Best cheap laptops: We rate the best-sellers on Amazon and Best Buy

Acer Aspire E 15

Amazon Best-Seller Rank: No. 1

Buy Here Get Discount:- https://amzn.to/2u0AjEm

Acer’s budget E 15 topped Amazon’s best-selling list the last time we visited it in August, and more than three months later, the Aspire E 15 is still sitting on top. It’s easy to see why consumers have voted for this $349 model. This top seller gives you a dual-core, 7th-generation Intel Core i3-7100; 4GB of DDR4 RAM; a 1TB 5,400rpm hard drive; and a DVD burner. Its display—a 15.6-inch 1920x1080, or “full HD,” panel is also notable, and pretty good for the price. (Read our full review of the laptop.)

A Core i3 might not sound as impressive as a Core i5 (which boasts a 700MHz, or roughly 30 percent, advantage), but for the average consumer, the actual performance difference is unlikely to be noticeable.

That’s because a system’s hard drive is usually the bottleneck to performance. And at this price, you’re almost always going to get a hard drive, as opposed to an SSD. Relatively ancient hard-drive technology is about as slow and cumbersome as playing music on vinyl versus an MP3. Fortunately, the Aspire E 15 is easy to service, so if you can afford to upgrade to a solid-state drive down the line, do it.

Graphics performance, which mostly impacts gaming, is also sacrificed in this budget Aspire. Rather than a dedicated graphics chip with its own memory pool, the Aspire E 15 uses Intel’s integrated HD 620 graphics. It results in nearly half the graphics performance of Acer’s beefier Aspire E 15 (No. 3 on the list right now) but it need not be a deal breaker. It will still handle most light-duty gaming such as Minecraft—just don’t expect miracles.

One final thing to note is that of the 10 laptops in this story, the Aspire E 15 is among the heaviest at 5.3 pounds. The only other laptop to weigh this much is the other Acer Aspire E 15 on this list. Still, it’s a fine notebook and we give it a Thumbs Up. For budget shoppers, it’s a close call between this and the No. 2 best seller. This is the real fight.

Acer Chromebook R 11

Amazon Best-Seller Rank: No. 2

Buy Here Get Discount:- https://amzn.to/2tWPBu7

Acer’s Chromebook R 11 Convertible, which sells for $249,  is new to our list, but there’s a lot of good here. In the past, we’ve been unimpressed by Chromebooks that “convert” into tablets, but maybe we’ve been too harsh.

The Chromebook R 11 Convertible features an Intel Celeron N3150, which is, for the most part, an Atom X5 on steroids. It’s a little underpowered for pushing Windows 10 but Chrome OS is considerably less bulky.

Perhaps more importantly, the Chromebook R 11 comes standard with 4GB of RAM. Budget and midrange Chromebooks used to come with just 2GB, which was borderline unusable for those who heavily multitask.

The R 11 features an 11.6-inch touchscreen, which might seem small, but as a tablet, it’s a good size. The screen itself is an IPS panel, which means the Chromebook R 11 will give you great off-axis viewing and far more color fidelity than much cheaper screens.

Acer also goes the extra step and uses an SSD instead of the much cheaper, and generally much slower eMMC drives.

This all means the Chromebook R 11 has the features to warrant its price.

Whether it’s worth it for you, depends on your needs. Having a touchscreen isn’t a must have, but it can be nice. The same goes with the tablet mode. Yes, you could forego these features and save almost $75 with the No. 4 on this list, but the R 11 is still a fine product.

Acer Aspire E 15

Amazon Best-Seller Rank: No. 3

Buy Here Get Discount:- https://amzn.to/2KKvzxr

No. 3 on Amazon’s best-selling list has moved up two spots since we did this article in August.

This souped-up Acer Aspire E 15 may look the same as the base model sitting in the No. 1 spot but it adds several key features that make it a much nicer laptop.

The first is the increase in RAM from 4GB to 8GB, which will help if you run multiple tasks simultaneously. The second is the inclusion of a GeForce 940MX graphics card, which gives this Acer E 15 decent graphics performance for entry-level PC gaming. It’s not on par with a $1,000 gaming laptop by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s definitely capable of playing a few games with the image quality turned down.

The most important feature of this E 15, though, is the M.2 SSD. If we had our druthers, Amazon would sell only laptops with SSDs because they basically speed up everything.

Honestly, the Acer Aspire E 15 is a much better laptop than the basic version at the top of this list. We understand not everyone can afford to buy “more” but the $200 extra goes a long way.

If there were two things to ding about this laptop, it would be the weight and the price. At 5.3 pounds, it’s not as light as the competition. And at $580, it stretches the definition of budget laptop.

Still, if you want snappier performance at a good price and don’t care about the weight, the Acer Aspire E 15 is for you.

Samsung Chromebook 3

Amazon Best-Seller Rank: 4

Buy Here Get Discount:- https://amzn.to/2z1oJPj

Of the three Chromebooks in Amazon’s top five, we’d probably rank the Samsung Chromebook 3 ($179) as our top pick for someone who’s really looking to save money.

Based on the specs of the Acer Chromebook R 11 and the Samsung Chromebook 3, performance should be pretty close. Both actually run Atom-derivative CPUs. Oddly, the Celeron N3150 in the Acer is slightly slower than the Celeron N3060 in the Samsung. Enough to matter? No.

Conversely, the Acer’s SATA drive is likely faster than the eMMC drive in the Samsung. But in a Chromebook, you’d probably be hard pressed to tell. The Acer also has 32GB of storage versus Samsung’s 16GB, but again, in a Chromebook, local storage shouldn’t matter since everything you do is on the internet.

The Acer also has an IPS panel, which should look far better than the 11.6-inch 1366x768 screen in the Samsung. Samsung doesn’t say what the screen technology is, so it’s likely a TN because if it was a superior IPS panel, they’d brag about it.

But the Samsung has the larger battery, by about 35 percent larger.

Bottom line: If you don’t care about touch and tablet mode, we say go for the Chromebook 3 and save yourself $75.

Acer Chromebook CB3

Amazon Best-Seller Rank: 5

Buy Here Get Discount:-  https://amzn.to/2IM4Awf

Acer’s Chromebook CB3 has long been a favorite of ours. Yes, it’s thick and clunky looking but its superior IPS screen should outshine the screens of most other budget Chromebooks.

Unfortunately, in this current crop of Amazon top sellers, it’s probably our third pick and, frankly, no recommended.

The CB3 still packs an IPS screen, which is a premium feature on Chromebooks, but this particular model has a pretty major problem: just 2GB of RAM.

While Chrome OS isn’t a full-service “fat” OS like MacOS or Windows 10, we’ve found that 2GB is still barely adequate.

Fire up a Chromebook with just 2GB of RAM and start running multiple tabs and you’ll find those tabs constantly refreshing or dropping out. With 4GB of RAM, multi-tab use is not an issue.

Amazon sells another version of the Chromebook CB3 with 4GB of RAM, but that pushes the price of the CB3 to $188.19, which is more than the Samsung Chromebook 3 above.

The other small knock against the CB3 is its CPU, an older Celeron N2840 CPU. In reality, it’s not that much slower than the newer Celeron N chips in the other two Chromebooks in this list, but it is somewhat slower, and older.

Yes, it’s nice to get an IPS panels in a budget Chromebook, but in this case, we’d take the Samsung Chromebook 3 or the CB3’s pricier cousin instead.