Hi,
A problem I have been coming up against is that a lot of the newer, budget Windows laptop (which I will immediately replace with my distribution of choice upon receipt) have memory soldered on the motherboard. This is a decision which brings the utmost distate to my mouth; I’m looking for budget laptops around the $300 mark (new) that let me upgrade their parts. Which models should I be looking at?
I am aware that the used market is fairly decent right now but I’d like to take a look at what’s coming up alongside looking at used gear. Thanks.
With budget, soldered is what you’re going to get because budget means they’re going to save every penny they can even minor things like so-dimm sockets.
$300 is a really difficult price point for what youre asking for new. At the price, youre in the chromebook range, where even the windows machines are going to be as barebones as possible.
You want to step into the used market if you want customizable for $300. Getting something good thats a few years old like an lenovo carbon x1 looks possible, and they are a dream to update. The above supports linux with no issues.
I see. There’s not much of a choice outside the used thinkpad range then. Very well. Thank you
Honestly, the value proposition of old business computers is almost unbeatable.
Yes, it’s not the most recent hardware, but decent enough, especially the chonky boi ThinkPads are very easy to repair/upgrade and built like tanks (though only Russian ones, they barely withstand an RPG hit, which is a shame).
Could you suggest a few models? I’d be fairly interested in older business laptops especially if they are a viable alternative to the thinkpad line (never a bad idea to have more choices!)
The thinkpad t480 for more modern feeling. A t470 for some more upgradeability. I also like the x270 for a smaller 12.5 inch screen and I think you can find all of these under 300.
Dell Precision, HP Probook for example. There are probably more, but these are the ones that I know of.
Yes. This is the way.
As a follow up, if the price point were a bit higher (much higher? idk), what would the options be like for this request? edit: also thx for the current answer 🙏
If you’re looking at the customisable/upgradable thing, then Frameworks are great for that. You can buy them without (or with) a Windows licence, you can buy them without RAM or a hard drive if you want. But they are on the more expensive end of the scale. However, in future you can upgrade the guts without replacing the case/screen/etc.
Cheap Chromebooks tend to break just like other cheap laptops. The only difference is that the OS may feel more responsive initially.
Framework announced their B-stock systems for $500. That’s going to be your best bet for relatively new, upgradable, and kind close to $300.
Otherwise, gonna have to go used, and good luck with upgradability since everyone’s been soldering everything on for a decade.
Came here to make sure this was represented. $500 is a great price for a fully upgradable laptop.
Plus the cost of your own ram, storage, etc.
Thinkpads will get you what you want. A T480 can be found at around that price and is basically fully upgradable and Linux compatible
Yes this, everything new at that pricepoint is complete garbage, ewaste straight out the factory.
The T480, while getting a little bit up there in age now, is still very capable having a quad core CPU, if you get both the internal and largest external battery it will rival M1 macbooks in battery life, two ram slots.
Thanks, and yes I’m looking at the used Thinkpad market. I was just curious if I could purchase anything of the sort new in my budget
new budget computers are horrible. don’t get them. they’re old designs sloppily put into tacky new looking chassis for a higher price.
hell there’s probably a $300 budget laptop that’s slower than my removeding <$100 11yo thinkpad t430
This is what I have and I was in your situation, op.
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I got a used ThinkPad for that price a year ago. Needed a laptop, and was a broke student. Really repairable - it’s easy to take apart, not glued, and most parts seem to be available at Aliexpress for reasonable prices. It’s still doing it’s job, and even though I could afford upgrading it now, I don’t really see a reason to.
The last time I had a look at the market for new laptops, most things 300€ (which should be close enough to $300) would buy you where, judging by the components, bound to be painfully slow. If it really needs to be new, I’d look for stores that have discounts, and look up the model on iFixit or a simmilar resource to check how repairable it is.
Thank you, I was simply surveying the market to see if there are any new laptops in this range to look at. Seems like that is not the case, so off to the used market I go.
It doesn’t necessarily need to be a ThinkPad either. Any used good quality business laptop should do the trick. My grandmother recently got an used EliteBook, and it’s working quite well for her. I’d look for mid- to high-end models, with parts that aren’t soldered - you should be able to find that out on the data sheet for the model in question.
Any i5/R5 and up in a machine that isn’t too old should handle pretty much everything most people expect from a laptop - for me that is running a browser, a Latex editor, a notes app, and an IDE, for the most part.
I’d reccomend Linux, but that might be based more on my personal convictions, and a machine like that should also be able to run current Windows with no problems.
I’m going to run Linux alright, and maybe BSD if I feel up to it. It would seem that the older Dell Latitudes are comparable to the older Thinkpads as options
Hmh, didn’t see the community this was in. Yeah, I guess that makes sense.
Upgradeable parts = non-soldered RAM and SSD?
Partly
Do you need a laptop?
