The best laptops under $500 in 2024: our top budget picks

If you're on a tight budget and need a new laptop, it's important to calibrate your expectations accordingly: even the best laptops under $500 you can get right now aren't amazing.

What they are is cheap and effective, which can be the most important features when someone just needs a affordable workhorse for work or school. I know because my team and I review dozens of laptops from the top manufacturers every year, and almost all of them cost $1,000 or more.

But there are a few hidden gems that punch above their weight, including the Acer Aspire Go 15 I recently reviewed. It's not a great laptop but it is a great deal, because you pay $299 and get a fully functional and effective Windows 11 laptop.

Folks looking for something a little lighter and more versatile should check out the Lenovo Duet 3 Chromebook, which has a nice bright touchscreen, 10+ hours of tested battery life and a surprisingly good keyboard cover included.

And while no modern gaming laptop can be had for under $500, the Acer Chromebook 516 GE can stream even the latest and greatest games in glorious 1080p and you can often find it on sale for under $500.

If you can afford between $500 - $1,000, you might also want to have a look at our list of the best budget laptops for a few more recommendations that cost a bit more!

The quick list

In a hurry? Here's a brief overview of the laptops on this list, along with quick links that let you jump down the page directly to a review of whichever laptop catches your eye.

Written by

Written by

Alex Wawro

Alex Wawro is a lifelong journalist who's spent over a decade covering tech, games and entertainment. He oversees the computing department at Tom's Guide, which includes managing laptop coverage and reviewing many himself every year.

The best laptops under $500

The best overall

I like to recommend the Acer Aspire Go 15 to folks looking for a cheap laptop because it delivers everything you need in a laptop for an eye-wateringly low MSRP of $299.

That's less than an iPad costs, yet in return you get a full-on Windows 11 laptop with plenty of ports, a comfy keyboard and 10+ hours of tested battery life. Sure the laptop is a little sluggish and the 720p webcam sucks, but those are the trade-offs you make for getting a full-fledged laptop this cheap.

If you need an affordable workhorse for work or school, the Acer Aspire Go 15 is an easy recommendation to make.

Read our full Acer Aspire Go 15 review.

The best Chromebook

The  Lenovo Flex 5i Chromebook Plus just squeaks under our criteria at $499, but it's worth every penny of that and (in my opinion) the best Chromebook you can get for under $500.

I say that because this is a Chromebook that doesn't feel like it, and as long as you have a strong Internet connection it's basically as good as any premium laptop for research, writing and streaming your favorite shows. 

In addition to a lovely 1200p touchscreen, the Intel Core i3-1315U CPU and 8GB of RAM onboard give this Chromebook enough pep to launch and run any app without noticeable slowdown. With those components this machine qualifies as a Chromebook Plus laptop, which means you have access to additional Google AI tools that can help you do things like quickly edit images or offer suggestions when you're writing text.

However, the Flex 5i disappoints a bit in our battery tests, where it lasted roughly 7 hours and 36 minutes before conking out. That's okay but not great, and since we couldn't even get 8 full hours in our testing under controlled conditions you shouldn't expect this laptop to last you through a full day at school or the coffee shop unless you use it sparingly—so pack the charger for those days.  

That said, the bottom line is that this is a killer Chromebook for the price. While it won't feel as fast or as premium as something like a MacBook Air or Dell XPS 13, the difference is you'll be walking around with an additio

Read our full Lenovo Flex 5i Chromebook Plus review.

I love the value proposition of Lenovo's 11-inch Duet 3, which gives you a nice bright screen, plenty of ports and the speed of a Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 chip. It's one of the best Chrome tablets you can buy, and the fact that Lenovo includes the keyboard cover at no extra cost helps it double as a surprisingly effective 2-in-1 Chromebook.

While you can also consider the original Lenovo Chromebook Duet a good buy if you're short on cash, those who can afford it will be well-served by this excellent tablet. Its small size and detachable keyboard make it the most portable PC on this list, and with 10+ hours of tested battery life you can count on using it for a full day of work, school or just scrolling on the couch.

Read our full Lenovo Duet 3 Chromebook review.

The best for gaming

You can't get any of the best gaming laptops for under $500, but you can get the Acer Chromebook 516 GE for awfully close to that these days.

And as long as you have a speedy Internet connection it's pretty great for streaming games via services like Nvidia's GeForce Now, letting you play even the most demanding games you own (like Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty) on this laptop's big 16-inch (2,500 x 1,600 pixels) display.

Since you'll mostly want to be streaming games rather than running them locally using the laptop's weak internals, you'll be glad to know this laptop sports an RJ-45 Ethernet jack so you can plug into a hardwired Internet connection. And with its comfy RGB-lit keyboard and 120Hz screen, you can count on being able to enjoy streaming the best PC games comfortably for hours.

