- Hey guys!
This is Austin, and today on The Cheapest Stuff on Amazon,
I bought the four cheapest laptops
that are currently available on Amazon
that are brand new with Prime shipping, of course.
First of all, we have the Dell Inspiron 11
which is not only the cheapest laptop here
at $170, but we've actually done an entire video
on this earlier this year.
Put simply, it actually gets a lot of basic stuff right.
Unlike a lot of budget laptops,
this is powered by an AMD processor
and I'll get into that a little bit more in a second.
But generally speaking, it is a little bit cheap,
but for the most part, you actually get something
that is surprisingly usable.
Next, we have the Samsung Chromebook 3 at $180.
Now, this is similar in a lot of ways,
but the key difference, of course,
is that it is running Chrome OS.
It has the same tiny 11.6 inch display.
What's different about this is, of course,
the idea that instead of having to run Windows,
we have a much more lightweight operating system
which makes a big difference to the general performance.
Then, there's the EVOO EV-C, which at less than $200,
is a little bit of a weird choice.
It does come with a larger 12.5 inch display
and there are some cool features like a fingerprint sensor.
But there are also some major, major drawbacks.
Three Gigs of RAM is definitely unusual,
but with a quad-core processor,
it seems pretty solid.
I mean, they're pretty obvious about it on the box.
Not only does it say on the sticker,
but also several times here that it is a quad-core chip.
Except, when you open up Task Manager
and see that it is actually a dual-core Celeron.
Which, yeah. That's great.
This isn't a total deal-breaker,
as several of the other laptops here are also dual-core,
but I think it's more than just a little bit sketchy.
They advertise it as a quad-core processor
and give you 50% of what you're paying.
You know what does have a quad-core processor?
The Asus VivoBook, which has a very obvious amount
of stickers and badges saying that it does,
in fact, have four cores.
Exactly as you would expect.
The issue here is that this is a much older AMD processor.
While it does have decent performance,
as you guys will see soon, it's not all that impressive.
And even worse,
Do you hear that?
That's a fan, my friends.
Unlike the other laptops, this is not fanless
and it's significantly thicker because of that.
As the only laptop here with a 14 inch screen.
That is an advantage for some people,
and there are a ton of ports.
So if you take a look on the side,
we have not only USB-C, but also a couple of USB-A's.
We have Ethernet, SD, even HDMI.
Flip the laptop over and we have
a very convenient little door which gives us access
to the two and a half inch drive bay.
That is unique among these laptops.
All of them, with the exception of the Chromebook,
have only 32 gigs of storage, which as you might imagine,
is difficult to run Windows on.
So, for the most part, you're gonna need
to install something like a Micro SD for extra space.
But with this guy, you can very easily upgrade it
with a hard drive or an SSD.
When you click on a video talking about
the cheapest laptops on Amazon,
you probably don't expect a lot of performance.
And you would be right.
With the Chromebook and EVOO, you get a
dual-core Intel Celeron processor with four gigs
of RAM on the Samsung and three on the EVOO.
Whereas with the Dell Inspiron, we actually
have an AMD dual-core processor.
If we move over to the Asus,
it of course does have that awesome quad-core power.
But as you will see,
it's not all that it's cracked up to be.
Run everything through Geekbench,
and the Dell does take the win slightly over
the Celeron processors.
What's especially disappointing is
the performance of that Asus.
Because it's such an older processor,
even though it's got the fan,
even though it's got the thicker build,
it is still significantly slower.
And that's not just in benchmarks.
Use the Asus, and it does feel a lot slower for normal use.
Speaking of the real world, I do think
the Chromebook does feel fastest.
Now fastest is a little bit of a relative term.
It's certainly not as quick as any kind
of more expensive laptop.
But because Chrome OS is so much lighter weight
than Windows, it feels reasonably snappy.
I will give it to the Dell for being
the fastest of the Windows systems.
Having that four gigs of RAM as well as a decent CPU,
actually kind of okay graphics,
does make a big difference.
But again, all four of these systems,
they're a little on the slow side.
And by a little, I mean a lot on the slow side.
At this price, all of these laptops
are absolutely made out of plastic,
but there are fairly big differences in build quality.
Not all plastic is the same?
I always forget it, what's the phrase?
Not all plastic is built the same?
Created equal! Created equal!
It's not all created equal, guys.
The EVOO is definitely at the bottom of the pack here.
I mean, just look at how much I can flex the chassis.
Oh, you hear that?
(laptop crinkling)
Ew, yeah.
I mean, it'll probably last you a little while,
but durability doesn't really strike me
as the strong suit of
(laptop crinkling)
No.
In comparison, the Dell is an absolute tank.
And, I mean, it's still not super super sturdy,
but there's no real flex on the bottom.
The actual keyboard itself is pretty sturdy.
There's a little bit on the screen,
but generally speaking, this does feel like
it could take a little bit more abuse.
When it comes to screens, all four of these laptops
have the same standard 1366x768 resolution.
Now there is a slight advantage
to the Asus as far as having a bigger 14 inch screen,
but let's be real, these are all kind of okay.
They're decent, but none of them look remotely as good
as something that costs even another hundred dollars.
Speakers on the other hand, are a little different.
So the Dell is the only one with front firing speakers,
but the only issue here is that they are incredibly small.
They sound okay, but they just don't get all that loud.
The Chrombeook and VivoBook sound fine,
but what doesn't is our good friend the EVOO.
(video playing on computer)
Yeah, so I mean, they're tinny, they're quiet.
Just not a really good experience,
which I guess you shouldn't expect that much for $200.
But all of the other laptops sound a lot better.
When it comes to keyboards,
the Chromebook is my clear favorite.
Not only does it have a nice clean layout
and full-sized keys, but it also does have
a small but pretty solid touchpad.
The Asus is right up there thanks to its full-sized layout,
whereas the Dell feels pretty decent to type on.
But the main issue here is that
it is a physically smaller keyboard.
Look, the EVOO I will be blunt with.
This might be the worst laptop keyboard I've used
in quite a while.
Not only does it have a weirdly small layout,
but the keys themselves feel like brittle, maybe?
It is just not a nice place to type.
I will give the EVOO this:
it is unique in this group in that it does
have a fingerprint sensor built into the touchpad.
And really, there's not a lot bad to say about it.
It works just as well as the sensors
in much more expensive laptops.
Wi-Fi is a bit of a sore point for the Windows laptops.
They're all limited to 2.4 Gigahertz wireless,
which really does slow things down quite a bit.
Except when it comes to the Chromebook,
which has dual-band AC Wi-Fi.
Now sure, these are slower systems,
but even if you ignore the speed difference
which is fairly significant,
you get a much more reliable connection
and that's something that's important for any laptop.
So, should you by any of the cheapest laptops on Amazon?
Well, maybe?
The Chromebook is probably the best bet here.
Not only is it a well-built package,
but important, pretty much anything you'd wanna do
on a sub $200 laptop, you probably can do on Chrome OS.
On the Windows side, I like the Dell Inspiron.
Not only is it the cheapest laptop here,
but as far as a budget system goes,
this checks almost all the boxes for what I'm looking for.
So that, my friends, is roundup of all
the cheapest laptops on Amazon.
As always, links to all of these guys
will be in the description.
If you want to feel free to, you know, check them out.
Although maybe avoid the EVOO.