I’ve been hunting for laptops at or below the $500 range with at least 16GB of RAM — the least I’d recommend for Windows 11 — because they’re really frickin’ hard to find at the moment. I often have to go for a refurb to hit that target in 2026, but today you can get a new Acer Aspire laptop with darn good specs for $499.99 at B&H Photo, a full $500 off the retail price.
There’s a giant asterisk on that retail price — B&H says the Aspire 14 AI costs $1,000 with the parts it’s using in this configuration: a Core Ultra 7 Intel processor, 16GB of RAM, one terabyte of storage. But the only major difference between that model and the $700 one PCWorld reviewed about a year ago is a slightly faster 8-core processor. Sho ’nuff, Best Buy appears to be selling the Core 7 version for $729.99, which is closer to where I’d expect this to land…though that’s for a refurb.
In any case, $500 for a new Lunar Lake laptop is a great deal. With that speedy, efficient processor, plenty of RAM and storage, and even some respectable Arc integrated graphics, you can do a lot with this 14-inch laptop. (Unless you want to touch the screen. You can touch it, but it won’t do anything.) Other highlights include Windows Hello for face-scanning logins, plenty of ports (double USB-C and USB-A, full-sized HDMI), and a decent 65-watt-hour battery that lasted over 17 hours on our review test.
While it’s not flashy or particularly svelte, the Aspire 14 AI is a reliable budget machine that’ll handle everything you can throw at it for standard work and web browsing. It’s a great find if you’re scrambling for a laptop update that won’t break the bank. If it doesn’t quite fit into what you’re looking for, be sure to check out PCWorld’s laptop roundup.
Get an Acer laptop with 16GB of RAM for $500