Yeah the HP Envy 14 with a 1650 is worth the 50 bucks more......just get it.

@@handlemonium not easily hot?

There is still called a budget range for every segment

@@mineshadow9483 Nope. Alex covered it in another Short Circuit. Also the Core i5 is only 4 cores (versus 8 in the 5900HS) so there's enough thermal capacity for 1060 performance. There'a even 14-inch laptops out there will a 3050TI/3060 like the Acer Swift X and Zeyphrus G14.

​@@handlemonium Actually now you've said this, the swift X is an even better value (at least on paper), with R7 5800U + 3050ti for $1100, or 5700U + 1650 for $100 less. Only downsides is its screen is pretty dim and non-touch

Are you okay….

Amen to that 😅. I sound like a bag of pop rocks getting out of bed

@@lazycubes7370 no I am 31 already 😭

You should really get that looked at...

@@graciouscompetentdwarfrabbit it was just a meme cause of how bad it sounded. No worries

Rich popular KZfaqrs will never risk their reputation by reviewing and recommending forgettable cheap plasticky laptops under $400. Specially when it won't attract as many views as what they usually show. It would be considered a niche market to them. Reputation risk and low profit means a bad business investment in the research, purchasing, and script writing for that hypothetical episode. This coming from a guy who's yet to have an annual salary above 20k after taxes.

@@sutton4791 I'm not sure I'd completely agree. Some of LTT's most popular videos were the budget TVs/monitors series of videos. I think the issue with cheap laptops is that the LMG staff believe the experience is too poor, so they don't want to recommend something they believe their audience would not be satisfied with after purchase. There's also the e-waste argument. Linus has made clear his distaste for e-waste on numerous occasions, and cheap electronics will usually fail more quickly and easily while providing subpar user experiences, becoming items that will just fill a landfill somewhere. Since Linus dislikes the stuff, companies won't send them these types of products to review and unbox, and he won't go out buying them on purpose. Of course, I say all this as something Linus and the LMG staff think. I'm not so sure if actual average consumers care that much, which is why I asked for a second opinion on such a hypothetical video.

I actually think sub 700 is where the "sweet spot" for budget laptops is. You can usually get some pretty good specs without compromising too much stuff.

In defense, every laptop that I have purchased for myself has been in the $500 price point. And I would not consider them "a bad user experience". Then again... I have only ever owned either seriously obsolete and already mechanically failing, or near-$500, laptops, up until VERY Recently when I inherited my first "it's actually worth more than $500 by time I own it" laptop. A large gaming laptop with nearly exactly the same footprint as my older systems, just with VASTLY improved .... well .... everything. Except battery. 2 hours if I'm careful is usable, but a little tight even by my standards, and I wouldn't take it far without access to power. My objectively newest model in the "fleet" is my Lenovo Ideapad 330-15AAR. A Ryzen 5 *2500U (there is no 2600U, Josh...) based system. LMG would absolutely hate it, and many people who reviewed it thrashed it as well, however I love it and it served me well on an international vacation as my only computer for half a month. It was a highly worthy upgrade to my aging Asus M50v with a blown up GPU, and is superior in literally every way. Reviewers criticized its TN panel (okay I see why, but at this price point and time IPS was still out of reach), power throttling under sustained loads (I lost about 15FPS out of 90 playing Portal when it rolled back), and "pathetic" 3 hour battery life in favorable conditions. They also questioned why it can't charge over its USB-C port, but I'm barely getting my feet wet in the USB-C ecosystem, and was far deeper in "let's find creative ways to power things that have barrel jacks". I tuned mine to be able to run up to 4 hours. Which, coming from ancient machines where 3 hours was luxurious, this is plenty of power for my workflow, and if I need more, I have power banks capable of extending that significantly. My biggest complaint is that the touchpad does not behave the way I want it to. Two-finger scrolling acts bizarrely due to smoothing algo's (it'll run extremely slowly in some programs, and extremely quickly in others), and two-finger tap to right click doesn't work at ALL - you MUST click the touchpad. Which is actually annoying when I'm not used to press-clicking a touchpad because that's not a feature in laptops built in 2007... (I want my buttons below the touchpad back.)

