Picking up a high-performing laptop on a budget has always been a bit of a squeeze, but thanks to ever-cheapening hardware and the introduction of Chromebooks, it’s not that hard anymore to find a device that suits you perfectly for under £500. All the big names now (well, apart from Apple) have something to offer in the budget range and there’s even laptop/tablet hybrids that put up a good fight in the budget department. Read our list for some of the best budget laptops on offer in 2014.

Acer Chromebook C720

Chromebooks are small, sleek and fast to boot up. The latest offering from Acer brings a long battery life, the Chrome OS and 32GB of local hard drive storage (Google throws in 100GB of free Drive storage too).

The C720 has an 11.60inch screen, 1,366×768 resolution and a 10-point touch screen that works well with games like Angry Birds. Don’t mistake this for a toy though, with the weight (2.8 pounds) and long battery life of around 7 hours, you can get some serious word computing power out of this, and all for a bargain price of around £200.

Specs:

Dimensions: 20.2 x 28.8 x 1.9 cm

Series: Chromebook C720-29552G01AII

Colour: Iron

Screen size: 11.6 inches

Processor: 2 1.4GHz Intel Celerons

RAM: 2GB

Hard drive: 16GB

Operating system: Chrome

Average battery life: 8 hours

PRICE: £200