So...that article I wrote yesterday about how basic $300 laptops and $200 tablets can run a lot of modern stuff and are surprisingly useable had me wonder, well...what if I looked for the worst products available? How bad off would you be if your (or more likely, your mom or something) picked out the worst products in like walmart or something. What would you be limited to playing?
I'm gonna be honest, I dont own any of the products I want to discuss, nor do I want to buy them, but I will ascertain, based on various metrics including comparisons to products i do own, and benchmarks, how bad off you'll be if you end up with any of these.
Windows laptop
So, I decided to try walmart for this one and see what was the cheapest, worst laptops you can get are and dear god, it's awful. I really forget how variable quality is at the low end sometimes. I normally filter out the junk and hone in on the best specs for the money, but there's a lot of crap. You often got laptops next to other laptops 5-10x as strong for only a few dollars more. Obviously getting an i7 for $300 like my dad did isn't normal, I really searched for that deal and had microcenter within driving distance, but yeah. You should at least get an i3 or ryzen 3 system with 8 GB RAM I would say these days? But on walmart's site, I find a lot of ewaste for like $150-200 with celerons and pentiums and athlons in them. For reference, those are all low end processors. Sometimes comically low end with how bad they are. I mean, not gonna poor shame, I know how tough things can get, but yeah for the most part there's no reason to buy the vast majority of this junk. It's ewaste. You can often buy something far better for like not a lot more money.
Anyway, sifting through the garbage, my goal today is to find the MOST garbage laptop I can. It should be noted I'm limiting myself to windows and its environment here. After all, the point is what is the worst gaming machine I can find and what you can play on it. There are a lot of awful chrome books too with what looks like really bad processors, but I wanna focus on windows first.
Anyway, eventually I found this monstrosity for $126. It has a celeron N4020 processor, a particularly old one (there were a lot of faster N4500s, N100s, N150s, and N200s), 4 GB RAM, 64 GB storage, and for an IGP, the N4020 has a UHD 600.
So first, let's focus on the processor. its a dual core, and it doesn't even have hyper threading. I havent seen CPUs that bad since like the early 2010s, then again anything below i3 level to me is just...terrible. I remember far cry 4 wouldnt even launch on a dual core after a bunch of people were hyping some pentium back in the day. And a lot of games from 2013 on just...thrash with horrible 1% lows framerate wise if they are on less than 4 cores. To compare it to my old 2011 laptop, it is at least better than that, and as I said, that thing felt like an Xbox 360 in practice, so maybe it could play games from before 2013 well?
4 GB RAM, here's the thing. New OSes dont do well with 4 GB RAM. I know my old laptop from 2011 is virtually unuseable on windows 10 because windows 10 liked to use 6 GB on my desktop when doing nothing at all. On 4 GB, my old laptop lagged and struggled to open anything. Was a decent experience back on 7 though, but yeah, 4 GB RAM hasn't been good since, again, before 2013 or so. After that I'd say you want a bare minimum, and opening task manager on my desktop, I'm currently using 8 GB RAM just sitting here with a few game launchers, discord, and a firefox window open with 4 tabs (mostly this blog and other links related to what I'm talking about).
GPU wise, it has the intel UHD 600, which is probably slower than the 630. Comparing the two, its like 30% as powerful. Now keep in mind, the 630 was 8800 GT territory and isn't too too bad. I mean, its very dated by modern standards, but again, going back to pre 2013 or so, it's sufficient for that. Comparing it to my old laptop chip, it's comparable to that from the few benchmarks available.
Now, keep in mind, I own a laptop like this. I bought it 15 years ago when i was a relatively midrange laptop that I got on sale at a good price. It had remarkable abilities for the time. Even could run BF3 which was brand new at the time. I ran it at 800x480 with 30 FPS, but hey, beggars can't be choosers, it was a marvel to see it run at all.
However, I stopped using it after around 2015ish mostly. it got too slow. It couldnt run any new games after 2012-2013 at all well. And after W10 pushed itself on everyone, it became so slow i hated just turning it on. And after that, I just got into tablets and mobile devices instead. I kinda gave up on the idea of a budget "gaming laptop" because of how poorly tech like this ages (also why i havent been keen to get a steam deck, it's very comparable to what this laptop was at the time and I expected it to age the same way, it has admittedly aged a bit better, but not a ton better, so...yeah).
But yeah. Would I recommend buying something like this in 2025? No. it's a horrible experience. If it's anything like that 2011 laptop, it'll take 5 minutes to boot, be unresponsive when you click on anything, and honestly, again, youre gonna be stuck with at most ps3/360 ports. Looking it up online, here's a playlist of YT videos with this CPU/GPU combo and its...worse than my old 2011 laptop was. Literally, looking at how it handles stuff like BF3, COD4, and stuff like that, I can attest that my AMD laptop from 2011 is faster than this at gaming.