@@TransparentlyDuplicitous You made valid points and I think those points are close to LMG's likely opinions. E-waste laptops/PCs will always exist. So it would still be nice if they made at least one video a year about actual budget laptops/PCs, like your original comment. It would help hundreds of thousands of people. They can do disclaimers on their view points regarding cheap laptops in the intro, what compromises to expect, and things to avoid.

Ah yes i loved the atom and celeron chips and 4GB ram, having to reinstall windows every 4 motnhs because it became slow as hell.

A used laptop at that price will almost always be better than a $300 laptop.

There's inflation too. $200-$300 laptops from the past were total crap.

@@Xfade81 fair fair but I'd still like to see more 500-600$ laptops instead of 800-1000

A good budget laptop isn't $250-300 anymore, but $850+ is definitely not budget territory anymore. I bought my Lenovo Flex about a year ago for around $500. Has a ryzen 5 and 12 gb of ram (you can upgrade). I had to spend $60 on a larger ssd but that was it. But you could probably find some good stuff in the $350-500 range that would do great. This channel just doesn't do actual budget stuff.

Inflation is getting worse and there's an electronic shortage. Things are changing.

@@Verdigo76 funny how things never seem to get cheaper...

Compared to almost two grand for other laptops, yeah that's budget. Any cheaper and your in bare minimum to buy a laptop territory and anything below even that is a toy.

@@Verdigo76 you can still get sub $500 laptops. This isn’t budget this is just LTT trying to get more views.

@@bianchialex you don’t know what budget is then.

Same

When things were at their very worst: 2 Suns, Cross in the sky, 2 comets will collide = don`t be afraid - repent, accept Lord`s Hand of Mercy. Scientists will say it was a global illusion. Beware - Jesus will never walk in flesh again. After WW3 - rise of the “ man of peace“ from the East = Antichrist - the most powerful, popular, charismatic and influential leader of all time. Many miracles will be attributed to him. He will imitate Jesus in every conceivable way. Don`t trust „pope“ Francis = the False Prophet - will seem to rise from the dead - will unite all Christian Churches and all Religions as one. One World Religion = the seat of the Antichrist. Benedict XVI is the last true pope - will be accused of a crime of which he is totally innocent. "Arab uprising will spark global unrest - Italy will trigger fall out" "The time for the schism in the Church is almost here and you must get prepared now" The Book of Truth

The "better" speakers always sound more tinny to me. Is it a volume thing?

@@destituteanddecadent9106 well, in the end you are listening to them through your own speakers so it's not the most objective test ever

@@AJD... ik, it's just weird that every time, the "better" speakers sound more tinny to me, so I thought the bigger volume might've been hard on my Pixel 4a 🤷‍♀️

The HP laptop sounded way better anyway. The dell just sounded muddy as shit. Like listening to a song 50 meters removed from the speaker inside a tunnel.

Great idea for a techquickie

Their machine shop video with the elgato wave panels, they used the miniDSP mic and REW to measure RT60 response, they COULD measure frequency sweeps with that measurement mic & REW from the listening position of a laptop user to show if any funny business is present in the frequency response.

The Dolby works on mine to make the speakers sound better but turn off for headphones. It has a weird audio sleeping feature that I haven't been able to disable though.

@@Kiritomens I agree. The Dell was louder overall, with much louder highs. The highs were very muted on the HP. But the Dell was distorted and messy, especially on those loud high notes. I'd be curious for another comparison with the Dell at ~70% volume. It definitely sounded like the speakers were over-working themselves, and it's possible that at 70% it would sound way better, and better than the HP. Can't say for sure though without actually hearing it.

Seriously! How is $800-$1000 considered "budget"?

@@boom8606 At this point I think LTT doesn't really remember what people consider reasonable prices for budget laptops.

They need to make people think prices scyrocketing is totally normal and if they hammer it into enough heads, nobody will wonder about Core-i3/Ryzen3 800$+ "budget" anymore...

My 2017 Lenovo laptop that cost me 500 is still going strong! 8 gigs of RAM, a 7th gen i5. Not many bells and whistles, but this thing flies on Pop OS!

@@Fennek_Kaipii What kind of nonsense are you stupidly accusing them of here? What's the point of what you're saying? They're in a conspiracy to move the budget overton window for question-mark-profit?

