We first wrote about the GPD Duo back in June 2024, and while GPD is best known for producing compact gaming laptops and handheld gaming consoles, the Duo is a full-sized laptop with a twist – it features dual 13.3-inch OLED screens that fold upwards for increased productivity.

Marketed as a “13.3-inch Dual Screen Productivity Laptop for Engineers,” the Duo is now available for backing on Indiegogo. The twin screens have a 2.8K resolution, a 60Hz refresh rate, and 10-point touch capability, offering a total of 18 inches of display space.

Not everyone needs the fastest CPU and the highest-quality high-resolution display. Sometimes, a machine with a last-gen CPU and a decent Full HD display is plenty for the web browsing, email, and Office applications that make up many users’ workflows. This can be true for students, or for buyers who are looking for a secondary machine to augment one of the best laptops you can buy.

That’s where budget laptops come in. The definition is a loose one, with some machines costing a bit more, but offering a lot more to go with it. But they’ll save you hundreds over midrange and premium laptops that are overkill for what you need. This list will provide several options, including for gamers and those with the lowest budgets. You can check out our best laptops under $500 and best laptops under $300 lists for even more affordable options.

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Asus ZenBook 14 OLED

Best budget laptop

Why you should buy this: The features and battery life are game-changers at the price.

Who it’s for: Anyone who wants a beautiful display for less money,

Why we picked the Asus ZenBook 14 OLED:

Sometimes, companies have to cut corners to fit a laptop into a remarkable $500 price. The display is often one casualty, with a panel that might suffer in terms of color quality and contrast. The ZenBook 14 OLED is a major exception, offering a spectacular OLED display that’s bright, colorful, and displays inky blacks. It’s equal to displays on laptops costing twice as much.

But that’s not all. The AMD Ryzen 5 or 7 CPUs on offer provide competent productivity performance to go with great battery life. And the laptop’s build quality is excellent, with a great keyboard and touchpad with an LED numeric keyboard. It’s a tremendous value all around, landing it on our list of best laptops.

Asus ZenBook 14 OLED

Best budget laptop

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Lenovo Chromebook Duet 3

A Chromebook 2-in-1 that won’t break the bank

Why you should buy this: It’s the best budget Chromebook.

Who it’s for: Anyone on a budget who doesn’t mind sacrificing performance for extreme value.

Why we picked the Lenovo Chromebook Duet 3:

Chromebooks have become popular budget choices over the last few years, and many have won us over as well. One style that hasn’t done as well as some others is the detachable Chrome OS tablet. That changed with the introduction of the Lenovo Chromebook Duet, now in its third generation, which not only is a very usable tablet but one that represents tremendous value thanks to the included kickstand cover and detachable keyboard.

The Lenovo Chromebook Duet 3’s low price brings some limitations and basic specs. Its Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 processor, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage don’t deliver stellar performance, although it’s good enough for the kinds of tasks you’ll want to run on it. The display is very nice, with a 15:9 2K (2000 x 1200) resolution that’s not as pixel sharp as Apple’s baseline iPad that the Duet competes against. If you want a tablet for web browsing, light productivity work, and consuming media, then the Chromebook Duet 3 and Chrome OS have you covered.

Lenovo Chromebook Duet 3

A Chromebook 2-in-1 that won’t break the bank

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HP Victus 15

Solid gaming for less than $1,000

Why you should buy this: It’s the best budget gaming laptop.

Who it’s for: Gamers and only gamers.

Why we picked the HP Victus 15:

Although the best gaming laptops are typically expensive, the HP Victus 15 is a great example of why they don’t need to be. Often priced at less than $900, you get some impressive specs. That includes an AMD Ryzen 5 8645HS chipset, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 GPU, 8GB of RAM, and a 512GB solid-state drive (SSD), with options for faster CPUs, more powerful graphics, extra and faster storage, and memory if you don’t mind spending a little more. Every model comes with a 15.6-inch, 1080p IPS display, and for just a little more, that display can run at a refresh rate of 144Hz.

