Advice needed on inexpensive laptop

[Deskman]

I am tired of lugging my large laptop with a heavy battery to conferences and I'm looking for something smaller, light, and inexpensive. Can anyone give me suggestions? I'd like something non-Chromebook under $200 or $300 if possible, one that has a good amount of memory for manuscripts, powerpoints, etc. (it would be great if I could back up everything from my hulking laptop) and is not slow. I would be happy to purchase last year's model of a laptop if I can get hold of one. I'm also wondering whether a tablet would be a better choice.

[scienceguy]

If you're okay with buying used laptops on eBay, take a look at the Lenovo X250, X260, or X270. They're 12.5-inch models with i5 or i7 processors. Perfect size for slipping into a briefcase. All are available for less than $300. The X250 and X260 routinely go for less than $150, though you may need to provide your own hard drive.

[DrSomebody]

Lenovo makes some basic laptops, I believe the Ideapad series, for that price range. They are nothing fancy, but they are Windows and brand new.

[ergative]

Lenovo makes some basic laptops, I believe the Ideapad series, for that price range. They are nothing fancy, but they are Windows and brand new.

I am a Lenovo groupie, and I find that they are well-made and last a very long time. If there are problems, they are software related, not hardware related.* I always buy Lenovo, and I have a brand new Yoga that I just love.

That said, Lenovo is not cheap. I find that basic-series Dell or HP tend to be cheaper for equivalent specs.

*i.e., they might fail to boot up one day, but if you reinstall the operating system** they run perfectly. It's not like a motherboard failure or something.

**Not to be that person, but I have a 2015 Thinkpad that refused to boot up last night. I put Ubuntu linux on it this morning and now it runs like new.

[jerseyjay]

I use a four-year old MacBook Air, which I am happy with, but recently I have had to travel internationally and I did not want to take it for various reasons (including that my main laptop contains much of my life and do not want to loose it, have it stolen, subject to inspections while crossing numerous borders, etc.).

So on Black Friday I bought a $250 low-end HP laptop at BestBuy. I used it for editing some writing that I am doing, and going online. It is not particularly powerful or anything, but it also is just fine for what I wanted. It is now my travel computer.

I noticed that most of the stores (BestBuy, Walmart, etc) had similar computers on sale. Of course it is past Black Friday, but you could probably get something like that again.

[polly_mer]

I received a refurbished Surface Pro 2 tablet + keyboard with Windows 10 for Christmas and it's been good enough.  The Surface Pro doesn't replace my desktop Macs for true work, but it's good enough as a lightweight traveling machine when all I need is access to Microsoft Office and web browsing.

[DrSomebody]

Lenovo makes some basic laptops, I believe the Ideapad series, for that price range. They are nothing fancy, but they are Windows and brand new.

I am a Lenovo groupie, and I find that they are well-made and last a very long time. If there are problems, they are software related, not hardware related.* I always buy Lenovo, and I have a brand new Yoga that I just love.

That said, Lenovo is not cheap. I find that basic-series Dell or HP tend to be cheaper for equivalent specs.

*i.e., they might fail to boot up one day, but if you reinstall the operating system** they run perfectly. It's not like a motherboard failure or something.

**Not to be that person, but I have a 2015 Thinkpad that refused to boot up last night. I put Ubuntu linux on it this morning and now it runs like new.

Right, the high end ones are not, but the budget series are. I bought two, one three Christmases ago, and one the Christmas after for an older couple in my life who needed new laptops. They were both around $300. They are not fancy at all, but they still work! I am a MackBook Pro person, and would only go Lenovo if I had to do PC and could get the high end, but they do have budget ones for students and such that run Windows and work for basic functions. I'd buy that before most brands, though Asus is recommended okay (but feel cheap). Dell is decent, but as my IT guy said, they are more known for being good about fixing them when they break. I'm talking low end on all of these, of course. Things are always going to work better when you can pay a lot more.

[Deskman]

Do any of these low-end laptops work for streaming films? I'd like to have that capability as well.

[spork]

Reviving this thread because I need advice. My university-issued laptop bricked and will be sent to the manufacturer for repair/replacement. I have an ASUS C302 chromebook as a backup and travel device that has served me well over the last few years. I particularly like the fact that it measures ~ 12" X 8.5", weighs less than 3 pounds, and has a tiny charger cube & cord. But I've discovered that it's not compatible with the Zoom desktop client, which means I lose certain Zoom features if I use it to host meetings. Also working through my university's Microsoft 365/OneDrive system is just not as convenient as using Office desktop applications (my university will install the Office suite of desktop applications on personally-owned computers).

I haven't been a Mac person since about 2000, simply because I'm not an early adopter and generally avoid paying the markup for Veblen goods. My phone, for example, is a Samsung Galaxy S5. So while I have no real objections to Macs, I'm not part of the Apple tribe.

Generally my needs are simple: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Chrome or Firefox for work on the web, sometimes editing documents with Adobe Acrobat (which for now at least is installed on university-issued machines). I'm not a gamer, do not edit feature films, or crunch massive data sets. I teach a lot online and tend to travel to international locations when there isn't a pandemic, so a laptop that easily fits into a carry-on bag is ideal.

[sinenomine]

Spork, I got an inexpensive Lenovo this Spring when it became clear I'd be working from home for ... however long. Other than losing its mic functionality within 4-5 weeks (I picked up a $20 plug in mic rather deal with repair hassles), it's working fine for me — Zooming, Canvas, Google suite, run of the mill work on texts and spreadsheets, etc., and it's handling all my transferred files well. It's not the speediest thing out there, but serves my needs.

[spork]

Can someone tell me the difference between a Microsoft Surface, Surface Book, Surface Laptop, Surface Pro, and Surface Go? I'm seeing all these names at wildly different price points.

[polly_mer]

Can someone tell me the difference between a Microsoft Surface, Surface Book, Surface Laptop, Surface Pro, and Surface Go? I'm seeing all these names at wildly different price points.

Try https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/2/17608116/microsoft-surface-pick-right-for-you

The big thing when I was looking before Christmas is some are tablets, some are stripped down laptops, and some are power machines.

[fleabite]

It is interesting to see all the votes of confidence in Lenovo. I can add another. I have an 11-year-old Lenovo ThinkPad Edge that I use every day, and it is still going strong. One of the USB ports has become a little wonky, but if I wiggle whatever device I am plugging in, I can always get it to work.

[ohnoes]

I'm using a three year old Lenovo ideapad and have no problems.  I think I paid $250.  It zooms, streams, Teams, and regular-computes.

My backup is PreviousLenovo that worked perfectly until Windows 10 came along.  I installed Linux and it's perfect again.

[JJChandler]

I will give another +1 for Lenovo (though I have also had good luck with Dell). Realistically, at this price point you are going to have to make some tradeoffs between speed/size/memory etc. I would suggest giving up on "lots of memory" and go for something with a solid state drive. Load times will be much snappier, the laptop will be lighter and (importantly) more durable. Most of the files you mentioned (word docs, powerpoints) are small and so memory is less relevant. Besides, you can easily suppliment this with  the cloud (dropbox) a cheap drive (another 128 GB for $15) or a synched external hard drive. My personal preference would be to prioritize battery life over everything else (unless you are using computationally intensive software like photoshop or SAS). If a chromebook is unacceptable, a tablet should be too. They have all of the limitations of a chromebook and then some.