1.4a flashed up before as he was going through them

Right! Consumerism isn't for poor people

I got this laptop for 600

Any amount is "budget". Budget doesn't mean "cheap". US army has a yearly *budget* of $725 billion.

@@czarkowskipawelyt context can have a big influence on the meaning of words.

To be fair I just bought a Inspiron 14 non touch screen and it’s actually pretty reasonable. That dell preferred 12 month financing didn’t hurt either. It 650 for the i5

Budget does not mean cheapest possible item...

You want a "no budget" laptop. The best option you can get is no laptop, it's completely free and the experience isn't too bad. $200 or $400 windows laptop though? Pretty bad. That price you're only getting a chromebook unless you're fine with using a hyped up child's toy. If you don't care about features or quality, you can get a decent performing laptop for around $600 - but if it has one nice feature you can guarantee the performance is going to be horrible, and likely you can't upgrade it so you're going to need to replace it in a few years unless you're fine using something super shitty - you'd we way better buying a good used one.

Yeah? I found a 14 in the dumpster and factory rest it and been off to the races!! Lol

Is it still holding up? The hinges on mine popped out after 2.5 yrs

CPU ?

@Phoenix 𝙾𝚙𝚎𝚗 𝙼𝚢 PROFILE Glad yours worked out. The two I got were defective. One massive overheat issue and the other wireless and another heat issue.

Yeah lol

Was it Apple? I didn’t hear about this.

U know what's more expensive than a laptop? Your lap. Feed me money humans

@@JourneyToTheSky In India, it's almost 8k USD. I really don't think this laptop was meant for the normal people.

@@JourneyToTheSky Yup, the new MacBook Pros *start* at $2,000 USD for just the 14 inch M1 Pro variant.

Could you tell me how this laptop is for gaming?

@@motivatorsoftheheart0007 good enough, not a gaming laptop tho

Gonna sound random, but where the bottom plastic meets the sides, is there a small "lip" or is it a smooth surface?

@@motivatorsoftheheart0007 Yakuza like a dragon runs at 28-40 fps at medium to low settings at 66% resolution scaling(720p). Expect slightly below Xbox One levels of GPU performance.

any problem with hinge you faced and what about battery

cost 3x as much as mine

Yeah 700usd is starting to enter the budget zone, I'd say 350 to 550 is budget

For a gamer but not a regular user

I got this. The screen really is too dim but the battery is really good now

Is that a good or bad thing... lol

@@techno_magnus9616 I’m happy to know I made a decent purchase. Especially considering I got it $350 off here in Canada

@@joshhills8316 dang, that's pretty good.

I was about to say the same lol, 1250 for the 16gb blows this absolutely out of the water

Touch screen gentlemen but still slightly expensive

Yup

@@OriginalDegree unless the touch screen supports a stylus then I don't c what's the benefit as most of Windows applications r designed for keyboard and mouse

@@OriginalDegree touchscreens don’t add any value to a laptop. Especially if there is no pen support

I was thinking the same.

It is though, you would need to spend atleast 800 to get good specs

few years ago I'd say the same. But value for money's price point has risen to around anything below $1k in current days

Yea. $800 for a small ultrabook is dead 'Mid-range'. Informally called _Budget_ or 'Low-end' is typically around $400-700. Below $400 is what we call 'Entry-level' for Windows laptops. Considering HP's 'High-end' *Spectre* model that is equal to Dell XPS 13 start at *950$* , the 1k+$ for a cheaply built Inspiron is really quite _beyond_ overpriced.

They do live in their bubble

Bloat is easy to delete with a reinstall of a Linux install, but the audio issue seems... Strange.

@@superslimanoniem4712 Yeah, it really is.

Extremely late reply but your audio issues come from uninstalling the Wavves software.

@@patrycjadargacz4909 Yeah I think I've realized this. I don't like how easy it is to make this mistake, especially since there are both the desktop and Windows 10 versions installed by default. I am likely not the only one to think both of them don't need to be installed.

@@TheOnlyName Yeah, it sucks that the wavves software is needed for audio to function perfectly. I presume that they must have included some drivers that is only in the wavves software.