With a decent build quality and surprisingly good gaming performance, the Victus 15 offers an all-around solid gaming package at an impressively competitive price. It does have its weak points, most notably that the starting graphics card isn’t as powerful as what you’ll see in more expensive laptops, but it’s still enough for entry-level gaming.

HP Victus 15

Solid gaming for less than $1,000

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Dell Inspiron 15 3000 Laptop

A business laptop for less

Why you should buy this: It’s the best budget business laptop.

Who it’s for: Office workers who want to save the cash for other investments.

Why we picked the Dell Inspiron 15 3000:

Whether you’re typing up another spreadsheet or winding down with a game at the end of a long workday, the Dell Inspiron 15 3000 strikes a great balance as a business laptop. It features powerful and efficient general computing power, like a 12th-generation Intel Core i7-1255U CPU, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD. That’s a lot of computer for just $280, even if the chipset is several versions behind.

With the typical Inspiron build quality, we’d expect this system to borrow several great design features from the more premium XPS range but make them available in a more affordable form. It’s not the lightest laptop at just under 4 pounds, but it has a great, spill-resistant keyboard, Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth connectivity, and a top-mounted 720p webcam for conferencing.

The Dell Inspiron 15 3000 also comes in an attractive business black paint job, which helps it fit in with any setup.

Dell Inspiron 15 3000 Laptop

A business laptop for less

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Apple MacBook Air M1

The only MacBook that could be considered ‘cheap’

Why you should buy this: It’s the only modern MacBook you’ll find for well under $1,000.

Who it’s for: MacBook fans who don’t want to pay thousands for a newer model.

Why we picked the Apple MacBook Air M1:

The MacBook Air M1 isn’t the latest and greatest MacBook, but it still holds it own in a number of ways. Its performance is still excellent, competing easily with recent generation Windows laptops. It also sports impressive battery life, with close to 20-hours between charges. In typical MacBook fashion, too, the build quality is excellent, and the display is Apple’s usual Retina-grade with a high resolution and crisp, bright picture.

The design is lightweight and portable, making it good for use in transit or when commuting, and it supports the fastest possible Thunderbolt 3 connections (up to 40 Gbps) so will work well with any external display or accessory. There’s not a lot of storage space in this base model, but there’s enough there to get you started and external or cloud storage can make up the short fall.

This model is a few years old, but still holds its own well. Grab one while you still can.

Apple MacBook Air M1

The only MacBook that could be considered ‘cheap’

Acer Aspire 3

Best cheap Windows laptop

Why you should buy this: It’s performance is impressive for the price.

Who it’s for: Anyone who wants a capable laptop for a fair price.

Why we picked the Acer Aspire 3:

For basic business and entertainment use, you’ll find little better than the Acer Aspire 3. It’s a very affordable laptop using a new CPU design – although based on an older Zen 2 architecture – with four cores and support for eight simultaneous threads. It has some fast DDR5 memory and a full half terabyte of SSD space, which gives you plenty of room for documents, films, and and for backing up your important data.

The onboard Radeon GPU is fine for the most casual of gaming, but it won’t be powerful enough for anything taxing. With Thunderbolt 3 you could attach an external GPU if you wanted, although that’s a very expensive add-on for this affordable machine. The Thunderbolt 3 ports are super handy, though. With support for up to 40 Gbps data transfer speeds, you can attach anything from an external monitor to a high-speed external storage drive.

There’s fast networking on this laptop too, thanks to its Wi-Fi 6, though you’ll need to use an adapter if you want Ethernet.

Acer Aspire 3

Best cheap Windows laptop

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Frequently Asked Questions

The Galaxy S25 series will arrive in early 2025 to try to compete for the throne as the best smartphone of the year. Samsung reserves its most advanced technologies for its “Ultra” mobile flagships, and this time will be no exception. According to reports, the company aims to make its next premium phone thinner than ever without compromising on specifications. Now, a new leak has revealed the colors in which the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra will be available.

