7 Best Cheap Laptops to Buy in 2026 (and Some to Avoid)
AI News Desk
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Wired
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14 min read
Computers have put people on the moon.
Computers have put people on the moon. You'd think that given the miraculous technological utopia of our age, we’d also be able to get decently cheap laptops. For so long, that felt like a hopeless case. More recently, many budget laptops have become quite good. Chromebooks are more modern , and budget Windows laptops now offer strong battery life. There’s even a MacBook affordable enough to earn the “cheap” designation. If your budget for a computer is tight, I have you covered with my recommendations for the best affordable laptops.
For more laptop recommendations, be sure to check out our other computing guides, including the Best Laptops , Best Windows Laptops , Best Chromebooks , Best Linux Laptops , Best Gaming Laptops , and Best MacBooks . Our guide on How to Choose the Right Laptop can also help.
Updated August 2026: I've added the Dell XPS 13, HP OmniBook 3, and MSI Cyborg A15. I’ve also confirmed accuracy and up-to-date pricing throughout.
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Thanks to Qualcomm's Snapdragon X chips, we finally have affordable Windows laptops that get great battery life. The HP OmniBook 5 14 is the best among those, so long as you can get it on discount. For starters, it has great specs, including 16 GB of RAM, 512 GB of storage, and a 14-inch OLED screen. That screen, in particular, is a big deal for laptops at this price, as OLED displays offer such a massive step up from standard IPS displays. Its display isn't as sharp or bright as the MacBook Neo or Dell 14 Plus, though.
The HP OmniBook 5 is a highly portable little laptop, at just a half-inch thick. The touchpad is probably its biggest downside. Like many budget laptops, the touchpad feels sticky to use, making precise movements difficult. The keyboard is great, though, and the addition of a USB-A port is clutch.
There's a big caveat with the OmniBook 5's price. It retails for $1,300, but it’s often discounted at HP.com. I can typically find a configuration that sells for less than $700, sometimes as low as $550.
This one's easy. If you've always dreamed of owning a MacBook, but it was never in your price range, the MacBook Neo (7/10, WIRED Recommends) is for you. It has plenty of shortcomings, mind you. Between the speed of USB-C ports and the lack of keyboard backlighting, Apple made lots of small compromises to get the price down to $699. Just 8 GB of RAM is the most serious detriment. You'll notice that every other laptop on this list starts at 16 GB, which has become the new standard. In my own testing, I was able to create a memory bottleneck without too much effort. But as a device for students, or just if you work at an office all day on a work computer and need something simple for weekends and evenings, the MacBook Neo’s performance should work well for you.
Its real strength is in its front-of-screen experience. It's the feeling you get every time you open the laptop, and that's where the MacBook Neo excels. A lot of that has to do with build quality and design, which are no less refined than the MacBooks that cost thousands more—with a dash of playfulness, thanks to the white keyboard and bolder colors. But the display is also worthy of recognition. It's both sharper and brighter than all its competitors, except for the Dell XPS 13.
I never thought a Windows laptop could pull off the trick of blending performance and affordability as well as the MacBook Neo, but the new Dell XPS 13 does it even better. The XPS 13 makes very few compromises, whether that's the portable design, the excellent display, the smooth trackpad, or the high speeds of the USB-C ports.
It has a couple of one-ups over the MacBook Neo, too. Some are quality-of-life improvements, like the backlit keyboard, the ability to charge from either side of the device, or the half-pound lighter weight. Other features are more substantial, such as the addition of a touchscreen and the 120-Hz refresh rate of the display. The 8 GB of RAM in the starting configuration is a severe limitation, but upgrading to the 16-GB model at $900 yields an incredible value. The 16-GB model is the one most people should buy, even if the $700 version with 8 GB is more tempting for budget-conscious buyers. Just be aware that 8 GB of memory in a modern Windows 11 laptop will start slowing down without too much effort.
The HP OmniBook 3 has the same performance, battery life, and OLED display as the OmniBook 5, but with a lower price. The OmniBook3 still comes with 16 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage (though you'll need to be mindful when you buy, as there are 8-GB models out there selling for the same price). When in doubt, HP.com tends to have the best deals on this laptop.
The most noticeable difference with the OmniBook 3 is that the quality of the chassis goes down; the 3’s thicker, plastic case feels much cheaper. There are smaller drawbacks as well, like the lack of a magnetic lid to securely close the laptop, the slower USB-A ports, and the really poor speakers. If those feel like minor nitpicks to you, saving the extra money on the OmniBook 3, rather than shelling out a bit more for the 5, is a smart move. The fact that you can get an OLED display and battery life this long-lasting on a device this cheap still blows me away.
