Thursday, March 28, 2024

The 5 best laptop deals in the Walmart rollback sale — from $98

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If you’ve been keeping an eye on laptop sales in order to grab one, then you might know that Amazon announced a second Prime Day, which they call Prime Early Access Sale, which is essentially the same sort of deals and exclusives for Prime subscribers as before. Well, Walmart hit back with its own counter-sales event, called the Walmart Rollback Sale, and there are quite a few fantastic laptop deals to pick up; whether you’re looking for budget laptops or gaming laptop deals, there’s a little bit of something for everyone.

Contents

  • HP 11.6-inch Chromebook — $98, was $199
  • Gateway 15.6-inch Ultra Slim Notebook — $179, was $199
  • Asus VivoBook 17 — $359, was $499
  • Lenovo IdeaPad 5i — $650, was $960
  • Lenovo Legion 5i — $749, was $1,030

HP 11.6-inch Chromebook — $98, was $199

While this little HP device might not make the list of best Chromebooks, it’s still a surprisingly good deal for the sub-$100 price tag. The whole thing has a great build quality and even has the corners reinforced with metal so that it can withstand the day-to-day movement it will likely deal with. Under the hood is an AMD A4-9120C, 4 GB of DDR4, and 32GB of storage, and while none of that is particularly impressive, that’s more than enough to get the job of general productivity and everyday use, especially since they drive ChromeOS, rather than Windows which is more power-hungry. It also has an up to 10-hour battery life and a peak brightness of 220 nits, which will decrease battery time but will allow you to use it during the day in shaded areas and lit rooms without too many issues.

Gateway 15.6-inch Ultra Slim Notebook — $179, was $199

If you’ve been around the internet for a while, you might remember Gateway from the 90s, and, well, they’re making a big comeback in the form of some great budget laptops. For starters, not only do you get a 15.6-inch FHD display, but it’s also an IPS panel, meaning you get some great viewing angles; plus, the larger screen means a larger keyboard that doesn’t have too much flex. It has 10 hours of battery life and weighs around 4.8 pounds, so you can carry it around with you relatively easily without being tethered to a power outlet. As for specs, you get an AMD Ryzen 3 3250U, a solid entry-level CPU that can easily handle the majority of productivity tasks, and while the 4GB of RAM is on the smaller side, you can upgrade it with a second stick to get dual-channel mode and gain a significant performance increase. While it didn’t quite make our list of the best budget laptops, it came close.

Asus VivoBook 17 — $359, was $499

With larger size comes greater responsibility and the ability to fit more in the chassis than you could with a smaller laptop, such as having a full-sized keyboard with a number pad on the side and a larger touchpad to work with. The large 17.3-inch screen not only has more real estate for your productivity apps, but it also has a crisp picture quality for streaming films and shows. Speaking of productivity, the VivoBook 17 is powered by an Intel i3 with 3Ghz speed, which should be more than enough for most folks regarding work, studies, or general use. You also get a much more appropriate 8GBs of RAM and 256GB of storage, which we appreciate. While the VivoBook 17, unfortunately, didn’t make it to our list of best 17-inch laptops, its budget pricing makes it a good 17-inch laptop to get if you don’t want to break the bank.

Lenovo IdeaPad 5i — $650, was $960

Lenovo has been doing quite a lot of work in the laptop department, and it’s not surprising that there are two different great laptops on this list. If you want a good laptop for work or university, with a bit more oomph, the Lenovo IdeaPad 5i is the one to do it, especially since it comes with a 12th-gen Intel i5-1235U and 16GBs of RAM. With both of those, you get more headroom for productivity apps and browser tabs, and while we wouldn’t say it’s great for the power user, we will say it works well if you need more in the power department. You also get a full-sized keyboard with the Numpad, although the whole thing is a bit compacted, and it’s important to note that the touchpad is offset to the left, so it might be a bit weird or off-putting if you’re left-handed. Even so, the overall build makes up for it, especially given that there’s little flex with the keyboard and the minuscule bezels on the screen.

Lenovo Legion 5i — $749, was $1,030

If you’re looking for the best Prime Day laptop deals, then you’re not going to do much better than this Lenovo Legion 5i, especially since it’s sub-$750 and yet runs an RTX 3050, which, granted, isn’t a powerful card, but for the average gamer on a budget, it’s a great start. What’s better, the screen runs at 1080p and doesn’t stress the card much, meaning you can hit the 240Hz refresh rate, even with slightly higher graphical settings on newer games, not to mention the screen can hit 500nits so that you can use it even in sunlight. As for the CPU, it’s a nicely paired 10th-gen Intel i5-10500H, and paired with the 8GB of RAM, it will give you lots of room for working and playing video games, making it a pretty versatile laptop. That said, we do wish it had come with 16GB for dual-channel use, so if you get a chance to do that once you buy the laptop, it’s worth it, and while you’re at it, you might want to grab something from our roundup of best SSDs to help supplement the 256GB internal storage.

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