install lcd panel for acer aspire one cloudbook made in china

Please read the following terms and conditions of sale carefully before ordering products from us. By purchasing goods from us, you agree to these terms of sale. These terms do not replace or affect your statutory rights. In these terms, "you" and "your" refer to the customer and "we", "us" and "our" refer to TJ Inspirations Ltd.

a) A contract for the sale of product(s) you order from us is only created once we have e-mailed you confirmation that your order has been dispatched.

c) The total cost of your order will be the price of the products you order, the delivery charge (if any), plus any additional services you choose e.g. premium delivery or installation. You"ll see all these in your shopping basket before you submit an order.

e) When deciding whether to accept your order we may use certain information about you, including any received from our accredited identity verification partner. For example, we may pass on your details for them to check against certain public and private databases. This will help protect you and us from fraudulent activities.

a) We are happy to announce that all the LCD Panels and Laptop / Notebook batteries purchased from us comes with 90 days warranty from the date of invoice. Please note that the warranty only covers against defects in material and workmanship and there are other circumstances which limit its cover.

b) If for any reason the product malfunctions, the policy will cover this up to 90 days for a replacement, the existing warranty will carry over NO NEW 90 day policy.

All our products are dispatched in brand new and secure packaging, therefore damages are extremely rare. Please check that the goods are undamaged, immediately you receive delivery of them and notify us if they are received in a damaged condition as soon as possible. We will replace it or give you a refund of the purchase price and the delivery charge *

In the unlikely circumstance that the goods turn out to be faulty / not as described / do not otherwise conform to the contract, you have the right to a full refund / repair / replacement / partial refund, according to your consumer rights.

Note: When returning an item, please make sure original packaging is used, which includes the invoice of your purchase or provided RMA documents. We ask all customers to return items using Recorded Delivery via Royal Mail or the cheapest tracking service for delivery outside UK Mainland addressing it to our head office.

b) You / We are responsible for the cost of returning the goods to us, and they must be returned in an unused condition in their original packaging. If the goods are not returned to us in a saleable condition, we are entitled to make a deduction from the purchase price. This is to cover the loss in value of the goods supplied to you, due to, for example, any unnecessary handling of or damage to the goods and packaging, by you.

The refund will be made by the same means of payment which you used for the initial transaction, unless you have expressly agreed otherwise. In any event, you will not incur any fees as a result of the reimbursement.

To exercise the right to cancel, you must inform us, by means of a clear statement, that you wish to cancel the contract, i.e. a letter sent by post, fax or e-mail. You may also download our returns/cancellation form , but it is not essential that you use this form.

c) Items will be dispatched within 24 hours of receipt of payment (excluding Weekends & Public Holidays). Please allow up to 7 working days for delivery (unless unforeseeable circumstance occurs which is out of our control).

d) If the goods are not available for delivery within 30 days of being ordered you shall be entitled to cancel your order and receive a full refund of any monies paid. Where goods become available for delivery at different times we reserve the right to deliver them in stages.

e) Once the goods have been delivered to you, you will hold them at your own risk and will be liable for their loss or destruction. We will not be liable for the loss or destruction of the goods once they have been delivered to you.

f) If you place your order we"ll send you an email to let you know when we"ve dispatched your order. Your order should arrive within 28 working days of dispatch. This maximum delivery period shall have elapsed before we will consider claims for lost in transit consignments.

h) No claims for damages, shortages or discrepancies will be considered unless reported to TJ Inspirations Limited within a reasonable period of time.

a) We reserve the right to delay delivery or to cancel the order or reduce the volume of the goods ordered by you (without any liability to you) if we are prevented from or delayed in the carrying on of our business due to circumstances beyond our reasonable control including without limitation acts of God, governmental actions, war or national emergency, riot, civil commotion, fire, explosion, flood, epidemic, lock out, strikes or other labour disputes (whether or not relating to either party"s workforce), or restraints or delays affecting carriers or inability or delay in obtaining supplies of adequate or suitable materials.

a) Items are shipped from our main warehouse based in UK, therefore Customs Duties and Taxes (except VAT) are not applicable. If you reside outside the EU and in the unlikely event of a charge, this is your responsibility; therefore you should anticipate an amount charged by the government in your respective countries. This includes and not limited to any of the above mentioned as well as any fees charged by the courier company.

a) In the event that any clause in this contract is deemed to be unenforceable, the enforceability of any other part of these conditions will not be affected.

On the back side of the screen you can see one or several labels with numbers. Almost every screen on the market today have manufacturer"s code and screen size included in the model number. You will need the manufacturer part number to find the right replacement screen.

For example a Dell XPS 15 (L502X) has a Dell Part Number of VVR75 or 0VVR75, it has an LCD Part Number: XM5XG and a manufacturer P/N: N156B6 -L0B. The Letter N tells us that the manufacturer is CHI MEI and the 156 that this is a 15.6 inch screen.

Below is a list of LCD screen manufacturers with their abbreviations - if you click on the name (in blue) you will see an example of that manufacturer"s parts label.

LG Display is a large South Korean company and the world"s largest LCD maker, followed by Samsung Electronics. Currently, the two companies together control nearly 50% of the global LCD market. LG Display is headquartered in Seoul, South Korea.

Chi mei Part number start with "N". Some Screens have Revision numbers. Like in this example, the part number is N154I2-L02 followed by revision number indicated by Rev.C1. If you had to search for this particular screen on this site, you should search for "CHI MEI N154I2-L02 Rev. C1".

Toshiba Corporation (manufacturing company, headquartered in Tokyo, Japan Toshiba-made Semiconductors are among the Worldwide Top 20 Semiconductor Sales Leaders. Toshiba is the world"s fifth largest personal computer manufacturer, after Hewlett-Packard and Dell of the U.S., Acer of Taiwan and Lenovo of China and US.

Chungwha Picture Tubes, Ltd. (CPT) is one of Taiwan"s, and the world"s, leading manufacturers of thin-film transistor liquid crystal displays, or TFT-LCDs. Ranked number three in the Taiwan TFT panel market.

Sharp, a Japanese electronics manufacturer, has developed into one of the leading electronics companies in the world. LCD technology continues to be a key part of Sharp"s product range, in both the component and the consumer-applicance sides of the business.

Hyundai Display Technology Inc. (HYDIS) of Ichon, Korea, is an industry leader in the development, sales, marketing and distribution of high-quality LCD, which is a spin-off from HYNIX Semiconductor Inc. Boe Hydis (Formerly Hyundai Displays Korea)

Quanta Display Inc. is a Taiwanese company established in 1999, manufacturing thin film transistor-liquid crystal display panels. It merged with AU Optronics.

