Best Budget Laptop Mini-Laptop or Laptop?The best budget laptop you generally see isn't that great a computer. The cheap laptop computers you see for sale usually have processors that are old or slow or both old and slow. What I am calling a budget laptop is one priced below $500. Most of these with Intel processors will have a Pentium dual core processor, core 2 duo, or older core i3 processors. Fairly consistently you can find second generation core i3 processors if you look around. Some of the Pentium processors are also new. Some of these are quite serviceable processors and are good enough to do just about anything other than gaming or video editing. Models with AMD processors span a similar range of capabilities. The older AMD processors such as the Athlon II and Turion II are slower around the same speed as the Intel core 2 duo or older Pentium (Pxxx or Txxx numbers). The newer fusion processors (C and E series) processors you will see are slow, but in 11.6 inch or smaller laptops or ultra thin laptops are competitive for the price. AMD A4 processors are in the upper end of the group and the fastest of the lot that you will see here are laptops with AMD Phenom II x4 processors. Another real choice for a budget laptop is a mini laptop computer. While these machines are slow, they may be capable of most of the things you will want to do with your computer. If down-loading music, surfing the web (including you tube), and light use of office applications such as word processing and spreadsheets are what you expect to do with your laptop, a mini-laptop will fill the bill. The best budget laptop, which will be very close to my $500 limit will be able to do more, but mmany won't. Last year I bought 2 mini-laptops (from 2 different retailers) for under $500 for the two. Generally speaking the best budget laptop will have an AMD Phenom II X4 processor or a second generation Core i3 processor. The better graphics cards are in the laptops with AMD processors and the processor is faster. More information can be found on my budget laptops page. return to laptop-computers-wiz homepage |