How bad is the Cheapest Laptop

[AlexTheGreatish]

What happens when you sort every Windows laptop in existence by price and buy the absolute cheapest? Well it certainly is pink.

 

Buy an Acer Aspire 5 A515-45-R1QD Laptop: https://geni.us/mUKgbT

Buy a "Laptop 10.1 Inch Windows 10 Notebook Computer Full HD Netbook Mini Gaming Mass Memory 3GB+32GB Cheap PC Laptops" Laptop on AliExpress: https://lmg.gg/utZm5

Purchases made through some store links may provide some compensation to Linus Media Group.

 

 

 

[Agall]

9 minutes ago, AlexTheGreatish said:

What happens when you sort every Windows laptop in existence by price and buy the absolute cheapest? Well it certainly is pink.

 

Buy an Acer Aspire 5 A515-45-R1QD Laptop: https://geni.us/mUKgbT

Buy a "Laptop 10.1 Inch Windows 10 Notebook Computer Full HD Netbook Mini Gaming Mass Memory 3GB+32GB Cheap PC Laptops" Laptop on AliExpress: https://lmg.gg/utZm5

Purchases made through some store links may provide some compensation to Linus Media Group.

 

 

 

Looks like it could complete a blender session faster than any other laptop, that plastic looks like it'll shred quite easily.

[CrystalDawnFog]

What i would do is downgrade that computer to windows 7 if you can get the drivers. It probably would run a lot better.

[emosun]

1 minute ago, CrystalApple said:

What i would do is downgrade that computer to windows 7 if you can get the drivers. It probably would run a lot better.

in terms of speed i don't think 7 would be any faster , but you could optimize 10 to be as low resource as 7. but a vanilla install of 10 will be slow.

it really should be stated that it being 10 times slower than most budget laptops is what makes it slow. It quite literally is a lower end windows xp era product.

There won't be windows 7 drivers at all. 7 might support basic functions but not the gpu or wifi or a lot of the buses

[f222]

Well that PC has more IO than most recent more expensive PCs and the included mouse which looks like a copy of Apple's magic mouse can be used while being plugged in, unlike the original. 

So all in all that PC is not to bad

[Needfuldoer]

If you want to buy a functional computer for that kind of money (and not a prop for a video), used office laptops are abundant and cheap. I paid about $100 for a Latitude with an 8th gen i5, 8 gigs of RAM, and a 250 gig SSD, to use as a mobile SDR machine.

[bhop_monster_jam]

flashpoint probably getting hammered right now

[Gokul_P]

Iam pretty sure the ram is 4gb with 1gb assigned to IGPU. You can adjust it in bios or iam pretty sure there is a setting inside windows somewhere (in the 100 different settings apps). Atleast it didn't ship with windows 11 that's the only plus i see. Buy used/ at this price or buy in sales. In this price point Chromebook and tablets are very good for content consumption and web browsing. There is pretty good sales on laptops right now You can get a N5030 (Not a very good CPU or anything but it gets the job done) (https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-IdeaPad-Pentium-Windows-Included/dp/B0BNLYG895/ref=sr_1_78?fst=as%3Aoff&refinements=p_36%3A1253506011&rnid=386442011&s=computers-intl-ship&sr=1-78) or r3 laptop for around 180$ add a 20$ 8Gb stick of ddr4 ram (The 4Gb inside the laptop is solderd down so going with 4gb stick is not a bad idea either and getting a cheap ssd for the saving)  (https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-DDR4-Laptop-Memory-CT8G4SFRA32A/dp/B08C4Z69LN/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=8Gb+ddr4+sodimm&sr=8-3) its going to be a pretty ok web browsing/content consumption machine. add a sata ssd too if you want 

[Mungaru]

18 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

If you want to buy a functional computer for that kind of money (and not a prop for a video), used office laptops are abundant and cheap. I paid about $100 for a Latitude with an 8th gen i5, 8 gigs of RAM, and a 250 gig SSD, to use as a mobile SDR machine.

Same here, I bought a latitude 5480 through craigslist for $160, i5, 24 gigs of ram, was practically brand new since the company was liquidating old hardware. It had never been touched, let alone deployed.

[darknessblade]

Can anyone from LTT say if Linus put a SSD inside the laptop? [even a Sata ssd would have been fine]

 

[SirSynx]

I would recommend adding a link to the right place to download flashpoint, there's scam links if you google it

[blinking_dodo]

Well, i left a reaction on YT, but it appears that my message is shadowbanned...

(LTTube when?)

 

Quote

Now i want to know: how cheap could YOU make a laptop that is decent/workable?