AU Optronics is one of the top 3 worldwide manufacturers of thin film transistor liquid crystal display panels (TFT-LCD), and is the largest in Taiwan. AUO provides customers a full range of panel sizes and comprehensive applications, offering TFT-LCD panels in sizes ranging from 1.5 inches to greater than 65 inches.

Typewriter with stamina. Acer"s 14-incher only brings a weak processor but offers very long battery runtimes. The price of about 280 Euros (~$310) and the included one-year license for Office 365 Personal might make the notebook attractive for many users.

The success of the Chromebooks led to several manufacturers offering Windows-based alternatives. These do not have the limitations of Chromebooks (cannot be used without Internet connection; no desktop applications). The Cloudbook 14 is such an alternative. Computers like the HP Stream 13, the HP Chromebook 14, and the Toshiba CB30-B-104 belong to its competitors.

Speakers: Stereo, Keyboard: Chiclet, Keyboard Light: no, McAfee LiveSafe Internet Security (trial version), MS Office 365 Personal (one-year license), 24 Months Warranty, fanless

Design, material, and color of the Cloudbook 14 are identical to its 11.6-inch sibling"s. Apart from the black display frame, Acer uses a slim, gray plastic case. The lid and the underside are textured. The top side of the base unit is roughened. The build quality is flawless. However, the stability should be improved - the base unit twists too easily. Thus, the front left foot of the laptop lifts up when pressure is applied right beside the keyboard.

Moreover, the Cloudbook 14 and the Cloudbook 11 share the same connectivity. One of two USB ports supports the USB 3.0 standard. The ports sit on both sides towards the rear. As a result, the space beside the palm rests remains free of cables. The memory-card reader works slowly. It transfers 250 JPG image files (about 5 MB each) at only 18.6 MB/s. We always test memory-card readers with our reference card (Toshiba Exceria Pro SDXC 64 GB UHS-II).

The Cloudbook comes with a chiclet keyboard without light. The flat, slightly roughened keys feature a short travel and a clear pressure point. The keyboard slightly springs when typing, but this was not disturbing. Since it is a 14-inch device, keys and key gaps are bigger than in comparable, yet smaller devices like, for example, the Acer Cloudbook 11. As a result, the typing experience is much more comfortable. If you are thinking about buying an 11.6-inch notebook, you should reflect on buying a 14-inch computer like the Cloudbook 14 instead. The multi-touch capable ClickPad of the Cloudbook takes up 10.1 x 6.1 cm. So, it offers a lot of space for gesture control. Fingers glide easily on the smooth surface. The touchpad features a short travel and a clear pressure point.

Acer has equipped the Cloudbook with a matte 14-inch display with a native resolution of 1366x768 pixels. The brightness (213.1 cd/m²) is too low for a mobile device meant to be used in all kinds of places. In view of the price point, the contrast (491:1) is okay. The display shows PWM flickering @ 200 Hz at a brightness level of 90% and lower. This might cause eye problems and/or headaches in sensitive people.

ℹDisplay response times show how fast the screen is able to change from one color to the next. Slow response times can lead to afterimages and can cause moving objects to appear blurry (ghosting). Gamers of fast-paced 3D titles should pay special attention to fast response times.↔ Response Time Black to White

The Cloudbook features a TN panel with narrow viewing angles. Thus, it is not possible to read from the screen from all positions. Moreover, the computer is not really apt for outdoor use. Outdoor use is only possible when the sky is overcast or in the shade. Otherwise, the display is too dark.

With the Cloudbook 14, Acer offers a 14-inch notebook for simple office and Internet applications. In addition, it can play videos. Our test model costs about 280 Euros (~$310). We have not found other variants.

With Intel"s Celeron N3050 (Braswell) dual-core processor, a weak CPU works inside the Acer computer. Its performance is sufficient for simple office and Internet applications. Those who want to run more demanding applications should buy a different computer. The Celeron works at up to 2.16 GHz in mains operation as well as on battery.

The system runs smoothly and we did not observe problems in our test. The results of the PCMark benchmarks correspond to the performance of the used SoC. Alike all Braswell notebooks, the Cloudbook 14 also performs better than comparable Bay Trail devices (Braswell predecessor). This is thanks to the significantly faster Braswell GPUs, while the CPU performance of Bay Trail and Braswell are almost the same. It is not possible to improve the system performance of the Cloudbook.

The Cloudbook comes with an eMMC storage module with a capacity of 32 GB. Just under 15 GB of the total capacity is free out-of-the-box. The transfer rates are on a normal level for this kind of memory. It is not handy to expand the storage capacity with an SD card. SD cards stick out of the card reader by about 5 mm and are not locked in the card reader. Nevertheless, users will have enough storage space available: The buyer of the computer gets 1 TB storage space from Microsoft"s Cloud service OneDrive (free of charge for one year).

Graphics are done by Intel"s HD Graphics (Braswell) GPU. It supports DirectX 12 and works at up to 600 MHz. The Braswell graphics core is significantly faster than its Bay Trail predecessor. As a result, it performs significantly better in the 3DMark benchmarks - albeit on a low level.

Even though the Cloudbook only brings a weak processor, it can be used for video playback. This is thanks to the decoder integrated into the GPU, which takes load from the processor when playing videos. It supports all usual formats including H.265 (successor of the H.264 format, which is wide-spread today), which allows smaller files at the same image quality. The CPU load was below 20% when we played our test video (4k, H.265, 60 fps).

Games suitable for the Cloudbook can be found in the casual games section in the Windows Store. The hardware is much too weak for modern games like Hitman. Even games like FIFA 16 with only moderate hardware requirements, do not achieve smooth frame rates. In addition, the Cloudbook does not offer enough storage capacity for most games.

In our stress test, the Cloudbook behaves the same way in mains operation and on battery. CPU and GPU work at full speed during the first minute and are slowed down afterwards. The processor works at 1.2 GHz and the graphics core at 320 MHz. The computer does not get especially warm. It only exceeds 40 °C in a single measurement segment.

(+) The average temperature for the upper side under maximal load is 31.2 °C / 88 F, compared to the average of 29.5 °C / 85 F for the devices in the class Office.

(+) The maximum temperature on the upper side is 39.9 °C / 104 F, compared to the average of 34.1 °C / 93 F, ranging from 21.2 to 62.5 °C for the class Office.

