This budget Acer laptop with 16GB RAM is absurdly cheap: $235

If you’ve been looking for a fantastic deal on a solid budget laptop, this is it. Let your fingers do the walking over to eBay, where the official Acer store is offering a refurbished 15-inch model with 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD for just $234.59. That’s over 50% off the retail price.

The Acer Aspire 3 is definitely a budget design, with a somewhat outdated AMD 7520U quad-core processor. It’s not going to be a benchmark monster, as it’s comparable to the least-expensive Intel Core i3 chips. Even the integrated graphics—normally a highlight of AMD designs—didn’t wow us in our Acer Aspire 3 review. But the build quality is solid, plus 16GB of DDR5 RAM and a 1TB SSD are generous even at the original price, unheard of at this discounted price. You also get decent connection options with USB-A, USB-C, and HDMI.

A 15.6-inch 1080p screen is more than servicable for most tasks, though it lacks a touchscreen, and you also won’t get Windows Hello with lack of a fingerprint reader and face scanner on the 720p webcam. Battery life is also a little underwhelming at 6 to 8 hours of normal use.

All that might seem like a downer, and perhaps it would be for a standard-priced laptop. But at well under $300, I’d say all of those are acceptable trade-offs for value. (After all, it’s damn near impossible to find a Windows 11 laptop with adequate RAM and storage for under $250.) The refurbished status is a bit of a ding, but coming directly from Acer helps alleviate it, as does the one-year Allstate warranty. That’s much better than the typical 90 days you get with a refurb.

If you’re not swayed, then be sure to check out PCWorld’s roundup of the best laptops on the market. But if you’re ready to buy, get one quickly. Discounts this steep tend to sell out fast, and Acer won’t have an unlimited supply of refurbished laptops that qualify for this sale.