Cheaper nowhere: the best laptops under $300, spring 2016

Lenovo IdeaPad G50-45 (G5045 80E300HCUA) Lenovo IdeaPad G50-45 (G5045 80E301BPRK)

One of the most affordable 15.6-inch laptops on the market is the Lenovo IdeaPad G50- 45 – it costs less than $250. It was possible to reduce the cost of the laptop and, as a result, the final price for the buyer by using an AMD processor instead of Intel.

If the old AMD laptop processors were hot and battery-hungry, the new E1-6010 consumes only 10 watts of electricity (previous generation consumed 18 watts). In addition to two processing cores with a frequency of 1.35 GHz, it has a Radeon R2 graphics accelerator with 128 micro-cores of the GNC architecture.

This processor with integrated graphics allows not only to surf the Web, view videos and edit documents, but also "run" in all blockbuster games released before 2010.

You can scold the Lenovo IdeaPad G50-45 not so much for 2 GB of RAM (this is just typical for $ 250 laptops), but for hard drive only 250 GB. A drive with twice the capacity would have looked better in this laptop.

Acer Packard Bell EasyNote TG71BM (TG71BM-C38X) Packard Bell EasyNote TG71BM (TG71BM-P53P NX.C3UER.026)

Laptops under the Packard Bell brand are not, as many mistakenly believe, American company Hewlett- Packard, and Taiwanese Acer. Therefore, their strict design and reasonable price are similar to those from Acer.

Packard Bell EasyNote TG71BM is based on the Celeron N2840 dual-core processor of the Intel Bay Trail architecture. Compared to its counterparts from AMD, it has a less performant graphics accelerator that can only run very old or casual games. But the N2840 has extremely low power consumption (only 4.5 W average, 7.5 W peak), which has a positive effect on laptop battery life.

From the bundled Battery 4400 mAh laptop can work up to five hours of web surfing or working with electronic documents, or up to three hours when watching movies. The indicator, of course, is not a record one when compared with expensive ultrabooks, but for inexpensive laptops it is quite worthy. Interesting fact: in addition to Packard Bell, Acer owns two other laptop brands — eMachines and Gateway.

Asus X553SA (X553SA-XX058D) Asus X553SA (X553SA-XX188D)

Low-cost laptops, in most cases extremely ascetic in appearance — strict black colour and nothing more . But the Asus X553SA has become a pleasant exception: it is available not only in black and white, but also in bright purple, which will appeal primarily to fashionistas.

Intel's latest energy-efficient processors are the Braswell family. The performance of their computing cores remained approximately at the same low level as that of the previous Bay Trail. But the integrated graphics has grown significantly — 16 execution modules instead of 4. Thus, in games, Intel Braswell processors are not inferior, and sometimes even surpass AMD E-series chips.

Braswell power consumption has not increased, but vice versa decreased — 4-6 W instead of 4.5-7.5 W. All thanks to the transition from 22 to 14 nanometer process technology (the smaller the size of the transistors, the less they consume electricity). As a result, most of the time the laptop fan runs at minimum speed and you can’t hear it.

The main highlight of the Asus X553SA is the wireless module supporting the cutting-edge Wi-Fi 802.11 standard ac. 802.11ac can reach up to 1 Gbps (depending on the distance to the access point), while 802.11n only has 300 Mb/s.

Dell Inspiron 15 3542 (I35C45DIL-46) Dell Inspiron 15 3542 (3542-7791)

Despite the low clock speed of 1.4 GHz, the Celeron 2957U is about twice as fast than Celeron N chips with a frequency under 2 GHz. The win comes from the more advanced Intel Haswell architecture found in powerful laptops and even desktop PCs. That's why this laptop can handle even the most resource-intensive applications

For extra speed, the 2957U processor has to pay with increased power consumption up to 15W. Fortunately, the Dell Inspiron 15 3542 battery has a relatively large capacity of 40 Wh, which allows you to work on a laptop without recharging for three to four hours. On the other hand, the weight has increased (up to 2.4 kg), which is clearly too much for a modern 15.6-inch laptop.

web is responsible for communication with the outside world -camera with a resolution of 1 MP (other low-cost laptops have only 0.3 MP), a Wi-Fi 802.11n network controller (300 Mbps) and a Bluetooth 4.0 radio module. The latter can be useful for connecting a wireless stereo headset, mouse, mobile phone as a 3G modem, or all of this together (simultaneous connection of several Bluetooth devices is available).

HP 250 G4 (250G4-M9T00EA) HP 250 G4 (250G4-N1A00EA)

Although the screen of the HP 250 G4 is glossy, it has an additional anti-glare coating that is more typical of < a href="/post/783/298_luchshie_15_6_dyuymovye_noutbuki_do_1000_dollarov/">mid-price laptops. Of course, it will not save the best from direct sunlight, but it will still reduce the glare from indoor artificial lighting.

Installed in the HP 250 G4 is the most powerful processor that can only be found in entry-level laptops — Pentium 3825U. It has two computing cores of the Intel Broadwell architecture, a modern 14nm process technology and, as a result, a high frequency of 1.9 GHz with an average power consumption of 15 watts. Simply put, you can work with professional software on it, and run more or less modern games (until 2012) during breaks.

Another trump card of the laptop is small, as for 15.6-inch models , weight — only 2.1 kg. However it turned out to be a double-edged sword: it was possible to achieve lightness by installing a small capacity battery — 30 Wh. And the powerful Broadwell processor eats up the battery quite quickly, so such a small battery capacity is enough for a maximum of three hours of battery life. We can recommend this laptop to those who are willing to sacrifice battery life for high performance.