The stereo speakers of the Cloudbook sit on the front edge of the underside. They produce a thin sound without bass. You won"t enjoy listening to them for long periods of time. External speakers or headphones are recommended for a better sound.

The Cloudbook comes with a weak SoC. As a result, the power consumption is quite low - regardless of the load. When running idle, we measure a maximum of 7.3 Watt. During the stress test, the power consumption increases to 15.9 Watt - albeit, only in the first minute. Afterwards, the CPU and GPU throttle and the energy demand is about 11.5 Watt. The power adapter is rated at 45 Watt.

Currently we use the Metrahit Energy, a professional single phase power quality and energy measurement digital multimeter, for our measurements. Find out more about it here. All of our test methods can be found here.

In our real-world Wi-Fi test, we simulate web surfing. The profile "balanced" is active and the display brightness is set at about 150 cd/m². The Cloudbook achieves a very good battery life of 10:31 h. The battery with big capacity (55 Wh) pays off here.

The 14-inch Cloudbook delivers sufficient performance for simple office and Internet applications. Thanks to the decoder integrated in the graphics core, the computer can also play videos. In contrast to its Chromebook competitors, the Cloudbook allows installing / using usual desktop software. However, the storage capacity is limited. About 15 GB is free out-of-the-box. The Cloudbook works silently and gets hardly warmer. The display will not win any prizes, but it is alright in view of the price point. It delivers an acceptable contrast and a matte surface. However, the brightness should be higher.The Cloudbook 14 is meant to be a mobile typing and web surfing machine. The computer entirely meets this application profile. The battery life is sufficient for a day at school / university. It is supplemented by a decent keyboard. On top of that, a one-year license for MS Office 365 Personal is included. At a price of about 280 Euros (~$310), the bundle is affordable.

What started as a side job during my computer science studies later became my main job: For more than 20 years now I have been working as an editor and author in the IT sector. While working in the print sector I also contributed to the creation of various loose-leaf publications and published original written pieces. I have been working for Notebookcheck since 2012.

© 2022 Acer Inc. Intel, the Intel Logo, Intel Inside, Intel Core, and Core Inside are trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Based out of Taiwan, Acer is known for some of the best-performing systems in the world. Though, there are times when even the best of laptops can malfunction. For instance, a lot of users complain about Acer laptop monitor not turning on and getting the Acer laptop black screen. If you have also got the Acer black screen of death, don"t worry – it is quite a common issue. In this troubleshooting guide, I"m going to tell you how to fix black screen on Acer laptop easily!

Since the Acer laptop black screen of death can be a crucial issue, users can end up resetting their system to fix it. In that process, you might end up losing some of your important system or user files. Therefore, what you should do first when your acer laptop screen won"t turn on is restoring and making a copy of your files and documents. You can use a reliable recovery tool like

Since the application supports all kinds of major data types and computers, you don"t have to worry about any compatibility issues. All you got to do is install Recoverit Data Recovery on your Acer computer and follow these steps:

Once you choose to create a USB bootable drive, a pop up message will appear requiring you to format your USB flash drive. Make sure you have backed up your important data before formatting the USB drive. Then click the "Format" button to proceed.

The creation of a bootable device will start. During the process, please do not remove the USB flash drive. As the creating process takes a while, please wait until the bootable drive used to boot your acer laptop up is created.

Once the bootable media is created, the window will display two simple instructions to follow to complete your data recovery from Acer PC having startup problem.

Adjust BIOS to boot from USB, allowing Acer computer to boot through your bootable device. Restart your crashed Acer laptop and press the BIOS entry key when the first screen is displayed.

Once you have restarted your Acer PC, you will find that your computer not displaying anyting is bootable, and you can recover and backup any data from it.

If you are getting the Acer computer black screen even when the system is turned on, then you can try the following fixes after backing up your data. Since it can happen due to hardware or software-related reasons, you need to follow a stepwise approach to fix this.

To start with, I"m going to list the simplest way to fix the Acer Aspire black screen problem. If there is a minor issue with its firmware or booting, then you can try to power reset your laptop. To do this, just press the Power button on your laptop and keep holding it for at least 15 seconds.

This will forcefully perform a soft reset on your Acer system and would turn it off. Afterward, let go of the Power button, wait for a while, and press the Power key again to turn it on.

If you have got the Acer black screen, then you first need to check whether the issue is with the screen or caused by a firmware problem. For this, I would recommend connecting your system with an external monitor. You can use the connecting cable and simply fix it with an external monitor. If you get the correct display on the external monitor, then it means the problem is with your laptop"s screen (and not its firmware).

Step 3. If an image displays on the external monitor, the reason might be a graphics driver conflict with the laptop LCD display. So solve this, you need to install the latest graphics and chipset drivers for your specific computer.

Another smart solution to fix the Acer Chromebook black screen of death includes the use of function keys. You might already know that there are certain functions and special keyboard shortcuts that we can use for different purposes.

Sometimes, even a driver-related issue can also cause the Acer computer black screen problem. For instance, if the driver has become corrupt, is outdated, or has not been installed properly, then it can make your Acer laptop go black screen after the logo. To fix it, you can consider reinstalling or resetting the graphic card driver.

Step 1. Firstly, go to the Start menu and launch the Device Manager from here. You can also go to its Control Panel > Device Manager to get this option.

Step 2. Expand the Display Adapter options and select the installed graphic driver. Right-click and choose to uninstall the driver to get a wizard. You can just complete the wizard to remove the installed driver.

Step 3. Once the driver has been successfully uninstalled, you can go to its official website and download the relevant driver software for your system.

Alternatively, you can also reset the driver or update it apart from reinstalling it. You can get the option to update the driver or disable/enable it from the Device Manager as well.

Chances are that a virus or malware attack on the system"s disk could have also resulted in the Acer laptop black screen. For instance, it could have corrupted the disk or the Windows partition, leading to the malfunction of the system. To fix the Acer Aspire black screen, you can use a reliable anti-virus software like Windows Defender or a third-party tool from brands like Norton, AVG, Avira, Avast, Kaspersky, etc.

You can just scan the hard drive of your Acer computer, detect the presence of malware, and even fix it. If needed, you can even format the entire hard drive to remove the presence of any malicious entity from it.

BIOS, which stands for the Basic Input and Output System, is responsible for the overall booting operations of the system. Though, if there is an issue with your BIOS program, then it can cause the Acer black screen of death. In this case, you can consider updating your system"s BIOS settings by following these steps:

Step 3. Now, you can just go to the website of Acer or the motherboard company to download the updated BIOS version on your computer. You would have to unzip the downloaded file on your computer.

