Best Cheap Windows 3 Laptops
The Best Budget Laptops Of 2017
1. Asus EeeBook X205TA review
Thin, light and bundled with a year of Office365, the Asus EeeBook X205TA is a Chromebook beater and a real bargain
Google's super cheap, cloud-based Chromebook program has given Microsoft a real headache in recent years. These low-cost machines get oodles of free cloud storage and access to Google's powerful web-based tools such as Docs and Sheets, and until now Microsoft hasn't managed to come up with a viable alternative. That looks set to change with the Asus EeeBook X205TA, which could be the first genuine challenger to Google's devices. It's a light, thin and cheap laptop that comes with cloud storage and Microsoft Office.
BUILD AND SCREEN QUALITY
For a £180 laptop, build quality is hugely impressive. The 11.6in EeeBook X205TA weighs 980g, making it one of the lightest laptops we’ve ever tested, but this lightness hasn’t resulted in compromised construction. The plastic chassis doesn’t feel nearly as cheap and nasty as some of the other budget laptops we've tested. We actually found its smooth corners and squared-off edges rather attractive.
Just two USB2 ports are found on the right edge of the X205TA, and there are no USB3 ports whatsoever, which is slightly disappointing. You do at least get Bluetooth in addition to 802.11n Wi-Fi, so you can connect wireless peripherals easily. On the left is a microSD card slot, a headset jack and a micro HDMI port for hooking the laptop up to an external monitor. The built-in speakers are fine: they’re loud, bright, and just a little tinny so you’ll definitely want a pair of headphones if you’re going to be watching videos and listening to music.
The screen isn’t particularly good, although the 1,366x768 pixel panel is no worse than the screens you’ll find on other cheap laptops. In our calibration test it was only able to display 54.7 per cent per cent of the sRGB colour gamut, while the 437:1 contrast ratio and fairly narrow viewing angles are nothing to shout about. Images with bright colours look somewhat washed out, and this is made worse if you're viewing the screen from an angle that isn't straight-on. Careful adjustment of the hinge is required to get the best viewing experience. Our main concern is that the screen doesn't have a matt coating, which means it is very susceptible to being obscured bright interior lighting and sunlight.
The keyboard, meanwhile, is surprisingly capable. The keys don’t have a huge amount of travel but they’re light, responsive and not in the least bit spongey, making them perfectly acceptable to work on for hours on end. The touchpad is responsive, too, meaning navigating around Windows and using multi-fingered gestures is easy.
PERFORMANCE & BATTERY LIFE
Being so small and cheap, we had tempered our expectations for the EeeBook X205TA’s performance. In order to be a good buy, it needed to be able to run a web browser with plenty of tabs open, handle a few videos and, of course, run all of the Office applications without fuss. In our time with the laptop we didn’t run into any major problems, although with Google Chrome, Word and Excel all open around 1.5GB of the maximum 2GB of RAM was in use at all times. You’ll have to exercise a little restraint if you’re a heavy user.
The quad-core, 1.33GHz Atom Z3735F procssor inside the X205TA is from Intel's new Bay Trail-T range. Bay Trail-T is normally found in cheap Windows tablets and its presence in a fully-fledged laptop did initially cause us some concern. Our worry was short-lived though: in our challenging multimedia benchmarking tests it managed an overall score of 19, where 100 represents a Core i5 desktop machine. A score of 19 at this price is actually fairly impressive, and while Windows 8.1 doesn’t exactly feel snappy and super responsive with this chip, we weren’t left twiddling our thumbs waiting for programs to open either. Web pages with lots of elements such as images, videos, comments and advertising will take a few seconds to load, though. You also won’t be able to do advanced tasks such as photo and video editing, and the latest games are well beyond the reach of this machine, but at this price you really can’t ask for much more.
The X205TA is completely silent thanks to its fanless design, and we never noticed it getting uncomfortably warm. We were impressed by the machine's boot times too: it took just 15 seconds to go from a cold boot into Windows 8.