A mini PC may be a better bet - $300 on a mini PC will get you more hardware than a laptop at the same price as you’re not paying for the screen or chassy but you’d then need to supply a screen (TV would do), keyboard and mouse.
If you need the mobility then it’s a no go, but if you’re more looking for a device at home a PC is better value.
If you do need the mobility of a laptop, then you won’t get anything much new for $300 as others have said. You’d either need to increase your budget or look at second hand as others have said.
Chassis
May I recommend further a good desktop pc w/upgradable parts and a used thinkpad laptop for travelling? You can get a good thinkpad for work and small games for $20-50 and they tend to last forever and be easy to repair. my favorite is X series
Used business/enterprise stuff is generally decent, HP Elitebooks, Lenovo Thinkpads, etc…
Notebookcheck.net has an incredible search tool and they’ll have info about how difficult it is to open up and what items can be replaced.
You will struggle to find anything decent at that price new.
Plenty of good used options though, a used ThinkPad will have great Linux compatibility and be serviceable. They can be very cheap depending on how older hardware you can tolerate. There are other business grade laptops from Dell, HP etc that have good refurb deals too.
I’m starting to realise that myself. It might just be a better idea to go used after all. Thanks
Most laptops won’t allow you to update parts, especially at that price. I think you’re better off getting a cheap laptop that has good reviews and you verify that Linux works in it. Personally, I’ve converted a few chromebooks to linux (making sure first that the CoreBoot BIOS/firmware works on these laptops).
ThinkPad 470 is not mentioned? Was it a bad choiseI? I want fedora om it?
There’s nothing wrong with the T470, it’s just an older model. If you find a really good deal on one then get it. If not, then go for the T480 since it has a newer CPU and better battery life.
I think Ive got a great deal, it works fine now, hope it still will do woth fedora 39
It will probably be fine for the next decade at least. It supports up to 32GB of RAM.
I was simply asking for newer laptops. I am considering the used thinkpads alongside any recommendations here so I feel more informed
Business Dells are also worth considering. They’re comparable to the Thinkpad.
A used ThinkPad? I use Debian 12 GNOME (animations on) on an old Core i3 2nd gen desktop with 4 GB RAM and no SSD, and I can use 3-4 Firefox tabs with music player, PDF reader and Thunar file manager quite well.
Shove in extra 4 GB RAM and put in a $50 SATA SSD if possible, and you have a snappy machine.
You’re going to have to up your budget a bit. However, you can get a Thinkbook, which is exactly what you’re looking for - DIMM slot, upgradable NVME and USB-C charging. Only downside is that it comes with a fake (non-Zen4) 7th gen Ryzen processor. If you can wait for some time, the next 2024 ThinkPad E series may have DIMM slots without the soldered RAM nonsense.
I am looking at used Thinkpads, thanks. It seems that’s my best choice after all.
The last thing you should be worrying about when buying a budget laptop is the expandability of the ram. it seriously doesn’t matter if you only have 4gb, Linux is so lightweight it runs completely fine.
imo you should be worrying about:
- display quality (even some ips displays look horrible)
- build quality (physically feel the keyboard, chassis flex, etc)
- battery life (for heavily used laptops account for the price of a replacement. for old thinkpads you can extend it dramatically with bigger bstteries)
- cpu speed (core count, single core performance, hyperthreading, etc. new celerons lose to i5s from 2013 lmao)
- storage (MAKE SURE IT’S NOT EMMC!!)
I would say 8GB of RAM is the absolute minimum you should consider buying for desktop Linux now. With 4GB, you need a lightweight distro if you want enough RAM left to run a web browser without swapping.
And don’t forget that someone running Linux might need to have a Windows VM for some situations. So you need to have at least 8Gb of RAM to be able to allocate 4Gb to this Virtual Machine.
Otherwise if you just use Linux 4 might be enough but really limiting.
I agree that it’s limiting, but I’d argue that the other things I mentioned are more limiting.
my point isn’t that 4gb of ram is fine, it’s that the other things i mentioned are worse.
Yeah I agree that a nice SSD, a good display, etc are also really important.
For me, my Surface Go 1 with a 128Gb SSD is the minimum in 2024.
I bought it in 2019 and I can clearly see myself using it for at least 5 more years if Linux doesn’t become way more resource hungry.
Yup, KDE is out of the question with 4gb
i run kde6 with 4gb though
The last time I tried kde5 it was a horrible experience. It ran but was super laggy. Maybe kde6 improved ram usage?
really? my kde laptop manages fine with 4gb with a few heavy ff tabs open
4 GB RAM is not enough if you plan on using multiple tabs on a browser. And I don’t mean a ridiculous number of tabs. You might run out from 4 tabs or so.
Thanks for the comment, but my workflow will require some RAM. I’ll look towards the older thinkpads, thanks!
