Lenovo Ryzen Laptop Hits $349 And Amazon's New Alexa Tablet Drops To $199

Shopping for tech stopped being fun the moment widespread component shortages drove up pricing on memory, storage, and every product that relies on those crucial components. While no relief is in sight—the memory shortage is expected to last through all of next year, and perhaps longer—sales provide an end-around to having to choose between skipping an upgrade or overpaying.

Even better, sales are not exclusive to flagship products that start from an already high place. The proof is in a couple of discounted devices we found that sit squarely in budget territory, and are now even more affordable. So, if you're on the hunt for a cheap laptop or a tablet, you're in luck.

Starting with the former, you can score the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 for a low $349.99 at Best Buy (save $280) right now. It's listed as Best Buy's deal of the day, and while we've seen this model go on sale numerous times in the past, we've never seen it sell for less than it is right now.

Obviously you have to adjust your expectations at this price range, but it's a decent setup for the money. In past years, you'd probably have to settle for a 720p HD display in budget territory, but not so here—the IdeaPad Slim 3 sports a 15.6-inch screen with a 1920x1080 resolution.

It's powered by an AMD Ryzen 5 40 'Mendocino' processor (4C/8T, up to 4.3GHz, 2MB L2 + 3MB L3 cache), which is based on the aging Zen 2 architecture. Those who like to pick nits will inevitably throw shade at buying a laptop based on an older chip, but keep in mind the aggressive price.

Other core specs include 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, so this really is more for casual and/or general purpose computing. But again, it's only $349.99.

If you're looking for a tablet, check out the all-new Amazon Alexa Tablet 8 that is not even a month old. Despite having just been released, it's already on sale, with the tablet discounted to $199.99 at Amazon (13% off, save $30).

That's not a life-altering savings by any stretch, but we're already in budget territory here.

The baseline model in Amazon's latest tablet line features an 8.7-inch display with a 1340x800 resolution (180 ppi) and is powered by the same MediaTek 8189 chip, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage. It also has a 5MP camera on the front, an 8MP camera on the rear, and USB-C connectivity with support for charging, audio, and 480Mbps data transfers.

One thing to note is that Amazon pivoted on the software side with its newest tablets—they now run a standard version of Android (Android 16 out of the box and Android 17 on the roadmap). This means you can download millions of apps from the Google Play Store without fussing around with sideloading.

Need more RAM or storage? The Alexa Tablet 8 with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage is on sale too, with Amazon marking it down to $249.99 (11% off, save $30). If you can swing the extra $50, that's the one we'd recommend. Note that for whatever reason, Amazon's listing shows it as having 4GB of RAM, but we believe that's a typo.