Whether you are a casual browser, hybrid worker or student either mature or immature, you may be looking for portable computer power to make your relaxation time, work or studies go with a sexy digital swing.
If you’re diving for pearls of relative wisdom pertaining to acing your way through academia, we have collated an edit of laptops designed specifically for studying but in this portable PC advice edition, we’re taking a broader look at laptops that err on the more affordable side, whether for hard work, soft play, or some semi-state somewhere in the middle.
To that end, what do you need?
What should you look for in a budget laptop?
Speed? Screen size? Gaming-level resolution? Portability? Or does it mostly come down to whatever you can get at an attainable price?
Well, I’ve factored in all these things and put together a magnificent seven selection of laptops that will do the business without breaking the bank.
Now, obviously, we all have very much our own idea of what qualifies as ‘affordable’, but toeing that ever-fine line between cost and function - and not going down the pointless cul-de-sac of cheap and cheerless, I set myself a budget of a maximum of £600, which I think keeps everything firmly in the affordable camp.
So, with seven such low-cost laptop options to feast your eyes on, here on in you’ll find a portable for all pockets…
Best budget laptops 2023 at a glance:
- Best for low price, large screen: Asus Vivobook 15 X1500 - £500, ASUS
- Best for sub-£300 absurdity: Auusda 14.1-inch Notebook - £259, Amazon
- Best for affordable Apple: MacBook Air 13.3 (2017) - £357, BackMarket
- Best for business on a budget: HP ProBook 455 G10 - £516, HP
- Best for big screen, big savings: Honor MagicBook X 16 - £550, Honor
- Best for spec and touchscreen tech: HP Pavilion 15 - £559, HP
- Best for top 2-in-1 tech: ASUS Vivobook 13 Slate OLED Steven Harrington Edition - £499.99, ASUS
Best trustworthy sites to buy refurbished tech online in the UK
Best cooling pads for laptops tried and tested
Best stylish laptop bags from pouches and briefcases to totes
Best laptops for students to buy in 2023 for quality at an affordable price
Best laptop brands for guaranteed quality whatever your budget
Asus Vivobook 15 X1500
Best for: Low price, large screen
Generally, when it comes to affordability in the land of laptops, display size is somewhat sacrificed in return for savings. However, at a flat £500 (down from £650), the Vivobook 15 X1500 from Asus rewards your purchasing choice with a stunning Full HD LED screen measuring a pleasing 15.6 inches in size, to save your squints during long-term use, and a 60Hz refresh rate for slick and smooth images.
What’s more, running on the Windows 11 Home OS, it also comes with a powerful Intel i5 quad-core processor at its heart, alongside an Intel Iris Xe graphics card, 8GB of memory and a generous 512GB of storage, which is very impressive for half a grand. Also, I should point out that downgrading to lower specs will save you an additional £100, but the drop in performance power will also be extremely evident.
With perfectly functional speakers built-in, port options come aplenty with 2x USB 2.0, 2x USB 3.0, an HDMI and a 3.5mm combo audio jack available to pander to all your peripheral plug-in needs.
On the comms side, a VGA camera and built-in microphone (with Cortana support) will comfortably cope with any video conferencing requirements, whilst Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 5.1 will keep you connected and not embarrassingly freezing up on-screen during any important bits.
Finally, a bit of a rarity in the littler laptop leagues, the Vivobook 15 also comes packing a full numeric keypad and a QWERTY pad that may be a touch on the petite side, but is still comfortable to drum your fingertips against for hours and hours without any signs of crippling hand cramp – always a bonus for long-distance typists like myself.
Light too at 1.80g, the 15 is totally totable, a final factor that culminates in a budget-beating laptop that could be the best 500 spondulix you spend today.
Display: 15.6-inches
Resolution: FHD (1920 x 1080 pixels)
OS: Windows 11 Home
CPU: Intel Core i5
Memory: 8GB
Storage: 512GB
Buy now £500.00, Asus
Auusda 14.1-inch Notebook
Best for: Sub-£300 absurdity
Yes, you read correctly, there is a laptop, shiny and brand new, that retails for a considerable amount under £300 and, here’s the thing, it isn’t rubbish. In fact, featuring a quad-core Intel Celeron processor clocking 1.5GHz with a turbo up to 2.5GHz and an Intel UHD Graphics 600 coprocessor, the Auusda is surprisingly sprightly for the insanely low price. Okay, it’s not up to handling the demands of the most modern, fast-action games, but for general requirements, you’re laughing.
Featuring Windows 11 Pro as OS, you get 8GB of memory and 256GB of storage (expandable to 1TB via micro SD), all tucked away behind a very nice 14.1-inch 1080p IPS display.
Keeping you connected is WiFi 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0, while your physical needs are more than met thanks to 2x USB 3.0, 1x Mini-HDMI, a micro SD slot and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
An excellent everyday-use laptop that is an ideal option for anyone who needs a reliable workhorse that’s also ultra-portable at a price that can’t be beaten, the Auusda 14.1-inch Notebook is an absolute bargain.
