Find the Best Cheap Laptop for Your Needs

✨ Best laptop deals

As the best basic laptop for everyday use, we go with the Acer Aspire 3 for its overall performance and battery life. College students will find the Lenovo IdeaPad 3 Chromebook a reliable campus companion. The MacBook Air M1 now makes an affordable choice for Apple fans, while the HP Victus 15 is a great entry-level gaming laptop. For business professionals, the budget-priced Acer Aspire 5 ticks all the boxes for dependable performance.

Why you can trust this list

Our in-house reviewers are all experts in the technologies they examine and review. We're one of the world's leading online marketplaces for refurbished electronics, using highly accomplished third-party refurbishers who micro-inspect every detail of the products we sell. Their testing and feedback give us a deep knowledge base to draw on when creating these lists.

We're also completely agnostic, not favoring any brand over another, so you can trust our objectivity. We don't play favorites, treating each laptop on its own merits without any sort of bias. Furthermore, we also track user feedback and reviews on our platform to gauge popularity and the pros and cons of each item. Our goal is to always give you full transparency and knowledgeable opinions so that you can make informed decisions.

🏆 Best cheap laptop for basic everyday use: Acer Aspire 3

Acer Aspire 3 pros and cons

Acer Aspire 3: features and benefits

The Acer Aspire 3 has all the features you'll need in an everyday laptop. It executes day-to-day tasks smoothly and effortlessly and is suitable for virtually everyone. It has a decent amount of processing power and a relatively extensive battery life. This laptop offers excellent value for its price point: you can get a perfectly functional refurbished model for under $240 on Back Market. It doesn't have a premium design or a top-end display, but you still get everything you need for web browsing, communication, home use, and home office work. If all you want is a basic, affordable laptop, this is the pick of the bunch. It's cost-effective, reliable, and runs smoothly.

Acer Aspire 3 specifications

• Chipset: AMD Ryzen 3 7320U

• Operating system: Windows 11 Home

• Processor speed: 2.4 GHz

• RAM: 8 GB

• Storage: 128 GB

• Screen size: 15.6 in

• Display: 1920 x 1080

• Graphics processor: AMD Radeon Graphics

• Battery life: Up to 17 hours

• Connectivity: Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2

• Dimensions: 0.75 x 14.3 x 9.4 inches

• Weight: 3.77 lbs

🏆 Best cheap laptop for college students: Lenovo IdeaPad 3 Chromebook

Lenovo IdeaPad 3 Chromebook pros and cons

Lenovo IdeaPad 3 Chromebook: features and benefits

The Lenovo IdeaPad 3 Chromebook is an affordable and lightweight machine that makes an ideal affordable laptop for college students. It's compact and easy to carry around. While it won't support resource-intensive course work, software for graphic design, or data modeling, it's great for note-taking, research, and other course work like writing papers, creating spreadsheets, and giving presentations. It also has an excellent 1080p webcam for collaborating with other students on projects. The full high definition (FHD) touchscreen is a very useful bonus. The only noticeable drawback is that it can slow down when running too many different apps simultaneously.  

Lenovo IdeaPad 3 Chromebook specifications

• Chipset: Intel Core i3-N305

• Operating system: ChromeOS

• Processor speed: 1.1 GHz

• RAM: 8 GB

• Storage: 64 GB / 128 GB / 256 GB

• Screen size: 14 in

• Display: 1920 x 1080 with 60Hz Touchscreen

• Graphics processor: Intel UHD Graphics

• Battery life: Just over 13 hours

• Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth

• Dimensions: 0.71 x 11.28 x 8.09 inches

• Weight: 2.47 lbs

🏆 Best cheap laptop for Apple users: MacBook Air M1

MacBook Air M1 pros and cons

MacBook Air M1: features and benefits

The 2020 MacBook Air makes an excellent choice for Apple fans looking for a cheaper alternative to the latest MacBook prices. It retains very impressive credentials and now represents some of the best value you can get in a Mac. It has been one of the most popular models since its release, thanks to its ultra-slim design, its lightweight portability, and the performance power of the M1 chip. Furthermore, it has a wonderfully responsive keyboard and one of the best touchpads you'll find on any laptop. Its Retina display is exceptionally sharp with a higher resolution than most mainstream laptops, even in 2026. Having been superseded by newer models, you can pick up this gem of a laptop at great prices today.