Read our full Acer Chromebook 516 GE review.

Battery life testing compared

None of the laptops on this list are going to give you much raw power, which is to be expected at these low prices. But just because they're cheap doesn't mean they have cheap batteries. In fact, manufacturers are quick to claim otherwise.

But you can't always trust a laptop maker's claims about battery life. That's why we run every laptop we review through a series of battery tests to see how long it actually lasts on a full charge, rather than trusting manufacturer claims.

Note that these tests don't reflect real-world use patterns since we have to set every laptop to the same settings in order to do fair comparisons. Thus, while the times listed here are accurate and useful as a comparison point, your own experience with a laptop's battery life will likely vary quite a bit.

That's because when we run our battery test we set the laptop display to 150 nits of brightness (which is on the dim side) and set it to endlessly browse the web via Wi-Fi until it dies. Then we repeat the process a few times and average the results.

However, when you use your laptop you're probably adjusting brightness regularly and doing all sorts of different tasks at the same time. So while I stand by our testing and the battery life results we compare in the chart below, I want to be clear that your own experience will vary!  

Performance test results compared

All of these laptops will feel a bit cheap and slow compared to fancier machines, but some have better screens than others.

I mention this because you may spend a lot of time staring at your laptop screen, so you should have a sense how they compare before you buy. A bright laptop can be nice because it ensures you can use the laptop outdoors in sunlight, whereas a dim laptop might be a hassle to look at or give you eye strain after hours of using it in bright light.

So here's a quick rundown of the average brightness and peak brightness of every laptop on this list, as measured in our testing lab by our Klein 10-A colorimeter. Don't worry too much about what different amounts of nits mean: the important thing is higher nits = brighter, and the average brightness is an average of the whole screen whereas the peak brightness is measured as the brightest point on the screen.

How to choose the best laptop under $500 for you

It can be tricky to know how much you should reasonably expect from a laptop that costs less than $500. 

You’re not going to get bleeding-edge performance or a super premium design. And you might have to make a few compromises on the display, such as how well it handles colors and how bright gets. But that doesn’t mean you have to make do with a laptop that feels cheap; rather, you’re looking for one that's affordable. So here are a few things to keep in mind when shopping for a laptop under $500.  

Chrome or Windows?  With $500 or less, you’re limited to getting a Windows or ChromeOS machine, as even the cheapest MacBook Air will be out of your price range. As such you’ll need to decide whether a Windows laptop or Chromebook better fits your needs. 

Chrome OS offers a lightweight operating system that will run on even the most basic hardware, yet still offers a comprehensive suite of abilities and web-based apps to get a lot of day-to-day computing tasks done. Furthermore, it now supports Android apps. 

Windows, on the other hand, requires a little more power to ensure it runs smoothly. But it supports a huge range of software, far more than Chrome OS can currently dream of. And Windows is being improved upon on a regular basis, meaning you’ll be able to get the best software Microsoft can offer years after you’ve bought your laptop. 

Clamshell or convertible: Sub-$500 laptops generally come in two varieties — traditional clamshell laptops or dynamic 2-in-1 convertibles. Clamshells are usually the cheaper of the bunch, and provide a traditional laptop experience with a keyboard and a non-touch screen. But if you want a touchscreen device that can also double as a tablet, convertibles (or detachables, like the Duet 3), are worth considering.

Don't settle for less than 1080p: Unless you're truly strapped for cash, you shouldn't settle for most laptops with a 1366 x 768 display. Plenty of affordable notebooks start with a display resolution of 1080p, which will make a big difference when it comes to streaming Netflix shows or working on Word documents for hours on end.

How we tested these laptops

To find the best laptop, we run every machine through a rigorous suite of benchmarks and real-world tests to gauge how it will perform during everyday use. 

We measure the average brightness and color quality of each laptop's display using our in-house light meter and colorimeter. For general performance, we run our machines through tests that include Geekbench 5 (CPU performance), as well as various 3DMark tests to measure graphics capabilities. We also run a file transfer test to measure how fast a machine's hard drive is, and a custom battery test that has the machine browse the internet over Wi-Fi until it runs out of juice.

When testing Chromebooks, we run our machines through web-focused tests that include JetStream 2, a Web-based benchmarking suite that runs over five dozen tests designed to measure how well systems handle the kind of applications they’re most likely to encounter on the Internet. 

When testing dedicated gaming laptops, we run benchmarks for popular games such as Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Far Cry 6 and Red Dead Redemption 2. For more information on our testing process, check out our guide to how we test.