4 best cheap laptops of 2026: Not all budget laptops are slow, bland clunkers

Last year’s Snapdragon X-powered Acer Aspire 16 AI is the best Windows laptop I’ve tested. If you’re looking for an affordable, well-specced computer with good battery life and a big, smooth display — and you need something nicer than a Chromebook — this one’s hard to beat. Also, it is quite portable for its size.

Note: 2026 Acer Aspire 16 will be configurable with new Intel Core Ultra Series 3 and AMD Ryzen AI 400 Series processors. It will be available in Q2, but we don’t know its price yet.

Of all the laptops on this list, I think this one hits the hardest for its price point. Truth be told, it probably sounds a little off with a low price for everything it brings to the table.

Inside, it comes with 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage – double that of the base MacBook Air – and a Snapdragon X chip. In the Geekbench 6 CPU benchmark, our main performance test, that processor scored a whopping 9,802. (That tells us how well it can handle multitasking and intensive applications. The higher the score, the better.) Of all the laptops we’ve tested under $900, that’s the highest score we’ve seen. Notably, that makes it faster than two smart Chromebooks on the market, which cost about the same: the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 (7,680) and the Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 514 (7,187).

As an aside, I want to point out that the Snapdragon X chip is an ARM-based CPU. Without getting too into the weeds, that means it’s not compatible with some specialized applications. (This is also something that plagues the Zenbook A14, below.) This is mostly a problem if you need a budget laptop for college coursework or light gaming, but since the Aspire 16 AI is aimed more at casual everyday use, I consider it a non-issue here.

The biggest takeaway is that the Snapdragon X chip doesn’t consume a lot of juice. In our video editing test, the Aspire 16 AI lasted 17 hours and 22 minutes before dying. Our current median battery life for Windows laptops is 14 hours, so it’s pretty tough. This tracks most laptops with Qualcomm’s first-generation Snapdragon chips.

I think most consumers will appreciate the Aspire 16 AI display, with its anti-glare finish, touchscreen capability, and 120Hz refresh rate. It’s still bright and crisp, but those specs are worth $700. (M4 MacBook Airs still have an average 60Hz refresh rate.)

This is a 16-inch laptop, so you get a good amount of screen real estate, but not at the cost of extra heft. At 3.42 pounds, the Aspire 16 AI is very light for its size and not too heavy to lug around. Apple’s current 16-inch MacBook Pro weighs 4.7 pounds, for reference.

The “budget” of the Aspire 16 AI is most evident in its loud speakers and average web camera. (I thought its image looked clean, but it dulls and flattens its title to the point where it almost looks like text.) Its hinge also wobbles a bit.