Bay Trail-T is also supposed to be power-efficient, and this rang true in our light usage battery benchmark. The X205TA lasted 8 hours 47 minutes hours on a single charge, meaning a full day's work is well within its reach.
WORKING IN THE CLOUD
There is one big problem for users who like to have all their files stored in one place: just 9.5GB of the 32GB eMMC flash storage was available after we’d installed Microsoft Office and Google Chrome. As a result, you can’t treat this laptop like you would any other general purpose machine. Instead, you’ll need to fully embrace the cloud, streaming your music from services such as Spotify or Google Play and storing your bigger files on OneDrive. If you really need more space, you could use a large microSD card to expand your storage, but this will neither be fast nor cheap.
The X205TA comes with a one-year subscription to Office365 and 1TB of OneDrive storage, which is worth £60. It's a generous offering, and one which you'll find on some other cheap Windows laptops from the likes of HP Toshiba. Chromebook buyers, by comparison, get 100GB Google Drive storage for two years, which is worth less in monetary terms but perhaps slightly more attractive because you pay nothing for two years. We prefer Microsoft’s offer because both its browser-based Office Online applications and Windows-based software are more fully featured than Google’s Docs, Sheets and Slides. You’re also given a free two-year subscription to Asus’s WebStorage service with 500GB of space, but this is a completely separate product you won’t be able to combine with OneDrive.
No Office365 products come pre-installed on the laptop. Instead, you’ll need to use the code found on a sheet of paper inside the box to activate your subscription. Once activated, you’ll be able to install Microsoft Office (including Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and Access) on one smartphone, one tablet and one Windows PC.
CONCLUSION
Asus has done a very impressive job to make such a capable machine costing so little. If you’re happy to take your work to the cloud and don’t mind paying a yearly fee of £60 for Office365, the Asus EeeBook X205TA is a terrific buy, even when compared to our favourite Chromebooks. If you’re happy to spend slightly more and reject the cloud completely, the Acer Aspire E3-111 would be a worthy alternative: it's more powerful and has a 500GB hard disk.
Click Here To Learn More About ASUS X205TA 11.6 inch Laptop Notebook (Intel Atom Z3735F 1.33 GHz, 2 GB RAM, Integrated Graphics, Windows 8.1 with Free Windows 10 Upgrade) - Blue
2. HP Pavilion x2 10-n054sa (2015) Review
Both a handy tablet and an effective laptop, the Pavilion x2 is a great all-rounder
The HP Pavilion x2 is the first tablet/laptop I've reviewed since Windows 10 launched, so I was excited to properly put the new operating system through its paces on a hybrid device where touch is central to how you use it. Sadly, the x2 runs Windows 8.1 out of the box, so you'll immediately need to update it to Windows 10 with a 2.7GB download and 60-minute+ install time.
Still, it's worth it. Windows 10 wasn't just a big improvement for desktops: with incredibly easy-to-use touch gestures, window snapping and Task View, the Windows desktop is finally ready for tablet screens. The HP Pavilion x2 handles these swipes and gestures in relatively quick fashion, with the passively-cooled, 1.33GHz quad-core Intel Atom Z3736F responding to most commands in under half a second - just fast enough to not be a frustration. The tablet only has 2GB of memory, though, so you're rather limited in the amount of tabs you can have open in your web browser or number of applications you can have open. This is a tablet intended for light use only. In Expert Reviews' dual-core multimedia benchmark, where a low-end Intel Core i3-4030U scores 100, the x2 scored 46.
Sadly, HP has bundled McAfee LiveSafe with this tablet, which means its onerous, processor-hogging behaviour soon kicks in, bringing everything to a crawl. Uninstall it as soon as you're able and find a less processor-heavy piece of security software.