A $700 one just arrived, slowly making our way down! -AC

If you want an actually good budget laptop, just buy one used. Budget laptops have and always been e-waste

This laptop also went on sale not too long ago for roughly $600 for the Ryzen 5 model Source: Bought this laptop

@@adultshawarma Bought a Dell M7710 used for less than this one, it's pretty much an ultrabook with its own dedicated graphics card and thunderbolt! It's a few years old, but gotdang it seems a better option than this.

@@adultshawarma Not really. Laptops such as HP Envy are good overall laptops that get the job done for the majority of people. Lenovo has some great options around the 700-800€ mark and you'd have to go below 500 to get what would actually be e-waste with ECC memory and useless CPUs.

I've been explaining to people for years: You can have cats, or you can have nice electronics. Not both.

That’ll be water damage to the protection circuit of the battery my dude. You’re basically sending enough power to it to bypass all the safety stuff. Eventually that bat is gonna puff and rapidly discharge (read as “explode”)

@@abnormallynormal8823 That is not how USB PD works

@@TheBackyardChemist my thinking was that the HP charger is just a little smarter or uses a different protocol than the Sony/Xiaomi one. Would this be a correct assumption?

@@Jackofafewtrades Its possible that your phone has 2 chips to handle both standard USB PD fast charging and Qualcomm non-standard fast charging. I would expect the HP charger to use the standard USB PD protocol.

Yeah, my spec ended up costing me just shy of $3k

@@-SP. you spent 3K on this?

@@How23497 I think he's talking about the new macbook pros

It's 850 for a 5700u and 16gb ram, I think that's good

love your profil name and pic HAHA

If only they picked it up at Cashies and used the 1 Grit to open it

Still the most commonly used brand in business. People should really consider buying their business grade machines (even off eBay or Dell outlet).

It mid-range chassis with high specs for 14". $1000 is fair, thous the Pavilion is better. Zenbook UM series is also a good option with its metal chassis, but you have top bloc the highest RAM option.

Yeah i got a 1660 Ti Laptop for under that price. Weird

some people actually want their laptop to last all day and have a gaming pc at home that blows the mobile 3060 out of the water

The only 3060 laptop at that price regularly is kinda terrible, so I don't think that's fair. But for 100 bucks you can regularly more you can get the same config w a 3060 from multiple vendors. That's the real killer.

Imagine buying a laptop when you can use a steam deck smh

Not everyone is a gamer and wants a 9lbs machine with 3 hours of battery life

it's meant to be a thin and light, not a gaming laptop. gaming laptops always have low battery life, are bulky, and may sacrifice stuff like the screen in order to get a 3060 in for a cheap price. also note that this is a 2 in 1 laptop, which may not be possible with a 3060. not everyone needs a gpu :)

Should’ve got an m1

M1 is way better

Budget is whatever the budget is. It's not synonymous for cheap.

M1 has better performance but the compromise you take with apple is compatibility issues with windows programs.

@@tams805 Got that wrong. Budget is not whatever the budget is if that was the case everything would be a budget product.

Across the world, from paycheck to paycheck

Then they probably can't fit an extraneous purchase into their budget

3 mos + paycheck in some countries 😅

And their reasoning be like, “well it is budget if you consider the price of Maybach or a Rolls”

@Chilli Potato who cares about that though? you are not going to notice it day-to-day...

@@Liloz01 I do. Non-rigid laptops are nasty to type on, even with a light touch.

You can notice it if its really bad

I do notice it when laptops flex when typing, but it only really happens on plastic ones. On a channel that mainly reviews expensive laptops with metal frames I suppose you're right, the deck flex test doesn't make a ton of sense. But it is a way of showing off nice machined aluminium laptop frames for sure

@@sarahilmao7294 Also, you get the 'feels cheap experince ' out of it.

@TheNextGamer21 osx is actually an incredibly good operating system and the only reason people shouldn't use it is if they need to run programs which won't run on osx. Sounds to me like you've never used it.