Step 5. Now, restart the system and press the BIOS key (like F2, F12, DEL, etc.) to enter the BIOS settings. Go to the Boot > Advanced settings and flash the upgraded BIOS installation from the USB drive.

That"s it! Once the BIOS settings have been upgraded, your system will automatically be restarted. If the Acer laptop black screen occurred due to a corrupt or outdated BIOS, then it will resolve the issue.

It might sound surprising, but the Acer black screen of death can also happen due to a discharged system. If the AC adapter or the battery of your Acer system is not functioning, then you might not be able to turn the laptop on. Firstly, you can check the adapter by connecting it to any other device. Also, you can remove the battery of the system and get it checked to ensure there is no serious hardware issue with the system.

If the memory module is loose, it usually causes the laptop to not display images. Therefore, reinstalling the memory module may solve the problem of black screen or black screen on the laptop. You can finally do this by removing the AC adapter from your laptop, removing and relocating the memory stick, and then reconnecting the AC adapter to your laptop.

Step 1.Close your laptop, then disconnect the power cord. Contact a grounded metal object to release static electricity before performing any operation.

Tips: If you lost some critical files after successfully fixing the problem of "Acer laptop blue light on but screen is black", Recoverit data recovery software can also help you get lost data back in 3 simple steps as shown below.

When the process is completed, the extracted data will be categorized properly. You can also use the inbuilt filters to handpick the kind of files you are looking for.

I"m sure that after reading this guide, you would be able to fix the Acer black screen of death issue easily. As there could be different issues leading to the Acer computer monitor black screen, I have included various fixes for them in this guide. You might have to try a handful of these solutions to fix the Acer black screen problem. Also, if you have lost your important files during the process, then just use Recoverit Data Recovery and get your lost data back easily.

If you’re on a budget but need a new laptop, there’s never been a better time to buy. As recently as last year, you just couldn’t get a cheap laptop that didn’t have a few glaring flaws: a low-res, washed-out screen; mushy keyboard; janky trackpad; underpowered processor; not enough memory; terrible battery life or an achingly slow mechanical hard drive. But right now you can get a good Windows laptop or Chromebook with a fast processor, plenty of memory, a blazing-fast SSD anda high-quality display — hardly any caveats at all — for less than $500.

We tested seven leading Windows laptops and Chromebooks to find the best cheap laptops. Sure, you can get a (much) nicer laptop for more money, but the price of entry for a decent experience has never been lower. And now’s the time to buy: Prices are low as manufacturers sell through their current stock, but they will probably go up this summer.

The Aspire 5 has a faster processor and more ports than the Dell, and its screen is brighter, but it’s bigger, heavier, doesn’t feel as nice to type on and lacks convenient features like USB-C charging and USB-C video out, among other things.

The Dell Inspiron 14 has the best combination of power, battery life, usability and features — and the fewest major flaws — of any sub-$500 laptop we found. It has surprisingly powerful guts, an excellent keyboard and trackpad, a serviceable screen, all-day battery life and pretty good build quality. It even has a fingerprint reader, sliding webcam cover anda USB-C port that supports power delivery and video output, which is rare in this price range. There’s room for improvement almost everywhere — the screen’s a bit dim, the chassis flexes a bit and the speakers could use some oomph, but we didn’t hate any part of it, especially for $500.

The 14-inch, 1920 x 1080 WVA display is competent but not amazing; that alone is a victory at this price. That size and resolution combo are good for getting work done, especially in side-by-side windows, without blurry text. Like most cheap laptops, the color gamut is limited and backlighting is a bit dim; even at peak brightness (which Dell claims is 250 nits) it was a little underpowered in a bright room. The Acer Aspire 5 is a little better and the Lenovo Chromebook Duet 5’s 400-nit OLED panel outclasses it in every way, but compared to the low-res, washed-out screens on many cheap laptops, the Inspiron’s is a relief.

The Inspiron 14 has fewer ports than other Windows laptops in its price range: HDMI, microSD, combo audio, an AC power input, two 5Gbps USB-A ports and a single USB-C 3.2 Gen 2x2 port with DisplayPort and Power Delivery. Offering a single USB-C port isn’t unusual, but the Dell’s USB-C port is unusually powerful for a $500 laptop. Unlike the USB-C ports in the Acer and Asus laptops we tested, this one supports DisplayPort video out and power in, which means that with a compatible monitor you can charge the laptop, send video and audio and use the monitor’s USB and Ethernet ports, all with a single cable.

The 720p webcam is good enough. The resolution and image quality won’t impress anyone, but the microphones picked up much less room noise than the Asus Vivobook’s, and the webcam does have a sliding privacy cover. The bottom-firing speakers have a bit more presence than the top-firing speakers on some of the other laptops we tested. They’re still a bit tinny and compressed on the high end, and lacking bass on the low end, like everything we tested, but they’re tolerable if you don’t have headphones around.

The Inspiron 14 ships with Windows 11 Home in S mode, a locked-down version of Windows that only lets you install apps from the App Store and only lets you browse using Microsoft Edge. This is easy to disable if you want to use whichever apps you want, so it isn’t a dealbreaker

If you’d like a little more power, more ports and a bit brighter screen, and don’t mind trading battery life, portability, keyboard backlighting and some USB-C functionality, the Acer Aspire 5, below, is another great choice, but we think for most users the Dell’s longer battery life and better overall usability will make more sense.

The Acer Aspire 5 (A514-54-501Z) is bigger and heavier than the Dell Inspiron 14, shorter on battery life and missing some features and creature comforts, but it has a brighter screen, more ports and a more powerful processor and graphics card, and it’s often cheaper. Which you should get depends on your priorities, but like the Inspiron 14, the big news here is how few annoyances you have to put up with for the price.

The 11th-gen Intel Core i5 processor has a higher maximum clock speed than the Core i3 on the Inspiron 14, and its Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics processor is more powerful than the basic UHD graphics on the Dell. This doesn’t make the Aspire 5 a gaming laptop, but it helps a bit for light photo or video editing, and the extra power will speed up CPU-intensive tasks.

The Aspire 5’s 1920 x 1080 non-touch IPS display gets a little brighter than the Inspiron 14’s WVA, which means less eye strain in bright rooms or outdoors. It has decent viewing angles and color reproduction. The Aspire’s Precision Trackpad is just as good as the Dell’s, and the Acer has more ports: HDMI, three USB-A ports, a USB-C port, a combo audio jack and an Ethernet port.

