This $400 Ryzen HP laptop is the perfect budget option for students and parents
If you don't plan on playing games, this is a great laptop.
We've already seen more than a few excellent Black Friday gaming laptop deals so far, but not everyone needs something capable of on-the-go gameplay. Besides the added cost, gaming laptops are typically heavier with shorter battery life. If you're just looking for a solid work laptop (that can also play a bit of Minecraft on the side), one model from HP with a Ryzen CPU is a fantastic deal at $400.
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The model on sale (15z-eh000) is equipped with a Ryzen 7 4700U processor, an 8-core/8-thread CPU that outperforms some of Intel's 10th-gen laptop chips in some tests. It's paired with 8GB RAM, a 256GB NVMe SSD, and a 15.6-inch 1366 x 768 screen. That's excellent hardware for the current sale price of $359.99, except that 768p doesn't look amazing when stretched out to 15 inches. Thankfully, you can configure the laptop to have a 1080p IPS display for only $40 more, bringing the total to $399.99.
HP Pavilion Laptop | $749.99 $399.99 (save $350)
This is a fantastic laptop for productivity, once you upgrade the screen to 1080p on the customization page. Other hardware upgrades are also available, if your budget has some room.
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There are other customization options as well that might be worth adding, depending on how high your budget can go. The next worthwhile upgrade after the screen would be selecting 16GB RAM, which costs another $80. Even though you won't be playing high-end games on this laptop, the extra memory still means you can have more browser tabs and applications open at once without slowdowns. The 16GB RAM and 1080p display upgrades together bring the laptop to $479.99. There's also an option to add backlighting to the keyboard for $0, at least as of when this article was written.
No matter what configuration you go with (as long as you get that screen upgrade), you'll get an excellent laptop that can easily handle web browsing, productivity work, and very light gaming.