MacBook Air M1 specifications

• Chipset: Apple M1

• Operating system: Apple macOS

• Processor speed: 3.2 GHz

• RAM: 8 GB

• Storage: 256 GB

• Screen size: 13.3 in

• Display: 2560 x 1600

• Graphics processor: Apple M1

• Battery life: Roughly 29 hours

• Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth

• Dimensions: 0.63 x 11.97 x 8.36 inches

• Weight: 2.8 lbs

🏆 Best cheap laptop for business: Acer Aspire 5

Acer Aspire 5 pros and cons

Acer Aspire 5: features and benefits

The Acer Aspire 5 is a solid and dependable entry-level refurbished business laptop for a very reasonable cost. It's universally rated as one of the best affordable laptops for everyday business productivity and office use. It feels solidly built, with a robust chassis that easily shrugs off the occasional bump on business trips. The screen resolution is clear and bright with a non-reflective matte finish to reduce glare in daylight. While it slows down somewhat when running resource-hungry software, it's still a perfectly good office laptop for non-specialized work and running productivity suites like Microsoft 365. Its relatively light weight makes it comfortable to carry around all day long on business.

Acer Aspire 5 specifications

• Chipset: Intel Core i5

• Operating system: Windows 11

• Processor speed: 1.7 GHz

• RAM: 8 GB

• Storage: 512 GB

• Screen size: 14 in

• Display: 1920 x 1080

• Graphics processor: Iris Xe

• Battery life: About 6.5 hours

• Connectivity: Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.0

• Dimensions: 0.71 x 12.9 x 8.8 inches

• Weight: 3.75 lbs

🏆 An affordable laptop for gaming: HP Victus 15

HP Victus 15 pros and cons

The HP Victus 15 is an excellent choice for an entry-level gaming laptop. Even in its basic configuration, it can handle many modern games, including RPGs and first-person shooters. This is somewhat of a purpose-built laptop, designed specifically for gaming. It's also a great platform for add-on features. Inserting a more powerful graphics card will boost it into a more capable configuration, for instance. It has a satisfyingly long battery life, and the frame-refresh rate is decent enough to handle local and online play. Bump-ons run along the entire width underneath, creating a stable physical platform. While it is a bit more expensive than the other laptops in this list, as an entry-level model, it's still decidedly cheap for a gaming laptop.

HP Victus 15 specifications

• Chipset: Intel Core i7

• Operating system: Windows 11

• Processor speed: 4.7 GHz

• RAM: 16 GB

• Storage: 512 GB

• Screen size: 15.6 in

• Display: 1920 x 1080

• Graphics processor: RTX 4050 with 6 GB VRAM

• Battery life: Just under 6 hours of gaming

• Connectivity: Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3

• Dimensions: 0.93 x 14.09 x 10.04 inches

• Weight: 5.06 lbs

Comparing the best laptop deals

*Prices written at time of publication. Prices can change daily (subject to change).

Shopping tips to get the best cheap laptop

Among the most valuable shopping tips we can give you is to choose one of our refurbished laptops rather than buying new ones for two powerful reasons.

First, consider the savings. You'll pay much less than you would if you bought these laptops new. You can save as much as 50% on the recommended retail price when you shop on Back Market, and these are every bit as good as new ones. They've been diligently restored to their original performance benchmarks by our expert, verified, third-party refurbishers. After this best-in-class restoration, the laptops are put through a battery of exacting tests using our 100-point quality inspection process to ensure peak performance. We put our money where our mouths are on this by giving you a 1-year warranty and free 30-day returns. We also offer a BackUp protection plan for longer-term assurance.    Second, by choosing a refurbished laptop, you'll be part of breaking the unsustainable cycle of disposable fast tech. Every item bought through us would otherwise have become electronic waste. You can enjoy your new laptop while feeling good about reducing your own carbon footprint and contributing to an eco-friendlier digital economy.

As for the best cheap laptop to get? That's a matter of personal choice, depending on what you need. Read up a bit more on the ones in our list and ask around for personal opinions. You can also check our customer reviews for more insights. We've selected our recommendations for the best ones to get, but if all you want is something really cheap, then check out our Chromebook selection for a laptop under 100.

✨ If you want a great discount on a reputable laptop AND do your part for the environment, refurbished is the way to go.

Quick cash for your old laptop

You can save even more on a replacement laptop by trading in your old one or any other electronic device you don't use anymore. It's quick and easy: fill in a short form giving us the specs, and you'll instantly receive an offer from one of our refurbishment partners. We'll pay for you to ship it to us, and within 5 business days your payment will arrive.

Closing thoughts

We’ve given you the lowdown on recommended cheap laptops for some of the most common uses, but our selection goes well beyond these models. You might need a laptop for something entirely different, like rugged outdoor work or 3D modeling. On Back Market, you’ll always find some of the best laptop deals around, with amazing discounts on top-quality machines. Browse whenever you need to—with us,the savings never stop.