Modestly priced laptops can be a great solution for students or new entrepreneurs on a shoestring budget. Many people need a laptop but don’t want to pay the eye-watering prices that are attached to some of them, so knowing about some excellent budget options can be a great help.
There are a lot of laptops on the market today, so manufacturers are pricing them competitively. You can even pick up some fantastic devices at places that offer cash for laptops, at below market value rates. Below, we explore some of the best budget laptops on the market in 2021.
Lenovo IdeaPad Flex5

Specs & features
- Price: Around £500
- Processor: AMD Ryzen™ R7 5700U
- System: Windows 10 Pro
- Display: 15.6” (1920 x 1080)
- Memory: Up to 16GB
- Battery: Up to 10.5 hours
- Storage: Up to 512GB
- Camera: Slim camera 720p
This is a great purchase if you’re looking to get a lot of decent features for a relatively low price. For what you get, this laptop is certainly priced competitively. Lenovo claims that this laptop uses cutting-edge technology to deliver excellent, lightning-quick performance, with a super-efficient battery. The Lenovo IdeaPad is also very stylish and aesthetically attractive. It uses durable paint and comes in multiple color options.
One of the best things about this laptop, though, is that it’s a 2-in-1 laptop, meaning you can fold its keyboard around and make a tablet out of this device. Not bad for a budget laptop!
Asus E410

Specs & features
- Price: Around £230
- Processor: Intel® Celeron® N4020 Processor
- System: Windows 10 S
- Display: 14” (1920 x 1080)
- RAM: 4GB
- Battery: Up to 12 hours
- Storage: Up to 128GB
Coming in at approximately £230, this laptop is shockingly cheap. Depending on what you use your laptop for, this could be exactly the kind of budget laptop you need. While it wouldn’t be suitable for running hugely demanding software, like Adobe Illustrator, it’s perfectly suited to word processing and web surfing.
This could be a great laptop for a student if they need a laptop primarily for essay-writing and streaming movies during the evening.
Asus Chromebook C523

Specs & features
- Price: Around £280
- Processor: Intel® Celeron® N3350 Processor
- System: Chrome OS
- Display: 16.6” (1366 x 768)
- RAM: 4GB
- Battery: Up to 10 hours
- Storage: Up to 64GB
This could be the best laptop on the list when considering both price and quality. It’s perfect for everyday computing needs, and definitely suitable for most students and remote workers. Coming with an anti-glare display, long battery life, and the device is incredibly lightweight, you could comfortably use this laptop on the go, perhaps while commuting on a train.
Chrome OS is also a straightforward and easy-to-use operating system. Like many Google products, everything you need is intuitively positioned and its entire software is ergonomic. Like other Chromebook models, this device comes with an ‘everything button’, that you simply press to retrieve anything on the device, from files to apps.