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Windows 10 vs. Ubuntu Linux Performance On A $199 AMD Ryzen Laptop
This $210 AMD Ryzen laptop may well be the best-value business notebook ever
Motile 14" Laptop: Ryzen 3, 1080p, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD ($199)
Motile 14" Laptop: AMD Ryzen 5, 14" 1080p, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD ($299)
MOTILE 14 Review $299 RYZEN 5 3500U Performance Laptop Amazing Value! (10m40s video)
$299 MOTILE 14" Performance Laptop Emulation Test - RYZEN 5 3500U (11m50s video)
External GPU On A $300 Walmart Laptop! MOTILE 14 + Radeon RX590 (10m52s video) (lol)
These $200-$300 laptops have a stellar reputation compared to the $80 landfill-tier EVOO 10.1 tablet that Walmart is associated with.
The main problems are probably single-channel RAM (although at least it can be upgraded), apparently a crappy Wi-Fi card, no USB-C charging, and they are Zen+. It's possible that Zen 2 "Renoir" could allow 4 or 6 cores in place of what is currently 2 or 4 cores, although it would take a while for prices to drop down to these levels.
Personally, I might take a break from laptops and try building a small form factor PC using Zen 4 (AM5 socket), which may be released in 2021. AM5 should support "mainstream" CPUs with at least 24 cores, possibly 32 cores.
Also, @krishnoid, Lenovo 100e is at $99.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday February 05 2020, @09:28AM
Having used 2/4/8 GB machines in the last year for browsing, I don't think most people need that much. It's probably not a catastrophe if some infrequently used tabs have to reload. A solution could be to siphon some of that browsing off your "work" system if possible (I don't know what you're doing with Firefox). Have 2-3 computers nearby. One can do real work with 32+ RAM, another one or two can do non-essential browsing and video streaming.
It would be nice to have the ability to just add 32 GB or 64 GB of RAM into any laptop. ~$100 for 32 GB is not an unreasonable upgrade for any tier IMO. The problem is that many systems are including soldered RAM with no DIMM slots, only 1 DIMM slot, low limits (sometimes 8 GB), or making it extremely hard to access the DIMM slots. We could blame these trends on Intel influencing the course of the industry with its Ultrabook initiative, but it was probably inevitable.
If you don't have a problem finding a display, or can carry a portable display [anandtech.com], carrying a flat SFF/NUC could be better. Two 2 DIMM or SO-DIMM slots capable of taking up to 64 GB should be possible.