Display: 14.1-inches
Resolution: FHD (1920x1080 pixels)
OS: Windows 11 Pro
CPU: Intel Celeron quad-core
Memory: 8GB
Storage: 256GB
Buy now £259.00, Amazon
Apple MacBook Air 13.3 (2017)
Best for: Affordable Apple
There’s a big market for refurbed tech these days, and with good reason – it’s cheaper, thereby allowing people with shallower pockets to get their hands on better spec products and, ticking the ‘green’ box, means considerably less waste finds its way to landfill.
Take this 13.3-inch MacBook Air for example. Available from refurb site BackMarket in ‘Fair’, ‘Good’ and ‘Excellent’ aesthetic conditions, here you can snap up a Mac with a pretty powerful Core i5 CPU, 8GB of memory and 256GB storage at a price that is pretty much next to nothing in Apple stuff terms.
With a resolution of 1440 x 900, colour and clarity are excellent for day-to-day usage and, yes, that will lend itself to gaming too, just not in a way that is going to blow you away. Speaking of graphics, here we have an Intel HD Graphics 6000 card to help things along, so older and less tech-taxing games will run nicely.
Running on macOS, obviously, despite being a 2017 model, the MacBook is compatible with the latest update, so you don’t have to worry about being left behind any time soon. FaceTime comes courtesy of a 720p webcam matched by dual microphones, while WiâFi 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.0 will let you wirelessly hook up with all. Which, while being a questionable analogy, is handy, as port-wise you’re only getting 2x USB-A options plus a 3.5mm headphone jack.
As I say, a refurb model, the MacBook Air 13.3 in the spec I’ve stated here is available in ‘Fair’ condition from Back Market for £345, ‘Good’ for £370, or ‘Excellent’ for £395, so you just need to decide how ‘new-looking’ you want to pay out for. Plus, you also get a 12-month warranty for purchasing peace of mind.
Let’s face it, if you’re into Apple but can’t afford the almighty asking price that membership to that fruity fan club commands at the all-new level, then this is an absolute no-brainer and – I can attest – the review unit they shipped to me, apart from a slight scratch I noticed on very close inspection, looked fresh off the production line and, what’s more, it ran like a newbie too. So, bottom-lining it, save money, save the planet.
Display: 13.3-inches
Resolution: 1440 x 900 pixels
OS:Mac OS
CPU: Core i5-5350U
Memory: 8GB
Storage: 256GB
Buy now £357.00, BackMarket
HP ProBook 455 G10
Best for: Business on a budget
Some laptops are designed with the gamer in mind, some are forged firmly for study and academia, and some, however, are built from the ground up solely to achieve business greatness; the HP ProBook 455 G10 is very much the latter, to the point that it should be dressed in a two-tone shirt, pin-striped suit.
Indeed, featuring a suitably sizable 15.6-inch Full HD display and driven by a meaty AMD Ryzen 3 processor with four cores and eight threads (boasting up to 4.3GHz with boost), the HP is certainly a nippy little laptop that is more than capable of juggling countless processes simultaneously without any lag or stall.
Now, 8GB of memory and 256GB of on-board storage is pretty standard, so nothing too special there, but the HP ProBook 455 G10, being an HP, also comes with lots of helpful HP extras to make you and your business life run smoothly. What kind of extras? Well, advanced multi-layered endpoint security, for a start, such as HP Sure Click which protects your PC from malware, ransomware and/or viruses slyly hidden inside the likes of seemingly legit websites and Microsoft Office and PDF attachments, and HP Sure Sense, which harnesses the power of AI to provide protection against more advanced malware, that’s what kind.
When it comes to connectivity, MediaTek Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 provide strong, sturdy connections, and communication comes through a 720p HD camera, dual stereo speakers and dual array microphones, so video calls and conferencing will always be crystal clear to help you close that deal.
With 1x USB-C, 3x USB-A, 1x HDMI 2.1 ports, plus a stereo headphone/microphone combo jack, you’ve all you need to set up office anywhere when out and about, and with weight at a piffling 1.74kg, its portability is never in question either, making this the perfect lightweight business laptop priced at under £600.
Display: 15.6-inches
Resolution: FHD (1920 x 1080 pixels)
OS: Windows 11 Home
CPU: AMD Ryzen 3 7330U
Memory: 8GB
Storage: 256GB
Buy now £516.00, HP
Honor MagicBook X 16
Best for: Big screen, big savings
There may be a slight element of cheating going here, as when I first opted to review the shiny new Honor MagicBook X 16 it was priced at £650 (and that was with £50 already shaved off), however, I also had hold of the advanced info that it was to be reduced again mid-August to just £550.
So, given that you’re now getting a £700 laptop for £550, what kind of cut-price bargains does that earn you in terms of tech? Well, firstly a powerful eight-core, 12th Gen Intel Core i5 processor clocking 2.0GHz base, up to 4.4GHz, Intel UHD Graphics GPU, 8GB memory and 512GB storage (expandable to 1TB), all pulsating sexily away beneath a whopping 16-inch, 60HZ FFS, FHD, IPS display in a 16:10 ratio to give you the full picture.
