Best Laptops for under $500

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football52

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I'm trying to help my aunt pick a laptop for under $500 (seems like since I'm in the Computer Science area everything thinks you should know exactly the laptop to buy right?) While I would say I know a far amount about good brands I've never shopped under the $500 range and what laptops are actually worth it.

To start out ChromeBooks are out of the picture as they use Microsoft word and other applications that Chrome books don't support. All they really use it for is surfing the web, letters, email etc.

I've looked at Lenovo, Dell and Asus laptops but really at under $500 all your going to see is your basic laptop with 4+gb of ram, probably an intel pentinum processor and your other basics.

Does anybody have any recommendations of a good cheap laptop?
 
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jaguarskx
I recommend the following $350 Acer laptop with a Core i3-7100u which should be fine for your aunt's needs. It's performance is basically equal the the i5-2410m in one of my laptop that I use to surf the net, Excel, Word and other basic things. That also leaves a bit of money for potential upgrades to improve performance while still staying within a $500 (before shipping and tax) budget. The difference in performance between the i3-7100u and i5-7200u will be minimal at best based on your aunt's intended use.

https://www.amazon.com/Acer-Aspire-i3-7100U-Windows-E5-575-33BM/dp/B01K1IO3QW/ref=as_li_ss_tl?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1475751103&sr=1-15&keywords=e+15&linkCode=sl1&tag=tecdea0f-20&linkId=973caed1ea66abfb86c5ee0a1596151b


Here is about a...
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jaslion

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Go into a local media store look for a laptop that has an i5 (can be had for that price) have a phone ready to look them up online to see if the laptop in question is garbage quality wise or not and decide this way.
 
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jaslion

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Added bonus is she can pick a colour. Which is great for people that don't care about a pc's internals just that it works and looks nice.
 
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jaguarskx

jaguarskx

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I recommend the following $350 Acer laptop with a Core i3-7100u which should be fine for your aunt's needs. It's performance is basically equal the the i5-2410m in one of my laptop that I use to surf the net, Excel, Word and other basic things. That also leaves a bit of money for potential upgrades to improve performance while still staying within a $500 (before shipping and tax) budget. The difference in performance between the i3-7100u and i5-7200u will be minimal at best based on your aunt's intended use.

https://www.amazon.com/Acer-Aspire-i3-7100U-Windows-E5-575-33BM/dp/B01K1IO3QW/ref=as_li_ss_tl?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1475751103&sr=1-15&keywords=e+15&linkCode=sl1&tag=tecdea0f-20&linkId=973caed1ea66abfb86c5ee0a1596151b


Here is about a 30 minute Windows performance review that covers general performance including using different browsers to surf the internet. Covers CPU load, RAM load and hard drive load. It also show how much of a memory hog Chrome is. I recommend you purchase a 4GB stick of RAM for about $32 and install it.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFO2RS3Rb1k&t=1006s


https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Single-PC4-17000-SODIMM-260-Pin/dp/B015HQ9SI6/ref=as_li_ss_tl?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1480359252&sr=1-7&refinements=p_n_feature_five_browse-bin:673263011&linkCode=sl1&tag=tecdea0f-20&linkId=64acafb4e681473bd0b856587e89452d



If you really want to improve the responsiveness of the laptop then you can purchase the following Samsung 256GB 2.5" SSD so that you can clone the HDD and replace it with the SSD. But you will need a USB to SATA cable like the one linked below for $12 to do the cloning process. You can download the cloning software from Samsung for free.

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-2-5-Inch-Internal-MZ-75E250B-AM/dp/B00OAJ412U/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1498011927&sr=1-2&keywords=256gb+2.5%22+ssd

https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-SATA-Drive-Adapter-Cable/dp/B00HJZJI84/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1498012131&sr=1-1&keywords=usb+to+sata+connector.


Excluding shipping and taxes the total works out to a little less than $500 if you decide to upgrade the RAM to 8GB and install the SSD.
 
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Chugalug_

Chugalug_

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I find i3 laptops even for general use can get quite slow after a few years, i'd personally recommend grabbing an i5 for a bit more power, should last her a much longer time.
Used to have I think a 2370m laptop? That thing was running like a brick after two years, hence why I upgraded to an i5 4210u laptop which is still working very well today.
 
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jaguarskx

jaguarskx

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My 2011 laptop with the i5-2410m runs perfectly fine. A bit of Windows maintenance can go a long way and 8GB of RAM. The only reason why I replaced it as a primary laptop is because it only has a 1366x768 resolution screen.

Writing emails and word processing does not require a lot of processing power. Browsing the web can be CPU intensive depending on where you go. Yahoo is probably one of the worst designed internet site because the site contain a lot of coding that does server requests that the CPU must process which can bog down the CPU.
 
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Chugalug_

Chugalug_

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Ah right that's probably balancing out the performance difference since i'm at 1080p. :p
For 1080, i'd grab the i5, for lower resolutions an i3 is fine, but still, given the budget i'd say it's well worth that bit more.
At $499 I reckon that's fantastic value.
 
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jaguarskx

jaguarskx

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The resolution of the screen will not affect overall performance of the laptop unless you are doing something that is graphically intensive like playing a game. Prior to purchasing a new laptop I connected my old 2011 laptop to a 1080p monitor. It worked without any issues, but it was not elegant, hence to reason why I simply bought a new laptop with a 1080p screen.

The graphics core is what drives the graphic performance which includes the resolution. Both i3-7100u and the i5-7200u have the same exact graphics core; the Intel HD 620 which operates at the same clock frequency.
 
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