Ah, Amazon Prime Day. Or Black Friday in July. Or whatever (insert retailer here) is calling it. The deals, they are a-flowing.
But not everything is worth your time, and more importantly, your money. One category that springs to mind is the laptop.
At this time of year, you see a healthy choice of sub-$200 laptops, such as this HP something or other that's only $129!
Don't buy it. Don't buy any other new-in-box laptop for under $200 during the Prime Day week. They are awful, you will instantly regret it, and you will have wasted your money.
I like a deal as much as the next person. But only if it's a good deal. Fortunately for you, we've rounded up some actually good laptop deals this Prime Day, selected by our experts.
- HP Envy x360 15:
was $899now $399 at BHPhoto - Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 15.6":
was $549.99now $349.99 at BHPhoto - HP Envy x360 14":
was $999.99now $599.99 at Best Buy
If a laptop is under $200 brand-new, it is bad. Period.
I'm not purposely ripping on HP here, but I need to use something as an example. So it'll be the HP Stream 14-inch laptop I mentioned above, currently down to $129.
The only redeeming feature it has, regardless of the price, is that it runs Windows 11. But it won't run it well. The first red flag? 4GB of RAM.
Do not, under any circumstances, buy a Windows 11 laptop with 4GB of RAM. Does it work? Yes. Does it work well? Not a chance. Windows 11 needs resources, and I'm frankly astonished Microsoft even allows its OS to be put on a machine with only 4GB of RAM.
You need to be getting 8GB of RAM minimum. Honestly, 16GB is where you should be aiming for on a laptop if you can stretch your budget enough. Google Chrome will use up more than 2GB of your RAM on its own, Edge maybe a little less, but even a web browser by itself will gobble up most of that 4GB.
The second red flag is the CPU. If you're buying a new laptop to use with Windows 11, it doesn't really want to be an Intel N150 or a Celeron anything. In this HP laptop, you have 4 cores, 4 threads, and a 6W TDP.
Even for the lightest of use, it won't be long before you're wishing you had something beefier.
These super cheap laptops will also have terrible displays — this one isn't even Full HD, you'll only get basic Wi-Fi hardware, and the memory speed will be low, as well as not having much of it. Just awful.
But hey, at least you get a Copilot key on the keyboard! 🙄
Don't spend your money badly, even shopping for a budget laptop
I get it, I really do. Shopping for a budget laptop, you want to save as much as possible. I love getting a great deal. But it's only a great deal if it's actually going to be worth using.
As I said, I'm not singling out HP. I needed an example, and that was the first one that grabbed my eye. There are many, many laptops out there, some from brands you know, others from brands you don't.
They'll be cheap, they'll use words like "powerful," "fast," and "gaming," to try and convince you this is a laptop you want, when it really is one you do not.
My best advice is to flat out avoid anything under $200, with the caveat that I'm only talking about new laptops sold during these deal events. You could spend $200 or less on a pre-owned enterprise laptop on eBay, for example, and get some great hardware for a steal.
I'd rather encourage someone to do that if their budget is in the $200 and below range, than sit by and watch them buy some absolute crap-book and waste their money.
If you find a laptop between $200 and $300, I'd not necessarily avoid it at all costs, but be wary. Check the specs. You want this thing to last a while, after all. No 4GB of RAM machines, no way.
We will continue to help folks find those truly great deals and will recommend laptops worth your time and investment. But it's better not to buy than to buy something horrible.
Spend a few hundred on something much better
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