The South Korean giant usually offers a wide variety of colors for its mobile devices. However, in the Galaxy S lineup, the most “gaudy” ones are reserved for the vanilla and Plus variants. On the other hand, the company resorts to more sober and business-like finishes on the Ultra models. It seems that we will see the same line in the upcoming smartphone lineup.

The Galaxy S25 Ultra could be available in these four colors

Ice Universe, a reliable tipster focused on Samsung mobile devices, revealed on X that the Galaxy S25 Ultra will be available in four colors: Black, Green, Blue, and Titanium. In any case, we cannot rule out that the smartphone will receive new colors months later. The source does not specify whether the post includes the colors that Samsung reserves exclusively for its online store.

In terms of design, the Galaxy S25 Ultra aims to stand out for its thinness in relation to the amount of tech it packs. Leaks say the device will be 8.25 mm thick. For reference, the current Galaxy S24 Ultra is 8.6 mm thick. While there are thinner flagship devices from other brands, the Galaxy S25 Ultra will still be the only one that needs to make room to store and charge the S Pen.

The Galaxy S25 Ultra will also have a refined design for the rear camera setup. Although the sensors remain individually arranged, a thick black ring now surrounds them all. Another expected improvement in terms of design will be in reduced bezels around the display.

Some leaked key specs

Moving on to the tech specs, the device will be powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite/Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 globally. It’s noteworthy that Samsung has not yet ruled out the Exynos 2500 chip for the vanilla and Plus models. The phone will be available in variants with 12 GB and 16 GB of RAM.

The device’s rear cameras will be 200 MP (ISOCELL HP2, main) + 50 MP ultra-wide + 10 MP (telephoto, 3x optical zoom) + 50 MP (periscope, 5x optical zoom) sensors. Lastly, the front camera on the Galaxy S25 Ultra will be a 12 MP sensor.

The following article discusses the fifth season of Star Trek: Lower Decks and older Treks.

There’s no such thing as “dead” in Star Trek, the sprawling, perpetual opus that has thrived in spite of itself for almost sixty years. What started as a cornball space-ships and punch-fights show for atomic-age kids and their parents has become (gestures around) all this. So I’m not writing too much of an obituary for Star Trek: Lower Decks despite its fifth season being its last. Given Paramount’s fluid leadership right now, I can easily imagine that decision being reversed in the future. So this isn’t so much of a goodbye as a farewell for now.

Lower Decks’ fifth season picks up not long after the fourth left off, with Tendi still repaying her debt to the Orions. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to suggest the status-quo reasserts itself soon after given, you know, all the other times this has happened. The crew of the Cerritos is then thrust into the usual sort of high-minded, lowbrow yet full of heart hijinks that we’ve come to expect. Naturally, I’m sworn to secrecy, but the fifth episode — where its title alone is a big spoiler — is a highlight.

I’ve seen the first five episodes of the season and as with any sitcom, there are a few misses in between the hits. One episode in particular is trying to reach for an old-school Frasier plotline, but it falls flat given the thinness of the characters in question. Thankfully, Lower Decks is able to carry a weak show on the back of its central cast’s charm. Sadly, as it tries to give everyone a grace note, some characters you’d expect would get more focus are instead shunted to the periphery.

You can feel Lower Decks straining against its own premise, too. A show about people on the lowest rung of the ladder can’t get too high. As a corrective, both Mariner and Boimler use this year as an opportunity to mature and grow. I won’t spoil the most glorious running gag of the season, but their growth comes in very different ways. If there’s a downside, it’s that the show still relies too much on energy-sapping action sequences to resolve its episodes.

