look and a clicky keyboard — though I'd encourage shoppers to find it on sale, given its older CPU. It otherwise starts at $799.99.
The best cheap Chromebook is the $499 HP Chromebook Plus 15.6-inch, with its big, vibrant display and competent everyday performance. It also supports some useful AI features and multimedia editing apps.
Cheap gaming laptops don't get much better than the Acer Nitro V 15, which combines a cool design with cool Triple-A performance for $999 as tested. (The base model is only $749.) We also now recommend the Acer Chromebook Plus 516 GE as an even cheaper "cheap gaming laptop" pick — which shouldn't be a huge surprise, given how much we liked its very similar predecessor. It costs the same $649, too.
Other cheap laptops on our radar
We currently have the Asus Chromebook Plus CX34 in hand for testing (specifically, the 2023 model with a 12th-generation Intel processor that retails for $399.99). If it feels like a better value than HP's Chromebook Plus 15.6-inch, it could be a new "best cheap Chromebook" contender.
We'll also test the Asus Vivobook S 14, a new Copilot+ PC with a Lunar Lake CPU and an OLED display, as well as the latest Framework Laptop 13, a repairable laptop that seems like a solid long-term value. We were big fans of an older version.
Look for extra-cheap laptops on Black Friday
Tech retailers like Best Buy, Amazon, Walmart, HP, Dell, and Lenovo save the bulk of their year-round lows for Black Friday season. (That's why we've deemed it the best time of year to score a great deal on a laptop.) For the next couple of weeks, we expect our favorite cheap laptops to be even cheaper than usual.
Don't want to scour the myriad listings yourself? Bookmark Mashable's guide to the best Black Friday laptop deals. We'll be updating it constantly throughout the holidays with vetted discounts on MacBooks, gaming laptops, Chromebooks, and more.
Read on for Mashable's in-depth guide to the best cheap laptops of 2024. FYI: We've listed the pricing and specs of our testing units, which may not apply to each laptop's base model.
