Cheap / Budget Laptops : Buying Guide

Here we list out all the possible points to purchase a cheap laptop when you are on a budget. Snatch a deal with our cheap laptops shopping guidance. Acquiring a cheap laptop necessarily means arbitrating somewhere. But if you are going for a cheap one, just make sure the concessions won’t make you lament your choice too soon after procuring.

Compromise can be on the looks, the aura, and the scrutiny to the specifications that makes you want to associate to on a more touching level. The compromise can be also on the build quality, the choice of internal peripherals. Unless you go for a real bottom dollar products, the one area where you less likely to feel the compression is the program performance. Design is no longer an afterthought for laptop makers. Clunky-looking laptops are well behind us, as even the cheapest components can fit into a frame not much thicker than an inch. There are many other things which we need to consider when buying a cheap laptop, we will look at the points below. Argos have some great deals on cheap laptops which you can find online across the web, and following the guide below would help you choose the best one for you.

Budget / Cheap Laptops Buying Advice

Design

Laptops are much more peculiar than desktops, handy and compact to use. It has become un-voidable these days that everyone is replacing desktops with laptops officially and un-officially.

Here we won’t be telling you which trend to follow but be apprehensive that cheap laptops are rarely catwalk models. They might use a very cheaper, chunkier quality plastic devices or it might be a simple design by the people with no artistic sense. So we have to be prepared to deal with something that’s been not so much hit by all the powerful ugly stick. Though not a whole lot, some attention is being paid to lid decoration, from using laser etchings to offering different color options. Many budget laptops use a technique called in-mold decoration, in which inlaid patterns are visible through a laminate coating.

Design admirations also compass into engineering, so we have to scrutinize the points like hinges, keyboard, access hatches and ask yourself if they look like they'll survive.

Materials

Superior grade materials will often serve the purpose. Aluminium alloy is mostly preferred for strength, corrosion and its resistance to corrosion and durability. Cheap laptops are mostly manufactured using plastics and that is why it signals fatter and heavier designs than notebooks shaped from metals like magnesium, titanium and aluminium.

We should be receptive that some cheap laptops camouflage their use of inferior materials by spraying plastic to look like metal. Sometimes a gentle wear can remove the faux metal paint to expose dark plastic.

Build quality

We should see how well the chassis has been set. We should check on the joints if its air tight and should check if lid to the deck joint is placed perfectly. Keyboards and trackpads are common putback devices which will give a soggy typing from low-grade capacitive touchpads.

Components

Picking the right components is arguably the trickiest part in finding the ideal budget laptop. The processor is the brains behind the laptop and varies as prices come down. Ideally, an Intel Core i3 processor is the best in breed in laptops that cost less than $700. After that, it's a mixed bag of cheap and cheaper processors. Intel Pentium and Celeron processors aren't as nimble as their Core counterparts, but they're energy efficient. You'll find plenty of AMD Athlon and Phenom processors in this price range.They are more than capable of handling any number of tasks thrown at it, but they can't keep up with Intel's battery prowess.

Performance

A laptop review should always satisfy the performance tests a single number of, say, 3500 points in PCMark 7 is also worthless. Always comparison tables with reviews can give a clear picture on the performance.

Graphics performance is always bad on cheaper laptops. And Performance always points to connectivity as well. Especially wireless performance in budget laptops are always confined with most basic of 802.11n capabilities. As per IEEE standards it allows for three antennae to provide a half-decent indoor range connectivity but budget laptops will have only one aerial which restraints wireless performance further.

Connections

Modern laptops supports USB 3.0 but budget laptop mostly comes with USB 2.0 which is an outdated one. HDMI is now pervasive for video output but GB Ethernet is never given for budget laptops. This is the way manufacturers will save few cents out of the view of the buyer.

There are many cheap and budget laptops in the market, but picking the correct one can be difficult at times. However if you consider the above said points, it’s hard to go wrong.