It's possible to buy a gaming laptop for less than $1,000, but right now, it's not recommended. There was a time when $700 gaming laptops were decent, but those days are long gone. The MSI Cyborg A15 with the RTX 5050 is the cheapest gaming laptop I've found that's actually worth buying . You still get the latest generation of Nvidia graphics, as well as a fast CPU from Intel. It’s not the prettiest laptop in the world, and it’s quite chunky, but it’s the best you’ll get for the price.
The Lenovo LOQ 15 with the RTX 5060 gets you a better screen (and better performance), but if you can't get your budget up to $1,300, go with the MSI Cyborg A15.
If you want to find a laptop for around $300 or less, Chromebooks are still the way to go. Windows laptops at this price just aren't worth your time, due to the extreme performance compromises required to get the price down. The Acer Chromebook CX15, however, is the best ultra-cheap laptop I've used. Even with its bargain-basement price, this 15-inch Chromebook comes with 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage. The 15-inch screen goes up to 300 nits of brightness, and even though the colors are a bit off, it has a 1080p resolution. The Intel Celeron CPU inside won't blow you away, but for the price, it certainly gets the job done.
There's also the Asus Chromebook CX14 (6/10, WIRED Recommends), a 14-inch version of this same laptop, which has a slightly sharper screen (due to the smaller display) and an overall more compact chassis. If you want to go even cheaper, there's a $199 version of this Chromebook with only 4 GB of RAM .
Most cheap laptops won't last you too long. They often function as a placeholder until you get something faster and more premium-feeling. Not so with the Framework Laptop 12 (7/10, WIRED Recommends). Like other Framework computers, the Laptop 12 is completely upgradable, allowing you to access and swap out nearly every internal component. So long as Framework continues to hold up its end of the deal, you could hold onto it for years, upgrading it through many generations of CPUs. What’s amazing is how easy Framework has made installing components and upgrading them yourself—it’s possible to do in minutes.
The DIY Edition, which doesn't come with RAM and storage, starts at just $549. While the performance and display aren't exactly premium, I was surprised by how high-end the touchpad and keyboard feel. If you want something affordable (and highly customizable) that you want to last more than a few years, this is it.
Here at WIRED, we never recommend products we haven't tested ourselves—and I’ve tried hundreds of laptops over the years. I left many laptops off this list due to price, quality, or both. While I stand by my top-pick recommendations above, there are a few additional laptops I've tested that are still worth buying for a particular use case.
Lenovo LOQ 15 for $1,400 : This fantastic gaming laptop used to sell for $900, despite coming with an RTX 5060. And unlike so many other affordable gaming laptops, this one comes with a solid IPS panel that has not only a fast refresh rate but also great image quality. So no, it's not extremely cheap, but it's worth considering because it remains the best value in gaming laptops right now.
Acer Chromebook Plus 516 for $479 : Chromebooks are really at their best when they cost less than $500. They thrive as cheap laptops that don't feel cheap. The Acer Chromebook Plus 516 has one primary advantage over other laptops around this price: its touchpad. I care a lot about touchpad quality, as it's an area where budget laptops tend to make compromises despite being a component that can impact day-to-day laptop use. Poor touchpad quality can make simple things like drag-and-drop or text selection frustrating. The Acer Chromebook Plus 516 has a really nice touchpad with a smooth surface for your finger to swipe or drag across. It makes a huge difference.
Acer Nitro V 16 for $900 : No gaming laptop selling for this price is going to be perfect. Far from it. The Acer Nitro V 16 (7/10, WIRED Recommends) has a big compromise that I need to warn you about up front: its 135-watt power adapter. It's just not enough to keep the Nitro V 16 fully powered during many of the GPU-heavy games I tested, such as Cyberpunk 2077 and Black Myth: Wukong . That means even if the laptop is plugged in, it'll start to drain the battery when you tax the GPU hard enough. That sounds awful, and it is. Acer could have easily sold the Nitro V 16 with a larger adapter. But the battery only drains in certain games and only when playing in Turbo or Performance modes. Stick to Balanced mode, and you'll be fine, as it only drops performance by around 5 percent. All said, I still think the MSI Cyborg A15 is the better laptop for this reason.
Lenovo Chromebook Duet Gen 9 for $379 : Lenovo’s Chromebook Duet Gen 9 (8/10, WIRED Recommends) quickly became one of my favorite gadgets of 2024, despite its small size. That’s the whole point of this 11-inch detachable laptop, which is incredibly fun to use around the house and throw in a bag when it’s time to go. The keyboard detaches from the screen, so it makes for a nice tablet when paired with ChromeOS's Android apps. With the keyboard attached, you can get some work done. At nearly 10 hours on average, its battery life will easily get you through the day, too.
