JANUARY 2022 PCWorld 97i3-10110U can exceed a score of 1,900 in the
same test. AMD’s Ryzen 3 3350U is even
better, scoring up to 2,500. That’s over three
times faster!
Intel’s Celeron and AMD’s Athlon
processors are not much better than
MediaTek. Laptops with these processors can
hit prices below $200, but quicker machines
remain affordable. You can find Intel Core i3
and AMD Ryzen 3 in laptops that start at
$300. That’s a better value.
RAM: AIM FOR 8GB, BUT
YOU CAN GET BY WITH LESS
RAM, also known as memory, is important for
multitasking and more demanding
applications. The sweet spot for a budget
laptop is 8GB. Apps that require more RAM
won’t perform well on a budget laptop for
other reasons anyway.
However, 8GB of RAM will push on the
upper end of a $500 budget. I
recommend leaning toward a machine
with 8GB of RAM when you have the
choice, but you might have to settle for
less. Many budget laptops have 4GB
or, less often, 6GB.
That’s fine. Really. Even 4GB of
RAM is fine for web browsing (fave.
co/3ec23xn), writing a term paper,
online shopping, personal accounting,
and hundreds of other computing
tasks. Just don’t pick up photography
or video editing as a hobby.
HARD DRIVE: AIM FOR A
128GB SSD OR BETTER
Budget laptops typically offer a solid state
hard drive instead of an old-fashioned hard
disk drive. That’s a good thing. A solid state
drive slashes app load times. It’s a huge
improvement.
Look for a hard drive with at least 128GB
of storage. This amount is pretty tight, but it’s
manageable if you stick with cloud storage for
large files and use apps larger than 10GB in
size. 256GB of storage is a better bet, but
you’ll have a hard time snagging that for
under $500.
You’ll find that some budget laptops,
most of them Chromebooks, list a small
32GB or 64GB eMMC hard drive instead of a
solid state drive. This is budget solid state
storage that delivers poor performance.
Though I recommend a larger solid state
drive, eMMC storage is fine for a