What's impressive about the Pavilion x2 is how it doesn't look anything like a £220 laptop. The sharply curved metallic edges, Bang & Olufsen-branded front-facing speakers and bright screen all point towards a much more expensive device. However, once you get your hands on it, the slightly flexy plastic and low-resolution 1,280x800 screen reveal its budget origins. Even the speaker grille is a bit misleading; only a small portion of this seemingly decorative feature actually houses any speakers, and the clarity of the audio barely changes if you cover them up or face them away from you. They're loud and clear, at least, but don't expect HTC BoomSound levels of audio fidelity here; these are cheap mono tweeters.
Around the edges of the tablet you get a single full-size USB2 port and a USB Type-C port that's used for charging. The Type-C connector is reversible, so you won't have to worry about scrabbling to plug the charging cable in the right way round. There's also a MicroSD card slot to expand the x2's paltry 32GB of storage, much of which is consumed by Windows 10. The tablet portion weighs 580g and with the keyboard attached it tips the scales at 1.18kg, so it's hardly a burden, even for those who like to travel light.
I wasn't expecting it, but I was actually able to get some serious work done with the tablet docked into the keyboard. Despite the keyboard's tiny dimensions, my fairly large digits had no problem flitting between the island-style keys, which isn't always the case with these tiny devices. What's more, with a combination of swipes and taps on the screen and more delicate commands on the relatively responsive touchpad, I never felt I was being hamstrung by the x2's lack of power. As long as you stick to one task at a time and don't expect the world, the x2 won't disappoint.
The only problem I had with the keyboard is that it doesn't have any extra USB ports, so I couldn't connect a mouse and a USB flash drive at the same time, for example, although a cheap Bluetooth mouse can easily be picked up to sidestep the issue. The tablet can also be attached to the keyboard in reverse, meaning you can use the keyboard to hold the tablet up when you want the screen to be front-and-centre, such as when you're watching a movie on a small tray table in a train or a plane.
I also found sticking to Microsoft's Edge browser a more worthwhile pursuit than attempting to browse with Google Chrome. While Google Chrome will stutter as you try to scroll up and down a media-heavy page while it's still loading, Edge always feels smooth. It doesn't manage to load everything especially quickly but, again, I never felt like it was holding me back. Its only downside is that it doesn't seem to store the tabs you have open in RAM, so it takes time to switch from one image-heavy tab to another as the device fishes it out of its page file.
While the screen's 1,280x800 pixel resolution is admittedly ridiculously tiny in this day and age, it actually works fine on a 10.1in screen. Yes, putting two windows side-by-side is nearly impossible if you actually want to see anything on either window, but if you remember that this is really more of a tablet with a keyboard than a laptop, it's forgivable. Working on outside on the Pavilion x2 is possible; while the screen is fairly reflective I had no problem reading and writing sitting outside on a cloudy day thanks to the 327cd/m2 maximum brightness of the screen. The story will likely be somewhat different on a proper sunny day, however. Colours looks fairly drab in comparison with top-end IPS screens, but viewing angles are wide and the 1158:1 contrast levels means more subtle details are fairly easy to see.
Battery life on the machine is actually very good at 7h 58m in Expert Reviews' moderate usage benchmark. However, if you dare to run the battery down be prepared to wait an eternity for it to recharge; from around 25% full it takes more than four hours to fully charge. This limits its practicality if you want to give it a quick splash of juice before moving on.
With Windows 10 installed, the HP Pavilion x2 is a force to be reckoned with, and while its specifications may make its £250 price seem slightly over the odds, its impressive design and build quality, usable keyboard and great battery life more than make up for it. If you only want one device in your life and your needs are modest, the HP Pavilion is a great choice.
To Read More About HP Pavilion x2 10-n054na (M4S69EA) 10.1-inch Touch Screen Laptop Tablet, Intel Atom Z3736F 1.33GHz Processor, 2GB RAM, 32GB eMMC Storage, 1280 x 800 Screen Resolution, Intel HD Graphics, Bluetooth 4.0, HDMI, Card Reader, Windows 8.1 Click Here.
3. Asus Transformer Book Flip TP200SA Review
A great value laptop/tablet hybrid with an excellent battery life that won’t break the bank
Tablets are great for when you’re out and about on the move, but sometimes you just need something a little more versatile to get some work done. Enter the Asus Transformer Book Flip TP200SA, a laptop-tablet hybrid with the option to flip the screen around however you see fit.
