Best laptop under 300$

My friend is looking to buy a laptop... he specifically asked me to find him one with an i7 processor... his budget is 300 USD. having built my own computer i know that a reasonably good i7 would cost around 250 USD which would be almost the entire cost of the laptop... what do you guys think? do you have any recommendations? or just tell him to lower his expectations?

EDIT: screen size and hard drive space do not matter. he is buying an external hard drive, and his only requirement for screen size is no smaller than 12 inches.

Well, this was the best that I could come up with. The cheapest new computer was four hundred and fifty. Everything else was north of five hundred.

http://dealnews.com/Refurb-HP-Elite-Book-i7-2.66-GHz-16-Laptop-for-294-free-shipping/1480957.html

1 Like

That CPU's from 2010

It's a dual core @ 2.66GHz w/hyperthreading.
Pretty damn mediocre.

Explain to your friend that these "I-numbers" are no indication of performance, there'll surely be better performing laptops at this price range.

how new do you want this I7, also ebay is a magical place, check it out sometimes

i scoured ebay and found these

http://www.ebay.com/itm/281847479911?ul_noapp=true

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-Thinkpad-T420s-14-2nd-Gen-i5-2520m-2-5GHz-3-2GHz-750GB-4GB-W7Pro-/351572504219?hash=item51db5aae9b:g:4HcAAOSwYHxWPUfQ

http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-PAVILION-ZD7000-LAPTOP-17-COMPUTER-3-2-Ghz2048Mb-2gig-ram60-gig-Win-7-home-/281852512844?hash=item419fb80a4c:m:mwkNK6f2LHZlnpyX-gbLLuA

Does he want battery life?

Does he absolutely need a laptop and an i7?

Because any older laptop you find with an i7 is going to have crap battery life, and you could potentially build a PC with an FX 8-core for 300ish

ok so its come down to this....

LENOVO SLIM CORE i5 3.2GHz MAX TB LAPTOPw/8GB+128GB SSD+14" HD+ LED+WIN7+WIN10

or

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/hyRNMp

which do you think?

Well if he wanted an i7 he probably wanted the extra threads potentially so...

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/ZdpkMp
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/ZdpkMp/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD FX-8320E 3.2GHz 8-Core Processor ($124.99 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: ASRock 970M PRO3 Micro ATX AM3+/AM3 Motherboard ($63.89 @ OutletPC)
Memory: Crucial 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($33.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Hitachi Ultrastar 750GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($34.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: XFX Radeon HD 5450 1GB Video Card ($27.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($44.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $330.84
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-11-09 21:34 EST-0500

he doesnt know anything about computers really. He wouldn't know what a thread was. just that i7 is bigger than i5. also, unfortunately the price must be under 300$ not a dollar over. Though I do like your build a little better than the one i made.

Well what's he using it for?

Also in that APU you want much faster RAM

light gaming but mostly just school work. I tried to tell him to wait for cyber monday or christmas and have his parents pitch him a couple extra hundred but he is hell bent on buying it now.

Well here ya go, he just needs to live without a case, you could also just tear open the external hard drive potentially and use that, but it might be one of the hard drives with a USB PCB on it rather than sata

the A10 7850k with 2400mhz should game about on the level of a console

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/BcWZMp
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/BcWZMp/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD A10-7850K 3.7GHz Quad-Core Processor ($119.99 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-F2A68HM-DS2H Micro ATX FM2+ Motherboard ($46.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-2400 Memory ($48.88 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($51.88 @ OutletPC)
Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($44.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $312.73
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-11-09 21:45 EST-0500

this is great thanks! also, Im pretty i can convince him to take apart his old computer, use that case and let me keep everything else for helping him build it :P

In addition you can also emulate PS2 games pretty well, so long as they aren't the crazy intense one, KH2 final mix + worked just fine for me

thanks for your help :)

An i7 laptop under $300 is pretty much impossible to find. If your friend really wants it to be a laptop and doesn't care about bulkiness, if it's used and possibly spending a few extra bucks, I'd recommend getting a off-lease one:
http://dellrefurbished.com/product/systems/laptops/cat61199/dell-latitude-e6420-4gb-ram-320gb-hdd/si6790008
or possibly this one:
http://dellrefurbished.com/product/systems/laptops/cat61199/dell-latitude-e6420-4gb-ram-320gb-hdd/si6790265
These machines are built to last, unlike some cheap consumer product.
I had a similar e6420 like the second link. It has a Nvidia Quadro. I didn't keep it because I couldn't make the video card work properly in Linux, because of Optimus, but in Windows everything worked fine.

this ones a bit of a wreck

edit: oh bids! , im almost asleep here