A laptop won’t revolutionize the minutiae of your life the way a smartphone can. You can’t easily whip one out to kill time in the elevator, capture a breathtaking sunset, or pay for a cup of coffee.
But in the years since smartphones took on all these jobs, laptops have honed their own talents. Amazing battery life and breathtaking screens are now common if you look in the right place for them. The graphics muscle to play games at full HD is affordable. And those basic old-guard features that you won’t find on any mobile device, such as touchpads and full-size keyboards, tend to get better with almost every generation.
Buying one by looking at specs and speed feeds alone can be maddening, though. Which specific features, and which laptop class, are best for you depends on your budget and how you plan to use your laptop. It’s better to take a systematic approach when shopping. Let’s run through how to make a smart pick.
Assess Your Budget: How Much Do I Need to Spend?
Don’t care about cutting-edge design and powerful components? You might be satisfied with a cheap laptop. Today’s market is flooded with basic but full-featured models with list prices under $500. Shopping holidays like Prime Day and Black Friday, and actual holidays like Presidents’ Day, bring frequent sales, discounting some of these models even further. Most of them will handle word processing and e-mail checking just fine, but they’ll struggle with other tasks, such as keeping many web browser tabs open at once.