 

- If you ship with Linux instead of Windows, you can skip the license costs.
- Just 3 USB ports should be enough, so skip the SD card which no-one uses anymore.
- make the webcam optional, and heck, if you are using a touch screen, you could even opt to remove the trackpad!
- keep the headphone jack, this will be crucial for audio output.
- cheapest SSD would beat any MMC in performance. (USB3.0 stick maybe, if fast enough?)
- using Linux, so 8GB ram should be plenty for daily use. (maybe even just 6GB?)
- remove onboard speakers, everyone will be using headphones/earpieces anyways. (keep the microphone though)

 

(if LTT reads this, plz let me know if you are doing this. )

 

 

[SorryDude742]

I would have liked to see Linux installed to see if that makes it more usable.

[Zodiark1593]

Never installed Steam on my RCA Cambio (with an older Atom Z3735F and 2GB), but from GoG, it ran Serious Sam, and Stardew Valley competently. Warcraft 3 did alright too. Think I’ve got other stuff that should run on it. 

[Efari]

Funny how they can make an entire video about the cheapest laptop but never actually tell us the price…

[mariushm]

32 minutes ago, Efari said:

Funny how they can make an entire video about the cheapest laptop but never actually tell us the price…

They said it was half the price of the $300 acer aspire ... so around 140-150$

 

yeah, if your budget is so low, just go for a refurbished laptop .. for example $153 for  Refurbished: Lenovo Grade A ThinkPad X270 12.5" Laptop, Intel Core i7-6600U (2.80GHz) 8GB Memory 256GB SSD, Intel HD Graphics 520, Windows 10 Pro 64-bit - Newegg.com

 

or even better, $169 for Refurbished: DELL Laptop Latitude 5290 Intel Core i5 8th Gen 8350U (1.70GHz) 16GB Memory 256 GB M.2 SATA SSD Intel UHD Graphics 620 12.5" Windows 10 Pro 64-bit (Grade A Refurbished) - Newegg.com

[xnamkcor]

"How can you have 2.8GB of RAM?".

 

Before we had GBs of ram, we had MBs of RAM.

[marcgii]

3 hours ago, bhop_monster_jam said:

flashpoint probably getting hammered right now

I'm attempting to download the regular version right now.  It took 5 minutes just to reach 1% lol

[AndreiArgeanu]

3 hours ago, blinking_dodo said:

how cheap could YOU make a laptop that is decent/workable?

It's going to be way more expensive even with those limitations in place. It's not really easy even for a company as large as LMG to get access to cheap mass produced hardware. The closest thing to what you specify would be is the pinebook. Which is a 100$ laptop with an arm SOC

[Remove]

This is very similar to another video from 2020.

https://linustechtips.com/topic/1226976-300-for-two-laptops/

The bare minimum specs of the EVOO model are certainly higher than the Pink Boi's.

32GB Storage

4GB RAM

11.6" display

 

My problem with both of these laptops is that their specs are woefully inadequate to comfortably run Windows 10, even in S mode.

They should come with some Linux distro installed.

 

I don't say that because I'm using Linux and want other people to use it too, but because Linux is incredibly painful to learn on these netbooks.

5 hours ago, Efari said:

Funny how they can make an entire video about the cheapest laptop but never actually tell us the price…

About $150 on AliExpress, which is on par with the EVOO's prices 3 years ago.

[Zodiark1593]

Know what, I think I'm imaginative and willful enough to squeeze a better gaming experience out of my old RCA Cambio (which has a iGPU that barely touches 50 GFLOPs, and 4 cores that get flattened by a single core of my current laptop, at 1.5 GHz), than Linus can with above machine. Battle of the ultimate low spec gaming. I've already a few ideas.

 

For reference as to what we're looking at, when I ran Unigine Valley on the Cambio, it hit maybe 1-2 FPS at minimum settings, in the sky, and 240 x 400 resolution, the same resolution as in the Nintendo 3DS.

[silentdragon95]

I really think that Linus should have mentioned the used market. If you live in a country with a healthy used market, a used or even refurbished (which has the advantage that you get a warranty and can return it if something were to be wrong with it) business laptop is always going to be a better deal at this price point.

 

However I suppose if you do not have access to a reasonable used market, this does get you a functional computer at a relatively low price. It's not great, but also not more terrible than you'd expect it to be.

[White_Helix]

What would be really interesting on this is a Linux Distro (take your pick) with a lightweight WM, XFCE, Openbox or something. I could really see that going like a whole new dimension of performance.

[powertoys]

It's painful how the midrange price point ($350~$500), the actual sweet spot for laptops, is utterly and completely ignored by nearly all of the major tech channels. It always goes like this:

 

Tech reviewers: *review $1000+ laptops*
(Sane) commenters: "that's WAY too expensive"

Tech reviewers: "fine, here's a $100 laptop, see, it's a piece of crap, don't buy it"

 

Btw, that point about the screen applies to nearly all gaming laptops sub-$1000. Nearly all of them share the same 250-nit, ~60% sRGB screen.

[WolframaticAlpha]

Yo, wtf that Acer laptop is nearing EOL? I watched the MacBook Air video when it came out.

 

I feel old.