The Flip TP200SA is the latest in a long line of Transformer Books, but this one has a particularly lightweight and compact design that puts it firmly at the tablet end of the hybrid device pool. Coming in at just 1.2kg and 18.4mm with the lid closed, this A4-sized slab of brushed plastic can easily be stored in a backpack, and the 360-degree reversible screen hinge means you can easily fold the keyboard around to protect the screen when you're not using it.
The hinge itself is reasonably robust, and should be able to hold up after multiple twists and turns. However, much like other 360-degree laptops we've tested, such as Lenovo's Yoga 700, the Flip's screen had a tendency to bounce back and forth quite a lot while I was using it as a laptop, so it may not be ideal for typists who are particularly heavy-handed. You really notice it when you tilt the screen back, too, as the top-heavy screen visibly lifts the edge of the keyboard tray off the table. This is a shame, but I'm willing to let this one slide in the face of its rock-bottom price.
The screen can't be detached from the keyboard sadly, but the Flip's built-in sensors can automatically detect when the screen goes beyond 180 degrees, at which point it will automatically switch to Windows 10's tablet mode and lock the keyboard so you don't accidentally bash the keys when they're underneath your fingers. You don't necessarily have to fold it flat, either, as you can also position it in a kind of kickstand mode, which is great for films and presentations alike.
Keyboard and touchpad
As the Flip is relatively compact, the keyboard is similarly petite, so it's definitely best suited for those with smaller hands. Since its keys aren't full-sized, I often found myself accidentally hitting the wrong keys when typing quickly, but this is something you'll no doubt get used to over time. At least each key had a decent amount of travel, and they always felt very responsive even after long typing periods.
Thankfully, the touchpad is on the large side, providing plenty of space to move my fingers around. Its integrated buttons have a decent amount of click, too, so using it shouldn't prove too frustrating if you find yourself without a dedicated mouse.
Performance and Battery Life
Sadly, the Flip's overall performance is where the TP200SA falls short. With just a dual-core Intel Celeron N3050 processor and 2GB of RAM at its disposal, this isn't a machine that's built for heavy duty PC tasks. As a result, I ran our slightly less demanding 1,080p benchmarks rather than our usual 4K tests, and it recorded an overall score of 31.
This is decent considering its price, but I experienced significant slowdown even when I was using it for basic word processing and web browsing. As a result, the Flip definitely isn’t intended for multi-tasking, but if your daily PC routine normally only consists of browsing the web and writing the odd word document, then the TP200SA should be more than sufficient.
The other thing to bear in mind is the TP200SA's limited storage. You only have a 32GB SSD to work with, which fills up pretty quickly if you want to store lots of files locally. This is becoming a pretty common trend at this end of the market, though, as both the Dell Inspiron 11 3000 and Acer Aspire One Cloudbook 14 have exactly the same problem. Thankfully, there's a microSD slot to expand the TP200SA's storage, but it's likely you'll be storing most files in the cloud.
Of course, with no dedicated graphics, you'll be relying on the N3050's integrated Intel HD Graphics chips for playing games. This isn't powerful enough to run proper 3D games, but simpler titles from the Windows Store like Jetpack Joyride and Crossy Road worked absolutely fine, so you should still be able to get a bit of light gaming done if you feel so inclined.
It might not be a gaming juggernaut, then, but the TP200SA's battery life is by far its main selling point, as it lasted an excellent 9 hours and 13 minutes during our continuous video playback test with the screen brightness set to our standard measurement of 170cd/m2. This should mean you'll get a good day's work out of the TP200SA before you need to return it to the mains.
Find Here To Learn More About ASUS TP200SA 11.6-Inch Touch screen, 360 degree rotatable notebook - Intel Celeron N3050 1.6 GHz Processor, 2 GB RAM, 32 GB eMMC, Integrated Graphics, Windows 10
