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The best laptops you can get for under $500 in 2025
Jan 23, 2025
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Overview
Table of Contents
When you're on the hunt for the best laptop under $500, you need to be careful.
In the highly competitive laptop market, you get what you pay for. That means it can be very dangerous to buy a "cheap" laptop. Choose wrongly, and you'll be stuck with a slow, outdated computer that causes more problems than it solves. Mashable regularly tests the best affordable laptops overall, but if $500 is your upper limit, then you're going to be priced out of some popular budget laptops. But even then, we still highly recommend a handful of computers that will fit nicely into your budget.
The Samsung Chromebook 4 didn't make the cut. Credit: Timothy Beck Werth / Mashable
A quick guide to laptop pricing
You can buy a cheap Chromebook for as little as $100, while our favorite gaming laptop will set you back over $3,000. And in our guide to the best laptops in general, you'll find machines that span a wide spectrum of prices. With $500 to spend, you'll be priced out of Ultrabooks, MacBooks, and most gaming laptops.
Typically, laptops fall into one of the following categories:
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