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7 Best Cheap Laptops to Buy in 2026 (and Some to Avoid)
Computers have put people on the moon. You'd think that given the miraculous technological utopia of our age, we’d also be able to get decently cheap laptops. For so long, that felt like a hopeless case. More recently, many budget laptops have become quite good. Chromebooks are more modern, and budget Windows laptops now offer strong battery life. There’s even a MacBook affordable enough to earn the “cheap” designation. If your budget for a computer is tight, I have you covered with my recommendations for the best affordable laptops.
For more laptop recommendations, be sure to check out our other computing guides, including the Best Laptops, Best Windows Laptops, Best Chromebooks, Best Linux Laptops, Best Gaming Laptops, and Best MacBooks. Our guide on How to Choose the Right Laptop can also help.
Updated August 2026: I've added the Dell XPS 13, HP OmniBook 3, and MSI Cyborg A15. I’ve also confirmed accuracy and up-to-date pricing throughout.
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Thanks to Qualcomm's Snapdragon X chips, we finally have affordable Windows laptops that get great battery life. The HP OmniBook 5 14 is the best among those, so long as you can get it on discount. For starters, it has great specs, including 16 GB of RAM, 512 GB of storage, and a 14-inch OLED screen. That screen, in particular, is a big deal for laptops at this price, as OLED displays offer such a massive step up from standard IPS displays. Its display isn't as sharp or bright as the MacBook Neo or Dell 14 Plus, though.
The HP OmniBook 5 is a highly portable little laptop, at just a half-inch thick. The touchpad is probably its biggest downside. Like many budget laptops, the touchpad feels sticky to use, making precise movements difficult. The keyboard is great, though, and the addition of a USB-A port is clutch.
There's a big caveat with the OmniBook 5's price. It retails for $1,300, but it’s often discounted at HP.com. I can typically find a configuration that sells for less than $700, sometimes as low as $550.
This one's easy. If you've always dreamed of owning a MacBook, but it was never in your price range, the MacBook Neo (7/10, WIRED Recommends) is for you. It has plenty of shortcomings, mind you. Between the speed of USB-C ports and the lack of keyboard backlighting, Apple made lots of small compromises to get the price down to $699. Just 8 GB of RAM is the most serious detriment. You'll notice that every other laptop on this list starts at 16 GB, which has become the new standard. In my own testing, I was able to create a memory bottleneck without too much effort. But as a device for students, or just if you work at an office all day on a work computer and need something simple for weekends and evenings, the MacBook Neo’s performance should work well for you.
Its real strength is in its front-of-screen experience. It's the feeling you get every time you open the laptop, and that's where the MacBook Neo excels. A lot of that has to do with build quality and design, which are no less refined than the MacBooks that cost thousands more—with a dash of playfulness, thanks to the white keyboard and bolder colors. But the display is also worthy of recognition. It's both sharper and brighter than all its competitors, except for the Dell XPS 13.
I never thought a Windows laptop could pull off the trick of blending performance and affordability as well as the MacBook Neo, but the new Dell XPS 13 does it even better. The XPS 13 makes very few compromises, whether that's the portable design, the excellent display, the smooth trackpad, or the high speeds of the USB-C ports.