Are Cheap Laptops Good Enough? My Month with a Sub-$500 PC

Can a cheap pc replace a top-rate PC? To discover, I spent a month using a sub-$500 as my primary gadget both at work and at home. My purpose became no longer best to see what a low-charge computer can, however also to determine what barriers you face when shopping a budget pocketbook over a top-class pc. On a non-public degree, I selfishly hoped to silence the doubters in my office who didn’t think I might close the entire month.

Full of self-assurance, I contacted Acer, who graciously lent me the Aspire E 15 (our first-rate contemporary pc under $500) to check my hypothesis that a budget laptop can accommodate most people of our readers’ desires, whether or not those be on the office, at home or while touring. However, with the aid of the give-up of my 30-day plight, that optimism changed into replaced with the belief that budget laptops nonetheless have a few critical limitations.

Misplaced optimism

“Do you need to do that to yourself?” Laptop Mag assistant coping with editor Sherri L. Smith asked in a deadpan tone once I described my 30-day mission.

While I’ve typically had true stories reviewing finances machines, I knew I’d need to make some compromises switching from my business laptop — a Dell Latitude 7490 with a Core i7 CPU –– to the $329 Aspire E 15 strolling on a Core i3 CPU.

The first component I observed when I took the Aspire E 15 out of the field became how a whole lot heavier it turned into than my painting’s pc. I complained about the laptop’s heft in my assessment, but the fact of the following month sank in as my fingers grew sore from preserving it.

Furthermore, the Aspire E 15’s 15-inch, 1080p show became a significant downgrade from the Latitude 7490’s shiny panel. I knew the show would not be as vibrant or vivid, primarily based on our lab checking out. After all, the Aspire E 15’s panel covers the most straightforward sixty-two. Three percent of the sRGB shade gamut, while the Latitude 7490 reached 118 percentage. And regarding brightness, the Aspire E 15 peaked at 227 nits compared to the Latitude, which got 277 nits. Still, I wasn’t equipped for the Aspire E 15’s terrible viewing angles, which made it tough to see the content unless I turned into searching at it from a practical perspective.