The Best Gaming Laptop Under 300 Dollars: Here Are Our Top Picks

THINGS TO TAKE INTO CONSIDERATION

What Type of Hardware to Expect at this Price Range?

If we’re to be honest, you won’t get much in the way of processing power if you’re fishing for a budget laptop under 300 bucks.

Most of them will run on Pentium dual cores, or AMD A-series APUs that still use Excavator cores from 2016.

These processors are equipped with onboard graphics processing units which aren’t very powerful. Higher end AMD APUs like the A12 9720p are comparable to Intel Skylake (6^th gen) Core i3s such as the i3 5310U.

The integrated graphics on an AMD 9720p is comparable to the GeForce 920MX, although performance may vary depending on memory setup (single vs dual channel), and the type of game you play.

What Type of Games Can You Play?

You can run esports games like Dota 2 or CS GO, but don’t load up GTA V on your 300- dollar laptop.

Besides, a lot of them have 64GB eMMC memory modules so you can’t even load any games that are larger than a few GB.

Modern games regularly exceed 15 to 20GB install size, so forget about playing any of those.

And even if you load a AAA title released within the past 7 years, your laptop lacks the processing power.

An AMD A12 APU with its two excavator modules and pseudo quad core design lacks the speed to run something like Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.

Should You Buy New or Renewed?

This is a tough decision to make, and it all comes down to what you require within your specific budget.

Sometimes, older laptop models offer incredible value for money. You can snag a laptop with a 4^th or 5^th gen Core i5 under 300 bucks, and that is super awesome.

Even a 5^th gen Core i5 will beat an AMD A9 or A6 APU in most tasks. And, you can grab a 4GB DDR3 SODIMM for cheap and slot it in there if there’s a free memory slot on the motherboard of your used laptop.

Spending a couple bucks on a 128GB SSD will breathe new life into that 4 year old machine, and make it run like new.

But here’s the thing- by the time you spend money on an SSD and that extra stick of RAM, you’re approaching new laptop prices.

Besides, you don’t even know what the battery health is like on the used laptop you just purchased. And it probably doesn’t have a warranty.

Even renewed products have short 90- day warranties on them. It is like taking a dive of faith, hoping that you don’t end up with a dud.

Unless you’re comfortable with taking your laptop apart and cleaning it + replacing the storage, you’d be better off buying new.

Things do change once you go below 200 dollars though- at that point, buying new isn’t a whole lot better than used/ renewed.

Things You Should Avoid

First of all, avoid laptops with eMMC flash memory modules. It is basically flash storage plus the memory controller, embedded into an IC package that measures 32 x 24mm.

This is soldered onto the motherboard, so it’s a permanent attachment and non- upgradeable. And the capacity is also very small, usually around 64GB.

You will find eMMC memory on Chromebooks, ultra cheap Windows 10 laptops, tablets, and phones.

We found a ton of laptops with eMMC memory in this price range, and decided to not include any of those in our list.

The reason being, eMMC memory is slow and simply not as reliable as an SSD or mechanical hard disk drive.

Besides, you barely get any storage to begin with. If you go with 64GB of eMMC memory, you’re relying on cloud services to get all your work done.

And forget about playing any games, because you don’t even have any place to install them.

Non-upgradeable RAM

This is a common theme in cheaply designed laptops. Most manufacturers would much rather solder the RAM onto the motherboard and force you to buy a new laptop every 2 years, instead of giving you the freedom to upgrade it yourself.

As you might have guessed, 4GB of RAM is borderline unusable for gaming and productivity.

Even if you’re just browsing the web, 4GB of RAM will choke your laptop’s performance once you open more than 10 or so Chrome tabs.

If possible, look up the part no. for a laptop on the manufacturer’s website to see if the memory is upgradeable.

For now, you might get away with just 4GB of RAM if you just use Microsoft Office and web browsers.

Playing games like Dota 2 and CS GO will be possible, on the lowest graphics settings.

But remember that your iGPU is sharing memory with system RAM, so gaming performance will be bad.

Multitasking will be tough, since you can saturate all 4GB of memory just by opening a couple of programs.

As a side note, there are still laptops in the used market with 2GB of RAM. Avoid those at all costs.

Conclusion

Unless you go down the used or renewed route, it is impossible to beat the Jumper EZbook X3 in terms of value for money.

Just think about what you’re getting under 300 dollars- a Full HD anti- glare display, a premium full-metal chassis, and a quad core Celeron N3450 processor. Combined with 8GB of DDR4 RAM, and a 128GB SSD.

It is going to feel much snappier than any of the cheap laptops which use eMMC flash storage or mechanical hard disk drives, and that HD 500 integrated GPU will handle casual games like Minecraft just fine.

You can even use this laptop to play Android games such as Clash of Clans and Arena of Valor by installing an emulator.

It is more portable than the bulky 15.6” models from companies like HP or Dell, thanks to the slim body and NanoEdge thin bezel display.

If you’re looking for a back to school laptop under 300 bucks, this is it. It can game, browse, edit photos, and run software like Microsoft Office.

You can even use it to stream movies from Netflix, since the display is 1080p with really nice colors.