@TheNextGamer21 it doesn't really matter, because of how the os works. For example you might say that the windows key on a windows laptop opens the start menu right, but osx doesn't really have such a thing. Instead there's a tab out key on the top of the keyboard that essentially does the same thing, and you can search from there. I can factually say, as both a user of windows (desktop) and osx (laptop), that apple make their computers a whole lot easier to use; if you're not a power user anyway. The fact is that not so much navigation with the keyboard doesn't matter nearly as much on a laptop as it does on a desktop, and if people are using desktops then they'd have a proper mouse anyway. I'm needing to buy a laptop due to incompatibilities with osx (software engineering), but that's the only reason I'd ever get a windows laptop/desktop. Apple makes very good devices, both software and hardware.

overpriced

You'll find out soon!

@@honk2448 there are windows laptop that cost the same and i can already tell u dell asus acer razer hp msi will not come close to the new mbs

Actually made for professionals (So expensive, common people will find buying it uneconomical!)

@@MonicaHolly143 there are windows/other os laptops that are worse, but the new apple products are still overpriced

Lol they did

Laptops under that price point are basically chrome books and horribly equiped Windows laptops that i wouldnt touch with a 30 foot barge pole.

laptops under these price points aren't worth unboxing imho they are nice for roundups, but the vid would mostly be yes there are cuts here and there but it is usable

you can hardly get good smartphones for that price. Good luck getting a laptop with good specs for that price

Yeah but I disagree with your budget idea, 300€ is more like cheapo, budget is 500€+ to me. But definitely not 800€ lol for that price I expect high end

Depends on the context i guess. I consider 800€ for my gaming laptop budget.

@@toaster98 Yeah definitely, and for a work laptop I think 800€ is already a good price, without any dedicated graphics card, just basic CPU

Investing in cryptocurrency is one of the best chance of making money 💸

Stocks are good crypto is better

I wanted to trade crypto but got confused by the fluctuations in price and lack of directives

@@harrisonfair5039 That won't bother you if you trade with a professional like Mr James Matheson

I heard his strategies are really good

Simple explaination: at sub 500 dollars you will get something that cannot function as a work laptop for the vast majority of people. If you're a child wanting to watch youtube, then sure. Probably better to buy a tablet though. If you need to run even simple productivity apps, do any kind of video or photo manipulation, you'll need something in the $700-$1000 range. It's simply *never* enough "bang for you buck" to buy a laptop at that price, there's diminishing returns on low-end laptops as much as there is on high-end laptops.

500 dollars laptops aside from being cheaply built with a narrow gamut dim screen, also sport dual-core i3-s at best. Also, they have no USB-C Alt-mode, which is essential for docks. Also, they often have soldered 4g RAM with a single expansion slot. If you buy a laptop under $1000, you will regret it.

@@fregus. I don't think the general public even cares about photo or video editing. Everyone just uses a browser and some office apps. First world countries always have a different understanding of what budget is. If you earn about 1000 dollars a month, would you give away half for your laptop or all of it? And for what purpose. Ltt doesn't touch on these aspects. A budget in this video is the same as a mid spec non gaming laptop. If we were to assume LTTs audience is North America then 800 can be budget cause ppl can afford that with a salary. Outside of first world countries, NADA. Honestly, it rubs off as arrogant even if unintentional. As for being a child, I will assume you are one from your profile picture. I'm a looot older and have a much broader understanding of wage gaps and affordability so no, this is not budget.

@@tyaty soldered ram is horrible and 4GB for Windows is really bad. Agreed. But there are plenty, I repeat plenty of non-branded cheaper laptops with 8GB of ram and a 256GB ssd that will easily be budget friendly to below 500. Why is this so hard to accept. You're not looking for budget if you want a dock. Budget means simple ports, usb 3 A at most, hdmi, SD card.

@@TeffySam as someone who has tried to use multiple 500 dollar laptops for work, I can safely say it's not worth it. Sure, if you're not in a financial situation where you can afford at $1000 laptop, you're not going to buy one. I don't see that as a problem. The majority of people that watch LTT are people working in IT, software development or some kind of media role. The budget of those people is, of course, going to be higher than a minimum wage worker or someone who can't afford tech. A 1000 dollar laptop is the cheapest laptop that will accomplish any task you throw at it. anything less and you will have compromises. Lastly, there are exponentially more "truly budget" laptops than flagship laptops, LTT isn't able to go through every sub 500 dollar laptop and pick the best one. The average LTT viewer is perfectly capable of finding a laptop for the price they want, videos like these are to show off the best of that price range.