The brighter screen on the Acer Aspire 5 (rear) makes it easier to use than the Dell Inspiron 14 (front) in brightly-lit environments, such as outdoors.

The Aspire 5 can’t charge or output a video signal over USB-C like the Dell Inspiron 14. That means it can’t do the single-cable-connection thing with a USB-C monitor. Most Windows laptops under $500 can’t do this, however, and you can still use the Aspire 5 with an external monitor, of course. You just need to use its HDMI port and AC adapter, plus a third cable if your monitor has USB ports you want to use.

The Aspire 5 weighs a half pound more than the Inspiron 14, it’s a bit wider and longer and it got around 6 hours of battery life in our tests compared to the Inspiron’s 8. Its keyboard isn’t backlit, the texture’s a bit less pleasant and typing isn’t as crisp. There’s no fingerprint reader or microSD card slot, and the webcam, an average performer like the Dell’s, doesn’t have a privacy cover. The fan comes on more often, and a bit more loudly. The lid doesn’t tilt back quite as far as the Dell’s, but the Dell’s isn’t great. A person above 6’ 2”, or one with a particularly long torso, won’t have an ideal viewing angle on either.

Like the Dell, the Aspire 5 ships with Windows 11. It comes with a bunch more bloatware, including a trial for Norton Antivirus, but that’s easy to disable and you can always use Windows’ built-in Reset tool for a clean slate.

The 13.3-inch 1920 x 1080 IPS touchscreen is vibrant and has great viewing angles, unlike the washed-out 1366 x 768 screen on the HP Chromebook 14b-nb0010nr, but you’ll have to keep your expectations realistic. It doesn’t show as much detail in dark scenes as the matte screens on the Dell Inspiron 14 or Acer Aspire 5 Windows laptops, or the much better OLED display of the Lenovo Chromebook Duet 5. Like the budget Windows laptops, it’s not as bright as we’d like, and the glossy coating makes it much more prone to glare in bright environments.

The 360-degree hinge is occasionally useful for watching videos, or getting the keyboard out of the way so you can use a nicer one. It also just lets you tilt the screen farther back than many laptops can. That does mean more wobble when you tap the touchscreen, compared to the rock-solid feel of tablets with kickstands, but since ChromeOS is not a good tablet operating system, you’ll likely spend much more time using the keyboard and trackpad, which are much nicer than the ones on any detachable tablet.

The Flex 5i’s backlit keyboard is comfortable, with snappy key feedback and decent travel, and the trackpad is wide and accurate. Mostly they recede into the background, which is a relief; if you notice your keyboard and trackpad at all, it’s usually because they’ve messed up. Same with the 720p webcam: it’s comparable to all the others we tested, though it does include a privacy shutter. The speakers are above average: not much bass, and some compression on the high end, but we’ve heard (much) worse.

Chromebooks run Android apps now, but that doesn’t mean you should count on them for much. ChromeOS was developed for laptop hardware — Intel and AMD chipsets — but Android was designed for ARM, a whole different architecture. Many Android apps won’t run on Intel Chromebooks at all, but for use with ChromeOS itself, Intel-based machines like the Flex 5i just perform better. And we think you won’t really miss the access to Android apps, because then you won’t be disappointed when they don’t seem aware that they’re running on a laptop.

The extra power of the Intel chipset does come at the expense of battery life. Lenovo advertises up to 10 hours, but we generally got around 6 hours of work in with the screen at 80% brightness and music playing. You could probably go a full school or workday without charging, assuming you stay out of bright light and don’t inflict your music on the world around you. The Asus Chromebook Detachable CM3 and Lenovo Duet 5, which use (different) ARM-based chipsets, got closer to 10 hours each, though the CM3 was much less pleasant to use for that long.

If you know you want a Chromebook (perhaps work or school requires it), the Flex 5i is the best choice under $500. Its Intel Core i3 processor lets you get more done at once, it comes with up to 8GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD and it doesn’t tempt you into trying to use it like a tablet by including a detachable keyboard or stylus.

The Lenovo Chromebook Duet 5 is a detachable two-in-one Chromebook with a bright and beautiful OLED screen, excellent battery life, good keyboard and trackpad and a surprisingly capable ARM-based Snapdragon processor. The Flex 5i is a better laptop — it’s better at running ChromeOS, which is the thing most people need from a Chromebook. But if screen quality and battery life matter more to you than ports, processing power or keyboard backlighting, the Duet 5 is a good choice.

The OLED screen on the Duet 5 is the brightest and most color-accurate we’ve ever seen on a laptop this inexpensive. With a DCI-P3 color gamut, it shows many more colors than the sRGB screens on the other laptops we tested. Its peak brightness, at 400 nits, is noticeably better than the Dell Inspiron 14 or Lenovo Flex 5i (around 250 nits) and the Acer Aspire 5 (around 300). It’s a much nicer screen for watching movies or playing games on, or just working in a bright room. The Duet 5 also gets around twice the battery life of the Flex 5i, at over 10 hours on a charge in normal workloads compared to 5.5 hours for the Flex.

We expected the Snapdragon SC7180 processor and 4GB of RAM to struggle more than it did, but the Duet 5 handled two dozen Chrome tabs at once, including the Spotify and Slack web apps, and multiple Google docs. It’s good enough, but if you’re trying to get serious work done, you’ll reach the Duet 5’s limits much sooner than the Inspiron 14, Acer Aspire 5 or Flex 5i, with their Intel processors and twice as much RAM.

The keyboard and trackpad on the Duet 5 are much better than those on most detachables. The keys aren’t backlit, but they’re full-sized, aren’t mushy and have decent travel. Like most keyboard covers, the Duet 5’s attaches to the tablet with magnets and a set of pogo pins. Those magnets are strong. If you’re not careful, they can click together before the pins are aligned, leaving you with a non-working keyboard until you re-attach. But you probably won’t remove the keyboard much.

Like the Flex 5i, the Duet 5 can run some Android apps, but it’s rarely useful. Most Android apps don’t recognize standard keyboard shortcuts; many won’t install at all, and the ones that do are rarely optimized for a tablet screen. It’s best not to think of the Duet 5 as a tablet at all, but rather a laptop with a keyboard you can take off, if you want to use a separate keyboard and mouse, are trying to save space on an airplane tray table or you just want to use it to watch a movie.

The magnets that hold the kickstand cover are also too enthusiastic, and the cover can partially block the rear camera if you’re not careful. The kickstand makes the Duet 5 much more stable for touchscreen use than a standard laptop, but at the expense of table space. And that stability vanishes if you try to use the Duet 5 on your lap. Only the long-thighed need even try.

