How much should you pay for a budget laptop? Well, that depends on your budget, of course. If you’ve only got $400 to spend, then you should find the best one for $400, end of story—but that can be very limiting, especially when it comes to specs. Today, Best Buy is offering an extremely rare deal: a touchscreen Windows laptop with 16GB of RAM for just $379.99. It’s good for today only, September 2nd.
This Lenovo IdeaPad 1i is a budget design down to its bones, but it has a few upgrades over the IdeaPad 1i’s extremely underpowered base model: a surprising amount of power from a 13th-gen Intel Core i5 processor, the aforementioned 16GB of DDR4 RAM, and 512GB of SSD storage. The 15.6-inch 1080p screen is a touch panel (a rare sight at this price), and Intel Xe graphics should provide enough juice to run Minecraft on basic settings (or pretty much any 2D game).
Don’t expect miracles from the underpowered battery, but you at least get plenty of ports (USB-C, double USB-A, full-sized HDMI, and an SD card reader) and a full-sized keyboard with a number pad. I also like the privacy shutter for the webcam, though there’s no mention of an IR sensor for Windows Hello compatibility.
This laptop would be pretty good at $500, but it’s an absolute bargain at $380—and because of that, I don’t suspect it’ll stay in stock for very long. Best Buy is only selling it at this price today, with the deal ending at 1 AM Eastern US time according to the product page. It also says there are only three at my nearest Best Buy retail location.
Hop on it quickly if you’re looking for an affordable laptop with some extra power and features. If it isn’t what you’re looking for, then check out PCWorld’s picks for the best laptops.
This touchscreen laptop with Core i5 and 16GB RAM is crazy for $380