If you need something basic to get online, hold meetings and do some work here and there, then a budget laptop is a good option. Take the IdeaPad 1 from Lenovo; not only is it $200 instead of the usual $330, but it has a big screen and a 1MP camera to work with.
That’s why you should buy the Lenovo IdeaPad 1
One thing the IdeaPad 1 has going for it is the AMD Athlon Silver 3050U, a reasonably powerful mobile processor that’s roughly equivalent to a 6th or 7th generation Intel i5 CPU, so it’s quite powerful. If you’re not familiar with either company’s CPUs, suffice it to say that the Athlon Silver is fantastic and will easily handle any productivity task you can throw at it, and even handle a bit of streaming too. Fortunately, you get an impressive 15.6-inch display that can handle 220 nits of maximum brightness, which isn’t too bad for a budget laptop. That said, it only runs in HD resolution, so it’s not the best if you plan to stream a lot Netflix or Disney+ at your leisure.
As for the RAM, it’s admittedly on the low end at 4GBs, but the IdeaPad 1 runs Windows 11 on S mode, so it doesn’t eat up as much RAM as it would in default mode. As for storage, you get 128GB to work with, which unfortunately isn’t upgradable internally, but you can at least grab one of these external hard drive deals to supplement it. In terms of the overall build, it’s pretty good, at least for a budget laptop, and the battery life should last several hours, especially if you don’t crank up the brightness too high.
All in all, the IdeaPad 1 is an excellent budget laptop that’s hard to beat at the $200 price Lenovo has on its website. Of course, if you want something with a little more power behind it, there are some other great laptop deals you can take advantage of. Alternatively, if you’re willing to avoid Windows, you can always opt for one of these Chromebook deals instead, as they tend to be cheaper and will give you a better experience.
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