The Duet 5 has two USB-C ports, one on each side, and that’s it. It can charge from either using its included 30W USB-C charger and frankly too-short 3-foot USB-C cable. Both ports allow charging, DisplayPort output, and data transfer, so you can live the dongle life or connect to a USB-C monitor. There’s no headphone jack, either. The speakers are okay, though voices can sound muffled in songs with lots of high-hat or other treble noise.

Finding the best laptop under $500 used to be an exercise in futility, bounded on all sides by misery. It was about finding the least bad, most tolerable laptop and hoping it stayed available for a few weeks. Inevitably there would be a performance bottleneck — a slow hard drive, not enough memory or a not-quite-good-enough CPU — that would drag the whole thing down. But over the last couple of years, the inflection point has shifted, in particular as manufacturers have begun to clear inventory as supply chain problems have eased. A $350 laptop will probably still have a performance bottleneck or two, and probably a janky screen or keyboard, but at $400 you start being able to avoid both.

For Windows laptops, you should look for a 10th, 11th or 12th-generation Intel Core i3 or i5 or AMD Ryzen 5000-series processor, 8GB of DDR4 RAM and a 128GB or 256GB PCIe NVMe SSD. These are the same basic guts as a $1,000 ultrabook, and you can get them all in sub-$500 laptops now. Most Chromebooks with similar specs cost more, but you should still aim for a Core i3 processor and as much RAM as you can get; storage space isn’t as important in Chromebooks, so compromise there if you must.

The keyboard, trackpad and monitor are how you interact with the laptop, and if any of them suck you’ll be frustrated every time you use your computer. Look for a 1920 x 1080 LED-backlit screen, a keyboard with decent key travel (and backlighting, if you want that) and a Precision trackpad.

If you want to use an external monitor, keyboard and/or mouse, make sure the laptop has the ports you need for that. The Windows laptops we tested each had at least two USB-A ports and a video-out port, but some of the Chromebooks were USB-C only. Every laptop had at least one USB-C port, but many inexpensive ones don’t support DisplayPort Alternate Mode, so they can’t output a video signal over USB-C and won’t let you use a single USB-C cable to output video and charge simultaneously.

Cheap laptops are great for students who need their own computers for homework or hybrid/remote learning. They’re also good for anyone who needs a personal computer — for household administration, research, correspondence, hobbies and so forth. Most people eventually run into tasks they can’t do (or can’t do easily or fast) on a smartphone or a tablet. There’s no substitute for a large screen, keyboard and mouse when you’re researching and writing an essay or creating a presentation, and some websites just don’t function properly on a smartphone.

Even if you have access to a work- or school-issued computer at home, you shouldn’t use it for personal tasks (for your own sake, not your school’s or employer’s). It’s better to keep your private information separate, and a dedicated computer is a great way to do it.

While it’s no longer true that they can only do things you can do in the Chrome web browser, it’s still mostlytrue. Android app support just isn’t that useful yet, and though they can run Linux, that’s not helpful for most people. Still, you can do almost anything in the browser these days, including working with actual Office documents and even light photo and video editing. Unless you know you need specific Windows software or features, a Chromebook will do almost everything you need with less upkeep.

We called in the best-rated laptops under $500 that met our minimum hardware requirements. We updated each to the most recent version of its operating system; we disabled S Mode on Windows laptops that shipped with it and upgraded the ones that shipped with Windows 10 to Windows 11 — not so much to avoid Windows 10, which is fine, but to remove variables and make sure we were running the latest OS, as most users will likely upgrade eventually.

You can’t optimize for everything if you’re optimizing for price, but we focused on finding the most usable, least annoying laptops we could, and understanding their limitations.

We tested each laptop by using it for several days of regular productivity work: several dozen tabs in Chrome or Microsoft Edge, including many Google Docs and Sheets, Outlook 365, Gmail, Slack and Spotify. We also ran PCMark 10, GeekBench 5 and a looping–video battery rundown test on the Windows laptops, but frankly we got more out of the real-world use.

Beyond processing power and specs, we compared screen brightness, ports, keyboard feel, trackpad accuracy, size and weight, handfeel, build quality, webcam and mic performance, speakers, battery life, wireless capabilities, bloatware, even the power bricks — anything that changes how you interact with the laptop. A certain amount of suffering is inevitable in life but it shouldn’t be the default laptop experience.

The Vivobook 15 has many variants under $500 with good-enough specs. We tested the F515EA-0S36, with an 11th-gen Intel Core i3-1115G4 CPU, 8GB of RAM, 256GB PCIe SSD and 15.6-inch 1080p anti-glare screen. It shipped with Windows 10 Home in S Mode; we disabled S Mode and upgraded it to Windows 11 for testing.

In our benchmarking and real-world use, the Vivobook 15 kept up with the Dell Inspiron 14 and Acer Aspire 5 in everything but battery life. Its 37 watt-hour, two-cell battery got about 4 hours to a charge; the Acer Aspire 5’s 3-cell got around 6 hours, and the Dell Inspiron got about 8 hours.

The 15.6-inch screen is physically larger than the screens on the other laptops we tested but has the same 1920 x 1080 resolution, so text and UI elements are a little larger and easier to see. It gets about as bright as the Acer Aspire 5, and a little brighter than the Dell. Like those screens, it has an anti-glare coating, so it’s easier to use in well-lit areas than a glossy screen, but doesn’t show as wide a range of colors as the OLED display on the Lenovo Chromebook Duet 5.

The backlit keyboard has firmer feedback than the Aspire 5, and is the only laptop we tested with a number pad (the Aspire 5 has a numpad layer, but you can’t use it at the same time as the regular keyboard layer). The precision trackpad worked well enough and has a fingerprint reader built in.

The Asus Chromebook Detachable CM3 has a great screen, excellent battery life and surprisingly capable performance for the price, with an emphasis on “for the price.” If you absolutely can’t spend more than $350 and need a small laptop for school or basic productivity work, it’s a far better option than an iPad or the Surface Laptop SE or HP Stream, two sub-$300 Windows laptops around the same size. But if you spend a little more money on one or our picks you’ll have a much better time, and if you mostly want a good tablet, just get an iPad.

The CM3 isn’t a great laptop, but it’s a much better laptop than it is a tablet. The detachable keyboard and trackpad are cramped but usable, and ChromeOS does a much better job with multitasking and window management than iPadOS. The 10.5-inch, 1920 x 1200 display is high-res enough that you can have a Google Doc on one half of the screen and a webpage or another doc on the other, though you’ll probably revert to fullscreen before long.