But that’s a minor gripe for a show that grew from the would-be class clown of the Trek world to the most joyful interpretation of its ethos. I’ve always loved how, when the chips are down, Lower Decks delights in the bits plenty of newer Treks would rather ignore. The show is, and has been, a delight to watch and something for the rest of the franchise to aspire toward.

I’ve been looking for a way to describe Lower Decks’ target audience for years, but only now has it hit me. It’s a show written by, and for, the people who grew up watching Star Trek in the VHS era. Creator Mike McMahan is just four years older than me, barely a teenager when The Next Generation went off-air. So while he’d have encountered Deep Space Nine and Voyager as first-run, everything else would have been discovered through re-runs and tapes.

You can almost track that timeline of discovery as Lower Decks broadened its range of hat-tips each year it ran. Of course we got a parody of the first two Trek films in the first season — both were ever-present on Saturday afternoon TV when I was a kid — but it’s not until the third that we get a nod to First Contact. As Enterprise ran out of gas, you can feel McMahan and co’s delving into the behind-the-scenes lore and convention gossip about those later series.

If you’ve seen , you’ll spot the gag about Harry Kim’s promotion, something the character never got on Voyager. If you’re fluent with Trek’s behind-the-scenes drama you’ll know the handful of reasons why, and why it’s funny to nod toward that now. But that’s not the only subtle gag that points a sharpened elbow into the ribs of major figures from the series creative team. I’m sure if you don’t spot them all, Reddit will have assembled a master list half an hour after each episode lands on Paramount+.

I won’t indulge in theorizing as to why a popular and successful show like Lower Decks is ending (it’s money, it’s always money). But, as we’ve seen countless times before, it’s not as if it’s hard to revive a successful animated show when wiser heads prevail. Hell, even McMahan told he’s prepared for that, and even has some spin-off ideas in the works. But for now, let’s raise a toast to Lower Decks, the animated sitcom that became the cornerstone of modern Star Trek.

The first two episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks season five will arrive on Paramount+, Thursday, October 24, with an additional episode landing each week for the successive eight weeks. The series and season finale will air on December 19.

Large companies work very hard to make sure their services don’t go down, and the reason is simple — significant outages will hurt your brand and drive customers to competing products with a better track record. 

Building a reliable internet service is a hard technical problem, but for company leaders it also presents a human challenge. Motivating your engineering teams to invest in reliability work can be difficult, because it is often perceived to be less exciting than developing new features.

At scale, incentives dominate. The top tech companies employ thousands of employees and operate hundreds of internet services. Over the years, they have come up with clever ways to ensure their engineers build reliable systems. This article discusses human engineering techniques that have worked at scale across the most successful tech companies in history. You can apply these to your company, whether you’re an employee or a leader.

Spin the wheel

The AWS operational review is a weekly meeting open to the entire company. Every meeting, a “wheel of fortune” is spun to select a random AWS service from hundreds for live review. The team under review has to answer pointed questions from experienced operational leaders about their dashboards and metrics. The meeting is attended by hundreds of employees, dozens of directors and several VPs. 

This incentivizes every team to have a baseline level of operational competence. Even if the probability of an individual team getting selected is low (at AWS, less than 1%), as a manager or tech lead on the team, you really don’t want to appear clueless in front of half the company the day your luck runs out. 

It is important that you regularly review your reliability metrics. Leaders who take an active interest in operational health set that tone for the entire organization. Spin the wheel is just one tool to accomplish this. 

But what do you do in these operational reviews? This brings us to the next point.

Define measurable reliability goals

You would like to have a ‘high up-time’ or ‘five nines’, but what does that really mean for your customers? The latency tolerance of live interactions (chat) is much lower than that of asynchronous workloads (training a machine learning model, uploading a video). Your goals should reflect what your customers care about. 

When you review a team’s metrics, ask them to describe measurable reliability goals. Make sure you understand — and they understand — why those goals were chosen. Then, have them use dashboards to prove that those goals are being met. Having measurable goals will help you prioritize reliability work in a data-driven manner. 

