 A summertime in the livings easy. You've probably been off dangling from rope swings, enjoying long walks on the beach, and playing wash or toss when it hits you. Holy crap, it's almost time for school. I spent all my dough on moomus ice cream and have almost none left for a new laptop. Well, don't worry, dear viewer. There is still some summer left, and we've created this video to make buying a cheap laptop as simple as possible. So sit back, relax, maybe grab a cold drink and take in this refreshing sponsor segue, because today's video is brought to you by GlassWire. GlassWire lets you instantly see current and past network activity, detect malware, and block badly behaving apps on your PC or Android device. Use offer code Linus and get 25% off at the link below. If you're on an extremely tight budget, and we're talking about $200, then buying new might not get you a laptop that operates to the level that I'd find acceptable, even for just basic web browsing, which is why we've got this ThinkPad. Yeah, so this right here is the ThinkPad T540P. It only cost us $225 US dollars, and that comes with eight gigabytes of RAM and a 240 gigabyte SSD. You can normally find these on like office auctions, and they come without hard drives, which is awesome, because then like you're throwing the hard drive and they crash anyway. And a new SSD only costs like 40 bucks, eight gigs of RAM, it's still around like 40 bucks or so. So you can have a very good little laptop for pretty cheap. The only problem with it though, is that it's kind of a screen that's a little bit under what I would consider good these days. Yeah, 768P. If you go much lower than that, it's gonna come to a point that Windows is going to actually complain to you that it can't show everything on screen. And it also has no warranty, you don't know what the battery health is. And even though it has an i5, it's an old i5, and it gets absolutely whooped by a modern one. So all of that said, this is still a very respectable machine. And as a bonus, I think these old ThinkPads look pretty cool, but maybe the used market just isn't for you. Like there's no warranty, and there's a number of traps to avoid when you're buying a laptop new for under $400. Yeah, and the first problem is a suspiciously large amount of memory. For under $400, you'll be very lucky to find anything above four gigabytes. So when you find something that says 20 gigabytes, be careful, because that is likely just four gigabytes of real RAM and 16 gigabytes of Optane memory. Now, Optane will improve the performance of your computer compared to not having it at all, but just getting eight gigabytes of RAM will go a lot further. And it also is commonly paired with a hard drive, which brings us to trap number two. Do not buy a hard drive. It might be tempting. After all, it probably has a terabyte of storage, but do not be fooled, because that storage is molasses slow. SSDs have become so cheap that it's basically the only option, which brings us to eMMC storage. It's slow, the wrong... A little bit of sugar helps the medicine go down. Speaking of unreliable, our umbrella just kind of like... Yeah, it blew that way, but it was about as reliable as eMMC storage, which is also slow. And in many cases, you won't be able to upgrade to an SSD if you buy a laptop equipped with this. So just buy a laptop that has an SSD, which brings us to the final tip of buying a cheap laptop. Ensure it's upgradable before you buy. To do this, just Google your laptop model, followed by Teardown. Hopefully iFixit has a guide. Although if not, check out whatever maintenance manuals or YouTube videos are available to ensure that there are sodium memory slots and swappable storage. With all of that in mind, my super budget pick is this $309 Acer Aspire 5. It has a Radeon 3 3200U dual core, which is slightly faster than the i5 and the ThinkPad. It has Vega 3 graphics, which might be good for some old games, but it does have a 1080p IPS display that just absolutely blows the one of the ThinkPad out of the water. Now it does only have four gigabytes of RAM, but that's easily upgradable. It's 128 gigabyte SSD is small, but an entire two and a half inch bay is open for easy upgrading. And the keyboard actually feels pretty solid for the price. It's nice and springy, not a short amount of travel. Seems fine to me. Yeah, it's not as good as the ThinkPad though. So it kind of brings us to the surface go. When you move up to like a $500 budget, you might be tempted to get something that's prettier. And like this does have some great things about it. This little keyboard, it's awesome. It's better than what we found on the Acer. And it does have a really great touch display that you can use when coupled with a pen to write out all of the notes that you might need for a class. But it does have one pretty fatal flaw. Yeah, it's just too freaking slow at this price point. What you should be looking for is an i5 processor, eight gigabytes of RAM and a 240 gigabyte SSD. Any specs better than that, or things like a touch display at this price are a bonus. With that in mind, here we have that same Acer Aspire from earlier, but this one comes in at $500 and has exactly our recommended specs. And is also the first laptop here that I can wholeheartedly recommend. It's got a quad core processor. It completed the blender BMW test in 11 minutes and 40 seconds. That's massively faster than the 19 minutes and 34 seconds recorded by the Ryzen 3 model. This laptop right here is pretty great, but don't get married to one specific model or brand. Just try and find something that's worth like $800 and