Unfortunately, its ability as a multitasker is hampered by the MediaTek CPU, which can start struggling around the tenth Chrome tab, or as soon as you try to do anything with an Android app.

Like the Lenovo Chromebook Duet 5 we tested, the CM3’s keyboard snaps onto the edge of the Chromebook with magnets and communicates via physical pogo plugs. This confuses Chrome, which sometimes refused to pop up an on-screen keyboard when the physical one was detached, and other times wouldn’t stop popping up the on-screen keyboard when we were using the physical one.

The HP Chromebook 14b-nb0010nr is almost great. It’s one of the few Chromebooks we found with an 11th-gen Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD for under $500 (at the time of testing). It has solid build quality and one more USB-A port than the Lenovo Flex 5i. Its backlit keyboard and large trackpad are excellent and pleasant to use, and it has a fingerprint reader. Unfortunately, the rest of the hardware is dragged down by the 1366 x 768 display, which is not just low-res, but also looks washed out except within a very narrow range of viewing angles. If you tilt the screen far enough back to see well, you’re mostly out of view of the webcam.

We look forward to testing the HP Chromebook x360 - 14ct-cc000, which has similar guts to the 14b, but adds a 360-degree hinge and 1920 x 1080 glossy screen like the Lenovo Flex 5i, which should address this Chromebook’s biggest weakness.

The first two problems can cause an Acer laptop to appear unresponsive. In some cases the Acer laptop might briefly flash to life but then fail to start, but in other situations the laptop may not react at all when you press the power button. Fortunately, these problems can often be fixed once you know the right steps.

Follow these steps to fix an Acer laptop which won"t turn on. The steps are arranged in an order from the most simple to most complex, so be sure to follow them in order.

An Acer laptop may attempt to boot from an external drive if it detects a boot drive is connected. Let"s eliminate this as a possible cause of failure.

These peripherals should not be detected as a boot drive but in rare cases an Acer laptop may become confused. It"s also possible a problem with a connected device, such as a USB peripheral attempting to draw too much power over USB and so causing the Acer laptop to stop attempting to turn on.

Most Acer laptops will include an LED light which indicates when the laptop is connected to power. It may not be near the power connector, so be sure to check all sides of the laptop. This LED will be lit if the laptop is receiving power.

Try a different power source if the power LED does not light when the power adapter is connected. If the LED still fails to light, the issue may be the Acer laptop"s power supply. This will require professional repair or replacement.

An Acer laptop with a defective screen may appear unresponsive at a glance. If an external monitor works, it means the laptop"s built-in screen is not working.

Most Acer laptops use F2 to access the BIOS, but if that doesn"t work for you, try the F12 key or the Del key, especially if you"re using an older model laptop.

At this point, it"s likely the problem is a hardware defect. A repair shop will need to diagnose the issue and replace the component causing the problem.

When your laptop won"t connect to Wi-Fi, it could be for several reasons. Along with issues with the laptop itself, you could have configuration problems with your network, a faulty modem or router, or software blocking your connection. Try restarting your hardware and turning off antivirus software and firewalls to see if you can connect.

Acer laptops typically run on Windows, so you can use the usual keyboard shortcuts to take a screenshot. Press Print Screen (or PrtSc) to add the screenshot to the clipboard, or use Windows + PrtSc to save it as an image file. Alternatively, press Windows + Shift + S to open the Windows Snipping Tool.

Acer laptops have a proprietary app that handle restoring them to factory settings. Search for Acer Care Center in the Start menu, and then go to Recovery Management > Restore > Get Started > Remove Everything. Then, you can choose whether to remove everything or just your files.

If your budget is tight and you want the most bang for your buck, or you just want to keep something out of the landfill, consider the used or refurbished laptop market. I"ve had great luck buying used laptops on eBay from all sorts of sellers (both pros and regular people).

To score the best deal, make sure you know the market. Do some research to figure out what kind of machine will suit your needs. The easiest to come by, and therefore (usually) the best deals, tend to be the more boring, business-oriented models. I happen to like ThinkPads, which are used by—and then dumped all at once by—large corporations, which means there are lots to choose from, and they"re cheap.

Aim for these specs: Try to get a laptop with at least an 11th-generation Intel Core i3 processor, 8 GB of RAM, 128 GB of storage (preferably a solid-state drive), and at least a 13-inch display that"s close to FHD (1080p resolution).

Finding used laptops on eBay: Once you know what you want, search for it on eBay. Scroll down and check the option to show only "Sold Listings." Now take the 10 most recent sales, add up the prices, and divide by 10. That"s the average price; don"t pay more than that. Keep the lowest price in mind—that"s the great deal price. Now, uncheck the Sold Listing option. See what"s between the lowest price and the average price. Those are the deals you can consider. I suggest watching a few. Don"t bid or participate at all. Just watch them until the end and see how high the auctions end up going.

Once you have a feel for the market and what you should be paying, you"ll know when you"ve found a deal. When you find it, wait. Don"t bid until the last few minutes of the auction. You don"t want other bidders to have a chance to react. Remember that if you miss out on something, it"s not the end of the world. There"s always something new being listed on eBay.

Funnily enough, the amount of contributors actually isn"t relevant to chances of a project winning anything in Hackaday Prize, most projects I"ve seen win are one-man efforts. I"ve participated in previous Hackaday Prize challenges, and I"m pretty realistic about it - I"ve submitted this project to Hackaday Prize "displays" round, but nothing I do here is really "in the spirit" of projects that change the world, are commercializable easily or could benefit from a Design Lab residence. This page, realistically, has 0 chances of getting anywhere further than this round"s final (which is a $500 prize), and even this chance is pretty slim, considering that, IIRC last time I checked, there"s already 10 decent applications.