It is a good idea to focus on the detection of issues. If you see an anomaly in their dashboards, ask them to explain the issue, but also ask them whether their on-call was notified of the issue. Ideally, you should realize something is wrong before your customers do. 

Embrace chaos

One of the most revolutionary mindset-shifts in cloud resiliency is the concept of injecting failure into production. Netflix formalized this concept as “chaos engineering” — and the idea is as cool as the name suggests.

Netflix wanted to incentivize its engineers to build fault tolerant systems without resorting to micromanagement. They reasoned that if systemic failure is made to be the norm rather than the exception, engineers have no choice but to build fault-tolerant systems. It took time to get there, but at Netflix, anything from individual servers to entire availability zones are knocked out routinely in production. Every service is expected to automatically absorb such failures with no impact to service availability. 

This strategy is expensive and complex. But if you’re shipping a product where a high uptime is an absolute necessity, then failure injection in production is a very effective way to get something resembling a ‘correctness proof’. If your product needs this, introduce it as early as possible. It will never be easier or cheaper than it is today. 

If chaos engineering seems like overkill, you should at least require your teams to do ‘game days’ (simulated outage practice runs) once or twice a year, or leading up to any major feature launch. During a game day, you will have three designated roles — the first role simulates the outage, the second fixes it without knowing beforehand what was broken and the third observes and takes detailed notes. Afterward, the whole team should get together and do a post-mortem on the simulated incident (see below). The game day will reveal gaps not only in how your systems handle outages, but also in how your engineers handle them.

Have a rigorous post-mortem process

A company’s post-mortem process reveals a great deal about its culture. Each of the top tech companies require teams to write post-mortems for significant outages. The report should describe the incident, explore its root causes and identify preventative actions. The post-mortem should be rigorous and held to a high standard, but the process should never single out individuals to blame. Post-mortem writing is a corrective exercise, not a punitive one. If an engineer made a mistake, there are underlying issues that allowed that mistake to happen. Perhaps you need better testing, or better guardrails around your critical systems. Drill down to those systemic gaps and fix them. 

Designing a robust post-mortem process could be the subject of its own article, but it’s safe to say that having one will go a long way toward preventing the next outage. 

Reward reliability work

If engineers have a perception that only new features lead to raises and promotions, reliability work will take a back seat. Most engineers should be contributing to operational excellence, regardless of seniority. Reward reliability improvements in your performance reviews. Hold your senior-most engineers accountable for the stability of the systems they oversee.

While this recommendation may seem obvious, it is surprisingly easy to miss. 

Conclusion

In this article, we explored some fundamental tools that embed reliability into your company culture. Startups and early-stage companies usually do not make reliability a priority. This is understandable — your fledgling company must be obsessively focused on proving product-market fit to ensure survival. However, once you have a returning customer base, the future of your company depends on retaining trust. Humans earn trust by being reliable. The same is true of internet services. 

Aditya Visweswaran is a senior software engineer at Google Cloud’s security platform team.

Ford started offering free adapters for Tesla’s Supercharger network to owners of its EVs in February, and now it’s telling some of its customers to stop using them, reports InsideEVs. The company found a “potential issue” that could cause “reduced charging speeds over time” or even damage to the charge port itself, according to a service bulletin it’s sending to those affected.

Ford EV owners should follow the link on Ford’s notice to make sure it has the right address on file. If it is, they won’t need to do anything else to get their replacement, but if not, the company says customers need to update their address by October 24th.

Ford will supply a replacement adapter in the coming weeks and provide return instructions to send back your existing adapter – both at no cost. It is imperative that we receive all adapters affected to reduce the risk of potential vehicle damage.

Ford will reportedly start shipping replacement adapters to customers during the week of October 28th. Only “a certain recent batch” of Ford’s North American Charging Standard adapters are impacted, according to InsideEV. Both Rivian and General Motors told the outlet that they have not identified any similar issues with their own adapters.