is on sale for 500. Make sure that you get an eighth gen processor. Those are typically quad core, whereas seventh gen or older are only dual core. This logic basically holds as your budget increases until around $800, which up until that point, the best GPU you can find is an MX250, which it's better than nothing, but you're not gonna be playing games on it. So, yeah. Yeah. When we move up to an $800 budget, and this is where things get interesting again, here we have the Acer Nitro 5. It's got an i5 with a GTX 1650. It's the first laptop that can really game out of all the laptops we have here. It's got an overclockable display to 90 Hertz, at least for our model, and it's built quality. I mean, it does leave something to be desired, but it's got a great display. It's a good price tag, but for $800, you're getting your money's worth, I think. Yeah, although on occasion at $800, you can get one of these guys right here, the Surface Laptop. Any qualms about build quality? Like, you just don't have them. It has probably the best keyboard on the market. The aspect ratio of the screen is higher, which makes it great for doing things like word projects, essays, really just general school stuff, and it has Windows Hello facial recognition. It's the best way to unlock something. Although, at this price point, you normally can only find the 128 gigabyte model, and there's no upgrading it, so that's a bit of a downer, which brings us to a thousand dollar budget, where you're just spoiled for choice for thin and light laptops. You've got the Surface Laptop 2 here. You've got the Dell XPS 13, which is just freaking awesome, and the ThinkPad X390 also looks really promising, although we don't actually know yet. It's coming in a future video. I haven't really tested it. Now, for gaming, what you're gonna wanna look for is the Asus Zephyrus GA502D. This thing has a third gen Ryzen 7 3750H, a GTX 1660 Ti, 16 gigs of RAM, 512 gigabyte SSD, 120 hertz IPS panel, although it is a six bit panel, and it's just an extremely solid performer for the price. Like... It's all that you need for gaming, really. Like, that's what I'd get. Yeah, but if you're really looking for no compromises, well, this does compromise a bit in gaming compared to this, but if you're looking for video editing, really just doing anything school-related, the Dell XPS 15, it's just been the winner for years. It came out in like 2015, and although they haven't changed a lot, it's still just kick-spot. It's got a GTX 1650, i7, up to six cores, and it costs like $1,600 or more, like at least two grand if you're looking for a 4K display, so... Yeah, I mean, that's basically the level where you start to get to the no compromises zone, but if you want absolutely no compromises in any way, shape, or form, you want the Razer Blade 15. It's got an i9 6-core, up to an RTX 2080 for graphics, and it's got a relatively large 81-hour battery, and not only that, its display can burn that battery pretty quickly at 240 hertz. Now, it still works pretty well as a daily carry laptop, with most gaming laptops not really falling under that category, but it just happens to be really, really expensive. You should expect to pay at least $2,000, although over $3,000 for top specs, so... Yeah, maybe instead of getting a Razer Blade, it's better to just get the Nitro 5 and put two grand onto your student loans, and maybe have some leftover for some LTT merch, like what Anthony has on right here. This is what I always wear to the beach. Which, speaking of expensive, brings us to Apple. I personally have a lot of trouble recommending them right now, because if they're poor keyboard quality, especially if you use them on the beach, like we have, it's probably gonna die. They're GPUs, they're underpowered for what you're paying for, and there's no touch screens available. Like, what the hell, Mac? Come on. Well... That's not entirely fair. I mean, the MacBook Pro 13-inch is still a relatively good PC. It's got a massive touchpad, it's got a lot of programs that people, especially for school, just straight up need to use, like Logic Pro, Final Cut, all that kind of stuff, you just cannot run on a PC without going through a hackintosh, which, I mean, if you're at school, you just don't have time for that kind of thing. And the build quality, it is great. Like, there's no complaints there. Yeah. So hopefully this has given you a better idea of what to expect given your budget. If you're still super confused, then go to the LTT forum and get some help there. And you can also help us out by checking out our sponsor, Ring. Door peepholes are so 1990s. Ring wants you to know who is at your front door even without getting up. The Ring kit includes the Video Doorbell 2, Spotlight Cam Battery, and Solar Security Sign. It also has a motion sensor, 1080p HD resolution with 160-degree vision, and two-way audio. Spotlight camera has a 1080p HD video, two-way talk, LED lights, battery or solar powered, and also has a siren. The audio is as great as you can get and you can just turn away unwelcome guests. My personal favorite is telling the Amazon delivery driver to not run away after the second knock at the door. Get some peace of mind with the Ring Welcome Kit, compatible with iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows. Buy it today at the link below. So, do you want to go skimboarding now? Oh, sure. Yeah, this that cocky I'm the shit flow. I got that out in cashed out. I just purchased what you rent though. And I don't speak about it if I never done it. If she f***ing with the crew, why the hell you tryna cuff her? Gang. Ha ha ha ha ha.