All flavours of Wi-Fi come as standard for ease of connection, while Bluetooth 5.1 is also on hand to help out. Meanwhile, on the port side, you get a generous helping of 2x USB 3.2, 1x full-featured USB-C, 1x HDMI, and a 2-in-1 3.5mm mic/headphone, which should be ample for most needs.
With a 720p HD camera, dual speakers and dual microphones, video calls and all that Zoom/Teams/Google Meet/and-all-the-rest stuff that has now become an unshakable part of online life couldn’t be easier or, indeed, clearer, so the Honor is equally effective for business and pleasure.
Protected by a fingerprint scanner to boot, despite its 16-inch size and full-on features, the Honor weighs in at just 1.75kg thanks to its aluminium alloy construction, making it just as eminently portable as any of the smaller models I looked at here, but with the added benefit of a much bigger screen.
Okay, yes, knowing a considerable price drop was on the cards was cheating a bit, but then if I’d not included this, you lot might have missed out on securing yourself a strikingly specced laptop at an exceedingly low price.
Display: 16-inches IPS
Resolution: FHD (1920 x 1200 pixels)
OS: Windows 11 Home
CPU: Intel Core i5
Memory: 8GB
Storage: 512GB
Buy now £550.00, Honor
HP Pavilion 15
Best for: Spec and touchscreen tech
Talking of cheating when it comes to beating the sub-£600 budget I set myself, say hello to my not-so-little friend, the HP Pavilion 15, a very desirable option, with a spec that’s metaphorically to die for, and which – akin to the Honor – has just been reduced from £700 way, way down to a far more bank account-friendly £559.
So, with 15.6-inches of stunning FHD IPS touchscreen display upfront, driving the 15 onto bigger and better things is a12th Gen Intel Core i5 CPU with 10 cores, 12 threads and a Turbo Boost speed of up to 4.4GHz, so sluggishness is not a thing around here. This comes paired with Intel Iris Xe Graphics, 8-Gig of memory and a capacious 512GB of storage, so you can expect excellent performance all around from this under-priced over-achiever.
When it comes to connections, the Pavilion 15 is not shy on that score, with 1x USB Type-C 10Gbps signalling rate (USB Power Delivery, DisplayPort 1.4, HP Sleep and Charge), 2x USB Type-A 5Gbps signalling rate, 1x HDMI 2.1, and 1x headphone/microphone combo 3.5mm port, while MediaTek Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.3 keep you good to go on the wire-free front.
With dual speakers benefiting from audio by Bang & Olufsen, your ears will not cringe in horror when you play music aloud for once, and the 720p wide view camera will give viewers a crisp, fresh perspective on your working world during video calls.
Running on Windows 11 Home, the Pavilion 15 is a lot of laptop for little money and it features that one special USP that few of the others here can lay a finger on: it’s a touchscreen too.
Display: 15.6-inches touchscreen
Resolution: FHD (1920 x 1080 pixels)
OS: Windows 11 Home
CPU: Intel Core i5
Memory: 8GB
Storage: 512GB
Buy now £559.00, HP
ASUS Vivobook 13 Slate OLED Steven Harrington Edition
Best for: top 2-in-1 tech
Standing out from the rest of my assembled small army of affordability here, the Asus VivoBook 13 is special for, firstly, not only is it a sub-£600 laptop, but it’s a sub-£600 laptop that bends over backwards for you to become a slate! And there’s more, when it’s not doing its contortionist act, it features the art of Steven Harrington, a contemporary Californian psychedelic-pop-art painter.
But, getting past the aesthetics, it features a 13.3-inch Full HD display that is also a touchscreen model to allow your artistic side freedom to doodle in slate format.
Based on a rather entry-level Intel Pentium Silver N6000 processor, and with Intel UHD Graphics, 8GB of memory and 256GB of storage, the spec isn’t going to leave anyone’s head spinning, but running on Windows 11 Home and with 2x USB-C 3.2, 1x 3.5mm combo audio jack micro SD card reader, plus Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2, it’s more than merely functional.
Indeed, that’s the point, this is not a laptop with any particular business bent, but rather one created for casual play, communication and self-expression, which is why that touchscreen display is a stunning OLED in 16:9 aspect ratio, with a 0.2ms response time, 60Hz refresh rate, 550-nits HDR peak brightness, 100% DCI-P3 colour gamut, 1,000,000:1, PANTONE Validated, VESA CERTIFIED HDR True Black 500 display, with 1.07 billion colours, so that you can truly express the hell out yourself.
Throw into that mix one 5.0-megapixel and one 13-megapixel camera, 4-way stereo speakers, and an array microphone and you’ve got yourself a laptop that possesses much more in the way of personality than most and, as I say, that display makes all visuals pop like, well, like Californian psychedelic-pop-art. Yes, it’s not particularly fast and I certainly wouldn’t recommend it for those who enjoy high-octane games, but for leisurely fun and clear video communication, the epically named Asus Vivobook13 Slate OLED Steven Harrington Edition brings the pop-art party.
Screen size: 13.3-inches
Resolution: FHD (1920 x 1080)
OS: Windows 11 Home
CPU: Intel Pentium Silver N6000
Memory: 8GB
Storage: 256GB
Buy now £499.99, ASUS
