What's new in under-$500 laptops as of Oct. 1, 2023?

[VirtualLarry]

I've in the last few months acquired an N100-based laptop from Chewi off of Newegg, and an N200-based HP off of Walmart.

The HP seems to have subtly better build quality, but the Chewi has LPDDR5, and the HP N200 has 4GB of (I think, feels slower) DDR4.
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My favorite recent laptops, are a couple of ThinkPads, refurb/off-lease, with 6th-gen i7 CPUs in them. (not QM)

 

[Oyeve]

I bought one of those 200 buck HP laptops from Walmart and it is a very decent cheap laptop. Just wish I could add RAM to it.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Thanks ChatGPT.

 

[tcsenter]

Not sure if deal or not. Extra 10% off with some promo:

Lenovo IdeaPad 3 15.6" 15ITL05 Intel Core i3 11-1115G4 4GB RAM 128 GB PCIe SSD - $300 @ Newegg

According to Lenovo PSREF, has 4GB soldered but one open SO-DIMM slot and M.2 PCI-E SSD.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Way back in 2020 I picked up an Acer Aspire 5 A515--43-R19L for $349.99 for my daughter for her remote learning/pod class and I have been 100% absolutely floored by the overall quality of the laptop at that pricepoint. 1080P matte screen, nice touchpad, 4Gb of upgradable ram, 256GB upgradable M.2 hard drive.

This thing is a normal 15.6" laptop, no funny business with proprietary parts and such, can stick a standard 2280 SSD in there and some extra ram if you want.

Windows 10S (which I immediately unlocked for my daughter). She's still using it 3 years later for her reports and such.

I checked again and essentially the same laptop with some beefed up specs (more Ram and HDD space) is available for $292 off Amazon as an Acer Aspire 3.

If you're looking for a basic non-gaming office type PC this thing absolutely slays in terms of value.

 

[BurnItDwn]

Recently picked up a used Dell precision with an i5-8300H, 32gb of ddr4, 500gb m.2 ssd, quadro p1000 for my aunt. It was about $300. Seemed like a very nice laptop compared to pretty much every other laptop I've ever used.

Grabbed from this link, but it was a different seller: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08BWG8Q5M?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details