Lenovo IdeaPad 5i 2-in-1 : 16-inch laptops tend to be more expensive than smaller options, making them hard to find at a cheap price. The Lenovo IdeaPad 5i 2-in-1 (6/10, WIRED Recommends) is a 16-inch laptop that tried to squeeze out just enough quality to make it worth the price. While the display has typical deficiencies (such as poor color coverage), I do appreciate that it doesn't have a matte finish, which brings out more clarity in the panel. I also found the keyboard tiresome to type on, and ultimately feel the OmniBook 3 is the better laptop for the price.
Asus Vivobook 14 : As one of the first cheap laptops to use the Snapdragon X, I praised this laptop through 2025 for its excellent battery life. But once the OmniBook 5 and OmniBook 3 came along, I stopped recommending the Vivobook 14. That's primarily because of how much better the OLED screens are on the OmniBook devices compared to the washed-out display that comes on the Vivobook 14. But if you ever see this drop to below the price of the OmniBook 3 and want the cheapest Windows laptop possible, it might be worth considering.
What Are Important Specs in a Cheap Laptop?
Read our guide on How to Choose the Right Laptop if you want all the details on specs and what to look for. In short, your budget is the most important factor, as it determines what you can expect out of the device you're purchasing. Next, you should consider display size, chassis thickness, CPU, memory, storage, and port selection. While appropriate specs can vary wildly when you're considering laptops ranging from $200 to around $1,000, there are a few hard lines I don't recommend crossing.
For example, don't buy a laptop if it doesn't have a display resolution of at least 1920 x 1080. In 2025, there's just no excuse for anything less than that. You should also never buy a laptop without at least 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage. Even in Chromebooks, these specs are becoming the new standard. You're selling yourself short by getting anything less. Another rule is to avoid a Windows laptop with an Intel Celeron processor—leave those for Chromebooks only.
Specs are only half the battle, though. Based on our years of testing, laptop manufacturers tend to make compromises in display quality and touchpad quality. You can't tell from the photos or listed specs online, but once you get the laptop in your hands, you may notice that the colors of the screen look a bit off or that the touchpad feels choppy to use. It's nearly impossible to find laptops under $500 that don't compromise in these areas, but this is where our reviewers and testers can help.
How Much RAM Do You Need in a Cheap Laptop?
The simple answer? You need at least 8 GB of RAM, but you'll likely want at least 16 GB. These days, lots of Windows laptops that fall into the “budget” category come with 16 GB of RAM standard t, as part of the Copilot+ PC marketing push . That's a great value that ensures you'll get the best performance out of your laptop, especially when running heavier applications or multitasking. Either way, it's important to factor in the price of the RAM because manufacturers will often charge $100 or even $200 to double the memory.
On Chromebooks, there are some rare occasions where 4 GB of RAM is acceptable, but only on the very cheapest models that are less than $200. Even budget Chromebooks like the Asus Chromebook CX15 now start with 8 GB of RAM.
Prices are constantly shifting, however, largely because of the ongoing memory shortage . We are starting to see the return of 8 GB in laptops like the MacBook Neo and Dell XPS 13, but I recommend opting for 16 GB if at all possible.
Yes, but you need to be careful. Don't just go buy a random laptop on Amazon for less than $300, as you'll likely end up with an outdated, slow device you'll regret having purchased. You might be tempted by something like this or this , but trust me—there are better options, some of which you'll find in this guide.
For starters, you shouldn't buy a Windows laptop for less than $300. That price puts you solidly in cheap Chromebook territory. These Chromebooks are budget-level in terms of quality, but they're still better in almost every way than their Windows counterparts of a similar price. A good example is the Asus Chromebook CX15 .
If you want a Windows laptop that won't give you instant buyer's remorse, you'll need to spend at least a few hundred more. Once you hit $500 or $600, there are some more solid Windows laptops available, such as the HP OmniBook 3. Even in that case, though, you're making some compromises in features like touchpad quality and chassis thickness. But as a general principle, Windows laptops only start to become worth buying in the $500-plus range.
Should You Get a Cheap Windows Laptop or Chromebook?
The eternal question. If you're looking for a laptop for less than $500, I highly recommend that you opt for a Chromebook. I know that won't be a possibility for everyone, as some people require certain applications that require a Windows laptop or a MacBook. If you do decide to get a Chromebook, make sure all of your connected accessories and other devices are compatible.
Chromebooks give you access to a full desktop Chrome browser, as well as Android apps. While that leaves some gaps for apps that some may need, you might be surprised by how much you can get done without the need to install any software. Most applications have web versions that are every bit as useful.
While Chromebooks are most well-known as junky student laptops, the “Chromebook Plus” designation has filled in the gap between dirt-cheap Chromebooks and $800 Windows laptops. You'll find some great Chromebook Plus options in the $400 to $600 range that have better performance and displays and look a bit more like a modern laptop. The Acer Chromebook Plus 514 is a great example of this. You can read more about the differences between Windows laptops and Chromebooks here .
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