The new $250 laptop price point.

[Tom]

Seems the new low cost laptop price is $250..I'd like to hear some discussion of how good/bad these laptops are ?

I assume the new low cost processors in these are as capable as middle of the road cpus of a couple of years ago ? What about gpus ?

 

[DaveSimmons]

The $250 laptops I'm seeing are netbooks with Atom or AMD C-xx processors, which are much slower than a core 2 from a couple of years ago.

At $350-400 you can get a Sandy Bridge dual-core Pentium or i3 processor that will be faster than many high-end laptops from past years. The i3-2xxx with HD3000 graphics is very fast and can even do very light 3D gaming at low quality / low resolution.

 

[alent1234]

bought a $299 toshiba last year as a gift, surprised at the decent quality

if it wasn't for my wife wanting a Mac i'm happy with iphone, ipad and a cheap laptop

 

[corkyg]

Haven't seen one yet that I would spend money on.

 

[Dman8777]

These days it seems like you can get a standard set of low end components (300 - 500 GB 5400 rpm HD, crappy TN display, 3 - 4 GB ram, windows 7 home, 47 wh battery) with a netbook proc (E350 seems to be popular) in the 250 - 350$ range or you can get all the same low end components but with a sandybridge or an AMD A-series proc in the 400-500$ range.

What I would like to see is an E350 laptop (14 - 15 inch) paired with above-average equipment (ips panel, bigger battery, ssd) in the 400 - 500$ range. I don't need more processing power, I just want a nicer overall computer.

 

[Tom]

There's nothing new about $500 laptops.

There is something new about $250 laptops. Not netbooks..laptops. That is a price that changes who can afford a laptop, and conceivably changes the reasons for buying a laptop. Or multiple laptops for families.

Starting from the assumptioon that laptop specs from a couple of years ago(pre i3,i5) are good for many if not all the things people do with laptops,(except 3d gaming), I want to know if the cpus/gpus are as good as the ones from a couple of years ago ?

Things like ssd, expensive panels, Sandtbridge are obviously not coming on a $250 laptop, but so what ?

 

[gmaster456]

My mother bought one of those. My suggestion would be to stay away from them. Lets just say you get what you pay for.

 

[erikistired]

links?

 

[Ketchup]

"You get what you pay for." Truer words have never been said.

Here is what I found in 5 seconds of googling:

http://www.circuitcity.com/applicati...35_A180-156411

Don't miss the specs on this bad boy: a 1 GHz C-50 with 2 GB of RAM running Win 7 64-bit; and don't forget, it's an eMachines (they still have a horrible reputation, different ownership notwithstanding.)

 

[OS]

I had a C60 based netbook for a bit, it worked ok for light use, web browsing and HD video.
Where it struggled was installing software and windows updates.

All this was even with an SSD.

i consider the brand to a tangential issue, pretty much all consumer commodity netbook/notebooks are contract manufactured anyways.

 

[Dessert Tears]

I had a C60 based netbook for a bit, it worked ok for light use, web browsing and HD video.
Where it struggled was installing software and windows updates.

I got the AO722-0473 deal at Target last month, and my experience has been pretty much the same. I restored it to factory a few times while playing with it, and it was really slow each time. It also did poorly with video ads at the NBC website, easily remedied by installing NoScript. I wouldn't want to use it as my only computer, but it seems fine for occasional travel and watching web videos on the TV over HDMI.

Edit: I mean that it was slow to restore, taking well over an hour each time. Some of the Acer junk took surprisingly long to install. It handled Hulu fine, but 2-3 simultaneous video ads at NBC.com pushed it over 90% CPU.

 

[DavidMarie]

"You get what you pay for." Truer words have never been said.

I respectfully disagree! When it comes to consumer electronics, and especially low cost laptops, prices drop irrationally around Christmas and just before and after a new Intel cpu series if available. You can find plenty of 1st gen. Core i 3/5 models out now for as low as $399 and even some SB models around $500. They run circles around the best Core 2 Duos from 2 short years ago - which is to say, more performance than most casual users will ever need.

$250 is cutting it too thin, even in these days of free-falling prices. First determine what you want (screen size, weight, battery life. The RAm and HDD are easily upgraded if/when necessary for a song. I take back what i said earlier: if you pay $250 for a new laptop today, you will likely get, well, something worth about that - and it may be all you need. As long as it has a dual core cpu - Pentium or AMD llano - it will probably handle all your email, MS Office and web surfing needs. Still, jump to $400-$450 and a world of excellent possibilities open up. Good luck

 

[HumblePie]

I got the AO722-0473 deal at Target last month, and my experience has been pretty much the same. I restored it to factory a few times while playing with it, and it was really slow each time. It also did poorly with video ads at the NBC website, easily remedied by installing NoScript. I wouldn't want to use it as my only computer, but it seems fine for occasional travel and watching web videos on the TV over HDMI.

Strange. I have that one as well that I picked up for $200 after GC from Target. It has been great for my intended uses for it. Which has been only surfing the web and watching netflix. I'm not sure what else is expected out of something like this. Although at this point now I would have tried to get a higher end tablet which would compete pretty favorably with the netbook I have.

As for the OP's question the $250-$350 range for slick deal searching is going to occasionally turn of an A4 laptop. This is decent, but for a tiny bit more money one can find an A6 laptop which is a quite a significant boost in performance over the A4.

As others have stated, the $350+ range can get you a nice I3, or A6 laptop.

 

[Dessert Tears]

Strange. I have that one as well that I picked up for $200 after GC from Target. It has been great for my intended uses for it. Which has been only surfing the web and watching netflix.

I edited my post to add a clarification. It has been fine almost all of the time, but I did notice that installations seemed to take longer.

 

[woodyear99]

Low cost laptops are getting better each year. I'm pretty happy with my Aspire One, had an Asus EEE PC HE1000 before....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIsT7U1qhI4

 

[Tom]

Managed to get a B940 based 15.6" laptop for $250. From reviews I've seen on Youtube it should be quite a bit faster than a budget laptop from 2 years ago that probably cost $400 minimum.

Best Buy has an i3 Sany Bridge based 14" laptop for $320 this week. Staples has a Samsung Series 3 i3 for $349 including MS Office. That's close to an ultrabook in some respects.

These are the kind of prices I'm talking about. I suppose it's partly the continuing trend in laptops that's been going on for years, and partly a response to tablets.