How many times have you heard the story of the poor sap who gets suckered into buying a $2,000 product that is so advanced he doesn’t even know how to use it? This happens everywhere, for everything. House cleaners, bicycles, televisions, computers, and the list goes on.
An easy and wallet friendly technique that will sidestep you clear of this nightmare entirely is setting a budget before you make your purchase. Setting a budget not only restricts you from dumping all of your money on one thing, but it also shows financial responsibility, which enables you to know exactly how much you are going to spend before making your order. Budgeting is a widely used technique by smart laptop shoppers everywhere which can even make buying a new laptop easier by narrowing the choices.
Are you looking for the best laptop under $500? Read on.
What Kind of Laptop Does $500 Get YOU ?
$500 or less in today’s laptop market will bring you a surprisingly good return in terms of laptop quality. I can’t remember the last time you were able to buy a $500 laptop that featured a dual core processor, a huge hard drive, or a batter life lasting over 5 hours. Today it’s possible. We’re going to use the Toshiba Satellite L755-S5349 laptop as our example showing what $500 can buy you today.
Toshiba Satellite L755-S5349
Let’s go through the Toshiba Satellite’s specifications to see what it brings to the table:
Intel i3-2330m 2.2GHz Processor
Translation: This laptop sees your requests of basic web browsing (email, Facebook, YouTube, banking, Google, etc.) and laughs! It won’t have any problem at all performing these simple tasks with its powerful dual-core processor capable of multitasking with ease. Unless you’re a producer of sorts who needs to convert large amounts of video, this is more than enough – for a great price.
4GB DDR3 System Memory (RAM)
Translation: Toshiba found a way to pack 4GB of system memory in this beast and still keep it under $500. What this system part allows you to do is run multiple programs at the same time without slowing down the system. Have you even been on a computer which slows to a snails pace if you try to listen to music while typing up your homework? Freezes when you open a few too many tabs on your web browser? This is the feature that prevents that from happening.
640GB (5400RPM) Hard Drive
Translation: A hard drive is the device that holds all of your information; it’s your computer’s long-term memory. This is where you store all of your pictures, movies, games, documents, and everything else that gets saved to your computer. A 640GB hard drive equals out to approximately 640,000 megabytes, allowing you to store about 213333 average length songs!
More Laptops Under $500
| Features | #1 | #2 | #3 | #4 |
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| Brand/Model | Toshiba Satellite L755D-S5363 | Samsung Series 5 3G 12.1-Inch Chromebook | ASUS A53Z-EH61 | Lenovo G570 43347PU |
| Operating System | Windows 7 Home Premium | Chrome | Windows 7 Home Premium | Windows 7 Home Premium |
| Price | $469.99 – Buy | $449.99 – Buy | $499.99 – Buy | $479.99 – Buy |
| Processor | AMD Quad-Core A6-3400M (2.3GHz) | Intel Atom Dual-Core N570 (1.66GHz) | AMD A-Series Quad-Core A6 | Intel Core i3-2330M (Gen 2) |
| Memory (RAM) | 4GB DDR3 | 2GB DDR3 | 4GB DDR3 | 4GB DDR3 |
| Hard Drive | 500GB (5400RPM) | 16GB SSD | 500GB (5400RPM) | 500GB (5400RPM) |
| Video Card | AMD Radeon HD 6520G | N/A | AMD Radeon HD 6520G | Intel HD Graphics |
| Display | 15.6″ | 12.1″ | 15.6″ | 15.6″ |
| Battery Life | 5 hours 7 min. | 8 Hours 2 min. | Unknown | 5 hours 14 min. |
| Weight (lbs) | 5.4 pounds | 3.3 pounds | 5.7 pounds | 5.5 pounds |
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| More Information | More Information | More Information | More Information | More Information |
