
Its MediaTek Helio 60T processor, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage, don't deliver stellar performance, although it's good enough for the kinds of tasks you'll want to run on it. The Lenovo Chromebook Duet's low price brings some limitations and basic specs. That has changed with the introduction of the Lenovo Chromebook Duet, which not only is a very usable tablet but that represents a tremendous value thanks to the included kickstand cover and detachable keyboard. One style that hasn't done as well as some others is the detachable Chrome OS tablet. Why we picked the Lenovo Chromebook Duet:Ĭhromebooks have become popular budget choices over the last few years, and many have won us over as well (See our list of the best Chromebooks. Who it's for: Anyone on a budget who doesn't mind sacrificing performance for extreme value. Why you should buy this: It's the best budget Chromebook. It's as well-built as all Surface devices and shares a common aesthetic - it'll look great sitting on a desk. It's solid for both productivity and media binging.įinally, the Surface Laptop Go is a good-looking device that comes in a variety of colors to let students choose just the right one for them. Next, the Surface Laptop go is a highly mobile device with a 12.4-inch IPS touch screen display that, although it's not quite FHD resolution, is still of very high quality and a pleasure to use. Those are remarkably low prices for a Surface laptop and should appeal to students at all levels. You can spend a bit more, namely $700, and double the RAM and storage. To begin with, it's the first Surface device offered at budget prices, in this case, $550 for a 10th-gen Ice Lake Core i5 CPU, 4GB of RAM, and a 64GB PCIe solid-state drive (SSD). Microsoft's new Surface Laptop Go meets all those criteria - making it one of the best laptops for students in college. Students usually want a few things in a cheap laptop - something that's easy to carry around, that provides good enough performance for getting their homework done, and something that's not going to embarrass them when they pull it out to take notes. Why we picked the Microsoft Surface Laptop Go: Who it's for: Students, buyers on a budget. Why you should buy this: It's the best budget laptop for students. It's not a sleek or modern-looking laptop by any means, though it is very well built, and you'll be hard-pressed to find a faster or better-built laptop for this kind of money. The $650 Acer Swift 3 also gets you 8GB of RAM and a large 512GB SSD. The display isn't the best we've seen, but you'll forgive it once you see how well this budget laptop performs. That helps the laptop not only perform productivity tasks with aplomb but even churn through demanding tasks like encoding video. For around $650 (prices fluctuate), you get an eight-core laptop with AMD Radeon integrated graphics. Normally, one of the things you give up is processing power, relegated to low-end and/or last-generation Intel Core CPUs, in addition to builds that are plasticky and don't elicit confidence in their long-term viability.įortunately, Acer has come on strong with the Swift 3 equipped with AMD's latest Ryzen 7 4700U CPU. Who it's for: Anyone who doesn't mind sacrificing style for power.įinding a fast, well-built, cheap laptop for $650 isn't easy. Why you should buy this: It's the best budget laptop.
