ASUS Vivobook With Intel Inside Is Just $299 And More Sub-$500 Laptop Deals
Where has the summer gone? It's hard to believe that we're already staring at the backside of July, and while we still have all of August waiting in the wings, the back-to-school shopping season has practically arrived. There is good news, however. While summer is quickly winding down, deals on laptops are heating up. If you want to get a jump on the back-to-school shopping season, we have you covered.
To kick things off, check out this discounted ASUS Vivobook 14 laptop that's on sale for $299.99 at Best Buy (save $300). This is pricing territory that used to be occupied by netbooks (remember those?). Fortunately, we've come quite a ways since then, and $299.99 gets you a much better system now. Or at least it does in this instance.
The caveat? This is Best Buy's 'Deal of the Day', so you don't have long to decide. It's all about the specs, and this one has fewer compromises than you might think. For one, the 14-inch display boasts a Full HD 1080p (1920x1080) resolution. When it comes to ultra-affordable laptops, we sometimes see manufacturers trying to sneak 720p displays into the wild.
This is powered by an Intel Core i5-1334U processor (10C/12T, up to 4.6GHz, 12MB of L3 cache) based on Raptor Lake. You might have expected a quad-core chip at this price point, so that's another pleasant surprise.
Finally, while you don't get a ton of RAM, you do get more than 8GB on this model—it features 12GB of of DDR4 memory, along with a 256GB PCIe 4.0 solid state drive (SSD). Yeah, we're not overly excited about just 256GB of storage, but at least there's a little bit more memory than we were expecting for a $299.99 laptop.
Want something a little bit bigger and better equipped for some lightweight gaming? Then check out this massively discounted Acer Nitro 5 laptop that's on sale for $279.99 at Best Buy (save $670). It boasts a physically larger 17.3-inch display of the IPS variety, and while the screen real estate is the same at 1920x1080, it features a 144Hz refresh rate (versus 60Hz on the ASUS Vivobook).
The other surprise here is it wields a GeForce RTX 3050 GPU. No, that's not going to set any benchmark records, but it's a discrete chip and an RTX part. Not bad for a sub-$300 laptop.
Other specs include an Intel Core i5-12500H processor (12C/16T, up to 4.5GHz, 18MB of L3 cache) based on Alder Lake, 8GB of DDR4 memory, and a 512GB SSD. Yeah, having just 8GB of RAM in 2025 kind of stinks, but it's upgradeable, and you get twice the storage as the Vivobook.
Here are several more sub-$500 laptop deals...
- HP OmniBook X Flip 2-in-1 (Ryzen 5 220, 8GB/512GB): $399.99 (save $350)
- HP 15.6-Inch Touch (Ryzen 5 7520U, 16GB/256GB): $349.99 (save $300)
- Lenovo IdeaPad 1 (Ryzen 5 7520U, 8GB/256GB): $349.99 (save $230)
- ASUS Vivobook 17 (Core i3-1215U, 8GB/512GB): $328.99 (save $201)
- Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3i (Core i3-N305, 8GB/128GB UFS): $229.99 (save $220)
EDIT: The Acer Nitro 5 has since sold out. We'll keep it featured above in case it comes back in stock (not likely, given that it was a clearance item), but if you're looking for something with similar specs and are okay with the open-box route, check out the Lenovo LOQ that's on sale for $474.99 at Best Buy (save $205) in 'excellent' condition. Likewise, there's an open-box variant in 'good' condition that's on sale for $454.99 (save $225). That gets you a 15.6-inch 1080p display, Ryzen 5 7235HS processor, 12GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and a GeForce RTX 3050 GPU.
