Get this budget-friendly HP laptop with 16GB RAM for under $400

It’s getting hard to find an affordable laptop these days, and not likely to get easier anytime soon… so when I see a surprisingly recent laptop with solid specs sliding in under the $400 point, it’s worth spotlighting. Such is the case with this refurbished HP laptop on eBay, available for as little as $398.96 right now. (Automatic discount at checkout!)

The HP Pavilion Plus 14-EW1XXX is the worst name I’ve seen for a laptop in a long time, and it’s pretty dang hard to parse. It also has a bad description, contradicting itself on whether it’s a 14-inch or 16-inch display, but I’m pretty certain it’s a 16-incher.

It has a pretty nice panel, too, boasting a 2560×1600 resolution (though not touch-enabled). Ditto for the 14-core Ultra 5 125H processor, four primary and four efficiency cores, and 16GB of DDR5 RAM. (That’s as low as I’d go to comfortably run Windows 11 these days.) This laptop-with-an-awful-name has 512GB of storage and a good-but-not-amazing selection of ports, with double USB-C, double USB-A, and full-sized HDMI.

This is a refurbished laptop, with a “five star” cosmetic condition according to the description, with an eBay Refurbished badge, which also means that it comes with a 2-year Allstate warranty included in the price.

The eBay listing shows a price of $428.99, but when placed in my cart for checkout, I get an automatic 7 percent discount that brings the final pre-tax price to $398.96 with free shipping. Not bad for a laptop with a 1600p display and 16GB of RAM, even if it’s lacking a few extras.