I was wondering around to buy a laptop for under $500, and after going through all those ultra-low-end-cheapo laptops with Celeron processors, there are some Pentium ones. Now, I was wondering are Pentiums in laptops any good. I didn’t hear anything new about Pentium processors since the Dual-Core days…
I would use the computer for web browsing and for learning programing (maybe VirtualBox? maybe?). Oh, and I would run Linux on it.
Thanks in advance!
Honestly just get a laptop with a core i3 in it for 500 dollars or if lucky i5 … quite honestly the processing power is much greater and your not saving much going less then that… you can find a slew of linux certified laptops out there too
Could get something more powerful if you go out and buy something that is used/refurbed.
Now you may think you do not need something all that powerful, but when you do start using your computer you’ll start thinking about how you should have got something more beefy.
Also get one with a nice amount of RAM.
Unfortunately, Intel deliberately obfuscates their product names to confuse consumers.
The story is this, for the latest generation anyway.
- Pentium Silver and Celeron CPUs are based on the very low-power inexpensive Atom microarchitecture. You don’t want one of these for anything where you care about performance.
- Pentium Gold is another matter entirely. It’s based on the Kaby Lake core microarchitecture. It’s essentially a Kaby Lake i3 (2 cores, 4 threads), downclocked and consuming much less power. It’s not a speed demon but it won’t make you want to toss your laptop in the trash bin like an Atom.
All that said, I wouldn’t buy any of the above. Refurbs are the way to go. Dell’s refurb site has a ton of stuff with i3s and i5s for <$500. Here’s an inspiron 5000 with an i5-7200u, 8GB RAM, and a 256GB SSD for $489. If the link doesn’t work that means it sold, just go to their refurb site and search around for an i3 or i5 with 8GB RAM and a SSD. Don’t get anything with a magnetic hard drive.
And if you can stretch to $600, you can get The Wirecutter’s recommendation.
Since you plan to run Linux, do your homework and check that the wifi chip will work and so on.
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i would stay away from core i5/i7 u and m processors . all of these are dual cores with hyperthreading (basically a core i3…) . stick with a HQ processor and you will get 4 cores (i5) or 4 cores 8 threads (i7) . yes your battery life will suck. but at least you will have some performance.
a core i7 7200u
an i7 7700HQ:
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Actually Coffee Lake changed that; Coffee Lake i3s are 4/4, i5s are 6/6 and i7s are now 6/12.
The Coffee i3 is a particularly fantastic value choice.
Just get a think pad with a dual core i5 and call it good.
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I have a Braswell based Pentium N3700 and for what it does I like it a lot. I overpaid at $350 when it was new, but it had a touch screen, small footprint, centered touchpad, no numberpad, replaceable drive, and gets better than 8 hours battery life which I demanded of my first new pre-built computer.
As mentioned above, the Atom based (and in the future ‘Silver’) Pentiums are going to be super low power. They are quad cores, but the single core performance is downright miserable. I have no problems using it to browse and have even run Virtualbox VM’s to check things out and it works adequately for that, however I understand its limitations. I specifically bought it to modify the power adapter and run it off solar power, so my use case is extremely narrow compared to others.
While some of the aspects of the ‘Pentium Gold’ CPU’s are mentioned above, as far as I know it is only 100% true for desktop SKU’s. It is very well possible that mobile versions have a similar thing to the dual core i5’s and such, so if you buy new, you have to comb through the specs for the cache sizes, cores, and other aspects carefully. I have seen a list for the new desktop parts on the horizon, but not mobile. They might not even make other Pentiums beyond the desktop ‘gold’ and mobile Atom ‘silver’.
Do you plan on using this thing on the move a lot, or just want something to throw in your lap and tinker with? How important is battery life to you? You might be better off getting a higher end used model and an extra battery. If you are only doing super light browsing, coding, and maybe watching videos then even the low end machines will do that job, be lightweight, and last much of the day running on the battery. The moment you ask more of it you will be sorely disappointed.
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Good to know
Thank you all for the input!
Now something I clearly dodn’t mention is that I don’t live in USA 
. I live in Montenegro in SE Europe. (If you don’t know where that is, nevermind. A lot of people don’t know that.)
Over here the market is fluded with an 2gen. older CPUs in a Laptop. You can actually find some AMD A4s, but not Ryzens on a budget (guess we didn’t “Ryzen” that much 
). That being said, new laptops are usually a bit pricy for the preformance they give (taxes), and the used market is quite small and I don’t personally trust it. So I don’t really know where to go…
So the bottom line is: We have to deal with 5th or 6th Gen. bottom line Core i3s (like 5005U) and a crap-ton of Celerons and some Pentiums (like N3700/N3710).
And I’m not going to buy the laptop that soon, so maybe things will change. I just don’t know what line of processors should I look at in that price range.
Meh… I don’t move that much from place to place, so the battery isn’t a problem
If you can find old Sandy Bridge laptops like Lenovo *20 series Thinkpads, that’s a really good way to go. The T420 and T430 can be upgraded to quad-cores down the road (if you’re a crazy person) and Sandy Bridge processors are still very competent chips. And those laptops are dirt cheap.
I know of that place. Stefan Savic is awesome.
But back on topic, could you just not order the computer online off of amazon.com or ebay.com or some .com and have it shipped to you over in Montenegro. Many people shop off of different domains to take advantage of the better pricing.
Shipping prices are a killer in most situation because you have to pay import taxes as well. At least in Bulgaria.
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Not really. Not a lot of things can be shiped here, and if they can… the shipping price is huge!
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