To put it explicitly, I"m treating this HaD prize round as more of "deadline for me to dump my brain and do as much research on laptop display stuff as possible + unlikely but plausible monetary reward for me to fund my crippling addiction to reusing laptop parts". Plus, there"s the "positive coverage" part of that, which I"ve learned to be one of the most important parts - actually letting people know that this is a thing will seriously impact usefulness of what I make. After over a year of working with laptop displays specifically (and multiple years of hoping I get to do that someday), I can"t help but feel like - now I owe it to people to tell every single thing I"ve learned. And, to be as frank and transparent as possible, the main competition here is between my lack of ability to finish projects I start and my desire to share what I"ve learned, as well as the desired ego boost of "I am doing a thing that people do really need" =)

One thing I do hope to be able to do, however, is eventually selling "making your display work" kits on Tindie which would cover usecases that Chinese sellers don"t cover. For instance, eDP displays from laptops can easily be adapted to full-size DisplayPort with a small PCB that"d connect to commonly available eDP-FPC cables with standardized pinout, providing both a DisplayPort input and a small circuit generating EN+ADJ signals for the panel"s builtin LED driver. Nobody is currently making these boards, but there"s a market for them, and I will be making them. And I"ll be linking to product pages for these boards from this project page, for sure - but that"s not the end goal, it"s merely "I can do this and it nets some extra income to fund my research" thing, especially given these boards will certainly be OSHW.

Other example - currently, a programming interface for M.NT68676 costs $25, but there doesn"t seem to be anything to it that couldn"t be replicated with a Raspberry Pi. When I get to reverse-engineering it, I"ll certainly be making and selling small boards which"d plug into a VGA port of the M.NT68676 board, hook up to the programming interface pins (VGA SDA and SCL, but I do have to check that) and provide level shifting, if that"s even necessary. However, as with all of the stuff I make and sell, it will be fully OSHW and anyone will likely be able to replicate that circuit using just a breadboard.

I have been doing projects online for a while now, and if there"s a track record to what I do, it"s "not finishing things", not "doing it for money/competition" =D This is, and always has been, my main challenge, and me participating in Hackaday Prize is mainly a tool for me to help provide some of the internal "drive" I"m missing.

And, to make it clear, I care about people"s ethical concerns no less than I care about people"s ability to reuse parts that"d otherwise end up in landfill - which is to say, I care about them a lot, as the amount of text I"m typing might indicate ;-P Please do check back as I go on and tell if you think this project is going in a direction you find undesirable - for me, it"s a "openly accessible knowledge database" first and foremost, and if you think it deviates from this goal in a major way, I"d like to know about it.

Long ago, before smartphones were ubiquitous and children in restaurants were quieted with awful games on iPads, there was a beautiful moment. A moment in which the end user could purchase, at a bargain price, an x86 computer in a compact, portable shell. In 2007, the netbook was born, and took the world by storm – only to suddenly vanish a few years later. What exactly was it that made netbooks so great, and where did they go?

The first machine to kick off the craze was the Asus EEE PC 701, inspired by the One Laptop Per Child project. Packing a 700Mhz Celeron processor, a small 7″ LCD screen, and a 4 GB SSD, it was available with Linux or Windows XP installed from the factory. With this model, Asus seemed to find a market that Toshiba never quite hit with their Libretto machines a decade earlier. The advent of the wireless network and an ever-more exciting Internet suddenly made a tiny, toteable laptop attractive, whereas previously it would have just been a painful machine to do work on. The name “netbook” was no accident, highlighting the popular use case — a lightweight, portable machine that’s perfect for web browsing and casual tasks.

The netbook was the perfect machine for the moment. It took full advantage of modern hardware advances, and created a highly usable machine for the important job of surfing the web all day, chatting to your friends. Later models began to push the envelope, with screens pushing out to 9 and later 10 inches, packing more storage, and even featuring battery lives up to 6 hours. Back in 2008, these were crazy numbers, and having less than 20GB of storage wasn’t a liability like it is today. Finally, there was the price.  Low-tier models could be had for under $300. The buying public loved it, and sales shot through the roof. In July 2008, netbooks made up just 1% of total laptop sales. By December, they had almost a fifth of the market.

However, netbooks quickly became a victim of their own success. Hardware manufacturers didn’t appreciate them cutting into sales of higher-end models which came with larger profit margins. Microsoft and Intel began to put pressure on manufacturers to limit specifications. Windows 7 licencing costs were jacked up for any machine with a screen size over 10.1 inches, killing off a series of larger netbooks that had edged towards 12″ screens. Microsoft also floated the idea of a cut-back Windows 7 Starter edition, limited to running just 3 programs at a time. At the same time, as manufacturers sought to compete on features, prices for higher-end models began to rise, outside of the original cheap-and-cheerful brief the netbook originally had.

In the end, the real death knell for the netbook came in the form of the iPad. For the vast majority of users, what they wanted was a simple, cheap internet machine to run Facebook and browse the web. As tablet sales grew, netbook sales fell off a cliff. Trapped between a new competitor and vendors keen to block them out of the market, the netbooks quickly disappeared. In their place, subnotebooks and ultrabooks stormed in – with much larger models at over three times the price point. By 2012, the netbook was effectively dead.

While the average user found themselves better served by a basic tablet than a tiny laptop, it’s the power users that lost the most when the netbook was killed. There’s great charm and utility in a laptop that can be easily carried with one hand without risk of being dropped or tipping over. Despite the diminutive size, many netbooks packed competent keyboards; I was easily hitting 100 words per minute on an early EEE PC 901. Combined with multiple USB ports and a full Windows install, it made an excellent portable development machine.

A netbook could be carried around in the field, and interface with all manner of hardware. Being a full-fat x86 computer, it ran IDEs, programmed Arduinos, and connected to the Web, all in one neat package. Precisely none of these things can be achieved as easily with a tablet. There are plenty of Bluetooth keyboards and adapter dongles and special apps for working with hardware, but tablets simply can’t compete with a real computer for doing real work. For a hardware hacker on the go, it was a glorious tool. And, at such a low price, it was accessible to everyone — even a broke university student.

Models like the HP Stream and ASUS VivoBook pick up where netbooks left off. Packing just 4GB of RAM and low-end CPUs, they’re not powerful machines – but they’re not supposed to be. They’re a real computer for under $300 USD, shipping with Windows 10 S. This is an “app store” version of Windows, but can be upgraded to full WIndows 10 at no cost. With under 100GB of storage, you won’t want to load these down with all your photos, videos, and applications. But, with many of us leaving all that in the cloud anyway, it won’t hold you back.

The main competitor holding back the netbook from true glory is no longer the tablet, but the Chromebook. Running a special Linux-based OS crafted by Google, these machines are intended to be lightweight web browsers, and little more. Rather than running local apps, they’re designed to work almost solely in the cloud, with a browser-based app framework. The platform has become widely popular at the bottom end of the laptop market, crowding out the possibilities of a full netbook resurgence. They do, of course, have a hardcore Linux following that happily scrap ChromeOS for a Linux install or run them side-by-side with a healthy dose of workarounds to suit the hardware. This is where a lot of the netbook aficionados ended up when the netbook hardware standard became s