Honorable Mention: Lenovo G570, $330 (i3-2370M)

Another really inexpensive laptop to consider is the Lenovo G570, currently selling for a mere $330 at OfficeMax. You get a Sandy Bridge i3-2370M CPU, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD, and around 5 hours of battery life. Performance should still be reasonable compared to Ivy Bridge, though the HD 3000 graphics are a big step down from HD 4000 so even light gaming is almost too much to expect.
There are plenty of other laptops in the $300 range with AMD’s C-series and E-series APUs (not to mention the dog that is Intel Atom), but while battery life might be good, just about everything else is too slow for me to personally recommend such a laptop. Then again, people are okay with tablets that offer even less performance in many cases, so consider your own wants and shop accordingly. In the meantime, if you have a favorite budget laptop that you feel we’ve neglected, by all means let us know in the comments, and as noted in above, let me know what category of laptops you’d like me to analyze next Friday.

Honorable Mention: Lenovo G570, $330 (i3-2370M)

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