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Black Friday laptop deals aren’t just about big savings on super-powerful machines like the best gaming laptops. Don’t get us wrong, there are some absolute scorching Black Friday gaming laptop deals happening right now but if you’re after a cheap laptop deal for the basics, you can save a lot of money too.
So, if you do just need a laptop for the basics like email, web browsing, document editing, and playing Netflix / Spotify, then we’d urge you to save money where possible rather than blowing a grand on a high-end piece of kit more suited to editing 4K video than you slugging through spreadsheets and Netflix.
So today, we’d like to show you our top find of a Lenovo IdeaPad with a $110 discount at BestBuy (opens in new tab). As basic 14-inch laptops go, it’s got a lot going for it.
- Lenovo IdeaPad 1|
$229.99$119.99 at Best Buy (opens in new tab) - More laptop deals: Walmart (opens in new tab) | Staples (opens in new tab) | Best Buy (opens in new tab) | Dell (opens in new tab) | Amazon (opens in new tab) | Newegg (opens in new tab)
- Check out our Black Friday TV deals highlights
Ok, let’s be upfront about what you should expect to get done with a cheap laptop like this. Forget about gaming, unless it’s your basic browser type games you might mess around with on Facebook and the like. This should strictly be used for light tasks, and we wouldn’t expect it to multitask with loads of apps open at once. However, it’ll do the basics just fine.
As for the specs, you’re getting a 14-inch HD screen (not Full HD, mind), 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, an AMD A6 processor, and Windows in the lighter S mode, which we’d stick to rather than doing the one-way change to full Windows as S mode is made to run on lower-spec cheap laptops like this.
64GB of storage is fine if you’re not going to fill this with apps or media files and it’ll be able to handle future Windows updates, too. We’d always avoid picking up the 32GB Windows laptops we sometimes see at dirt cheap prices as they eventually can’t fit a later Windows update on even if you clear out all your other apps and media; they just get stuck in a loop and can be vulnerable to security issues the longer they go without updates. 64GB of storage means you shouldn’t have that issue.
14-inch laptops are a great size too, and strike that balance between being small enough to put in your bag and carry around on a regular basis compared to the standard 15.6-inch size, but they also have a keyboard that doesn’t feel cramped compared to smaller laptops.
Cheap Black Friday laptop deal
(opens in new tab)Lenovo IdeaPad 1| $229.99 $119.99 at Best Buy (opens in new tab)
Just don’t ask it to run too many apps at once and this cheap laptop will happily chomp away at your standard day-to-day work tasks. The 8-hour battery is great value too.
An ideal purchase for the basics, then, or maybe an inexpensive first laptop for a child. Or how about something for working at home to save you lugging that work laptop home every night?
If you do need something with a bit more power for better multitasking, or maybe media editing, then you’ll have to spend a bit more of course, but this is the time of year to do it with so many retailers tripping over themselves to provide great laptop deals right now as we’re into Black Friday week. We’ve linked to the laptop aisles of some of the best retailers out there for you to check out a wider range of items. We’ve also listed some cheap Chromebooks below, which are decent alternatives to cheap Windows laptops like this and often run faster due to the Chrome operating system being much less demanding.
Walmart (opens in new tab) | Staples (opens in new tab) | Best Buy (opens in new tab) | Dell (opens in new tab) | Amazon (opens in new tab) | Newegg (opens in new tab)
