Best laptops for every budget in 2018

[crosscourt]

More here, www.maketecheasier.com/best-laptops-for-every-budget/

[tlmiller]

My take (on the first 2 categories only):
HP Stream 11 I've bought 3 of these, owned 2 myself (1 was bought for a friend because they specified they wanted a pink laptop). I disagree. When they were FIRST released 2 years ago, yes, they were awesome value. But not anymore. While not horrible, for $20 more, you can get the Acer I own, which is 14" FHD display, quad core Celeron Apollo Lake instead of dual core Bay Trail (so double the cores AND significantly better IPC), 4 GB ram, and the same eMMC. Superior in EVERY aspect.

Acer Aspire E15 I won't personally like this, but actually not a BAD choice. However, it's not very light, nor very quick to boot with that spinning platter drive. BUT, if someone wants plenty of storage space, this is, to be fair, one of the least expensive laptops that can be found with a good screen. The 8th gen chip doesn't mean anything in this since the i3's aren't quad core, so that doesn't help it's case like it does the later mentioned Lenovo Ideapad. But overall, I can support this choice.

Lenovo Ideapad 520S I've used this, and for the price, it's fairly meh once you get past that wonderful processor. Yeah, nice screen, and yes huge bezels so it's not very small (very similar to how my Yoga 3 pro is almost as large as most 14" due to the bezels). Their other choice is FAR superior.

Dell XPS 13 – 2017 If it had a 8th gen cpu, there'd be no contest. I'd still easily recommend it over the Lenovo. Have a few of these at work, and they are WONDERFUL. They mention the XPS 15 later, and honestly, I think the 13 is in every way a more desirable laptop having used both at the same time.

Asus FX504 Personal bias showing huge here. I don't like gaming laptops. They're barely portable, the battery life is amazingly sucktastic, and they usually have bodies that get hot if they're actually setting on your legs due to the GPU's.

[crosscourt]

Its his personal overview nothing more. If I posted mine it would be even more different than his and yours would be as well. It just offers a different take on the subject, thats it. Youre tastes are very specific, mine are more generalized and I prefer older hardware because of price.

[tlmiller]

Yes, although there's no excuse for listing the HP Stream IMO. Even at it's (barely) sub-$200 price, there's better options avaialble regardless of what you're doing with the laptop. Simply put, 2 years ago it was a good laptop, now it's a pile of garbage unless they drop it down to the $120-range as there's simply too many Apollo Lake based laptops that are significantly faster, with more ram and some with better LCD's for the same or just a few dollars more.

[crosscourt]

To give you an example, I just read a laptop overview based on best values in older hardware, such as i buy off of Ebay. It was a great read but everyones experience is a bit different and for in depth overviews I would point people to major sites like Arstechnica/Anandtech or one of the large laptop review sites.

[tlmiller]

I used to love Anan a lot. They've went downhill in the last few years however (not bad still, but nowhere near as good as they were). I'm not sure why, but I never really learned to like Ars. I couldn't ever put my finger on what turned me off them. But I've never read them, nor recommended them. No idea why. But to this day, I click on a link that goes there and as soon as I start reading I immediately realize it's that site even if I don't pay attention to the page, and generally don't even finish.

[crosscourt]

I worked at Anandtech for years when Anand was there but since he left its simply not the same any more. Its still a good site for most mainstream users but i recommend Arstechnica myself, given the level of expertise available in the staff and membership.