Why would it be worse than the AMD one? If I had to guess, drivers. AMD has made GPUs for decades now whereas before intel Arc, all they had were IGPs, and despite making excellent CPUs, they often made bad GPUs and had bad drivers. I know in 2013 I recommended an intel HD 4000 laptop to a friend (comparable experience to this) and he had trouble running some games I could run simply because intel drivers sucked. Yeah at this level, I'd highly recommend buying AMD over intel when possible, just to get a better IGP. Normally with low end laptops like this the IGP is the big bottleneck with gaming as the rest of the specs are at least decent, but intel IGPs really fall on their face sometimes, which is why I'm kinda biased against them with GPU/IGP related purchases for gaming, even if they offer excellent products otherwise for the most part.
AMD CPUs historically have been fairly mid (although are decent now), but again, when buying a laptop like this, it doesn't matter. Sometimes its better to get a slightly weaker CPU to get good IGP performance. Again, what's gonna bottleneck your system is your GPU mostly.
And RAM...4 GB RAM is awful and I know it held me back on my 2011 laptop at times, but yeah.
Just...don't buy products like this. Again, always go for at least intel i3 or Ryzen R3 with 8 GB RAM these days if you want something like....not COMPLETELY awful. Again, at budget prices, you got a lot of options, although again, it's better to spring for something for like $300 and not end up with ewaste. If I were to buy something cheap from walmart right now, just looking at the options, spend a bit more and go for something like this or this. Something around the $300 mark that isnt awful. Which would I go for between those two?
Well, intel wise the CPU is a little better. AMD wise the GPU is better though, and keep in mind what I said about drivers. AMD aint the best at supporting their products long term, but they tend to be more functional for gaming in practice. Either way, the intel one is cheaper so the two are appropriately priced. id probably say is worth $60 for better and more consistent GPU performance though.
What would these machines be able to do?
Well, not a ton, see how it falls on its face in these games, but many of them are rather demanding AAA games.
Youre probably better off spending an extra hundred on a steam deck if youre serious about budget gaming, and forgoing the budget laptop experience altogether. But if you have to have a laptop, well, this is gonna destroy the chip from the cheap one. Notice how youre paying around 2-3x the price and getting 6x the performance? Low end be like that. Avoid low end.
Really, I think the best lesson from all of this is "just get a steam deck, bro...".
Either way, the worst of the worst can at least get you xbox 360 level performance roughly, with a more modern laptop being....not all that terrible. I mean, it's not great, but it's not terrible....
Anyway this is why i just switched to mobile devices.
Speaking of which, what about Chromebooks?
Chromebooks
ChromeOS seems a lot more limited gaming wise. It's not designed for gaming, although it's apparently able to do android gaming. Chromebooks are cheap, affordable, and while probably better than an ewaste laptop for general uses, are probably less capable of gaming. Apparently PC games are available through a compatibility layer, although given the low end nature of these systems, they probably won't run well.
In terms of the specs, at the low end you get the same host of celeron processors that low end windows laptops can run, and I'd expect game compatibility to be worse than in a normal windows environment. However, I did manage to find a chromebook with an even worse CPU than in the windows ones, bringing us to new lows in performance.
So this thing has a N3350 processor, which is this much worse than the N4020 of the windows one. Graphically, they perform about the same, with the HD 500 in the chromebook being worse than the HD 600, but not that much worse. Still, you can't afford to lose power at this level.
Now to be fair, I know very little about chromebook environments, so on actual gaming performance, Id prefer to let videos do the talking, however, looking at videos I cant find this specific specs configuration, with videos talking about bad chromebooks still having better specs than this, and being limited on storage anyway. Still, just to compare it to say, my samsung s6 lite, on the android side, it looks comparable. Although on CPU it seems worse than the samsung exynos chip. Given the CPU was my biggest bottleneck in games like COD mobile, that doesn't bode well.
It also barely has any storage at all. So...to answer the question what would it take for me to do browser gaming rather than actual PC gaming? Probably this thing. I don't even think I would do mobile gaming on this. Like, again, I wouldnt even have enough storage for games with its pathetic 16 GB storage. I havent used a tablet with 16 GB storage since my original memopad 7 from 2014, and that can't run decent mobile games these days. Heck, I havent used a PC with 16 GB storage since my original 90s era desktop which died in 2002.
So yeah. We're scraping the bottom of the barrel here.
As far as what a good chromebook looks like, well it follows the pricing of windows. You can even get like intel i3 ones, although at that point I'd just want windows for gaming anyway. Still, say I settled on a middle ground and went for this. $180 for a CPU that's 2.5x as strong, and a GPU that's 4x as strong. I could probably like, at least do SOMETHING on that. For PC gaming, it can at least handle the basics in a windows environment at least. Not amazing, but like...better than the crap we've been talking about.
Apparently on the android side, it won't even let this guy download games, so....yeah. Chromebooks seem to be a special level of gamer hell. If youre a parent who wants to get a system where your kid cant play any games and you wanna make them miserable (or just focus on school), get a chromebook. Apparently the things are useless. Not saying really dedicated people cant find way to jailbreak the things. but yeah.
With that said, let's focus on android tablets now.
Android tablets
This is the space I retreated to for low end and portable gaming. I dont do the steam deck, as its kinda expensive and not very portable or good for what it does for the price (although better than laptops). I dont do laptops because they're even worse, and often even less powerful. Chromebooks are hell. But android? Well, android has the google play store, games meant for cheap and lower end devices (including 3D games), and yeah it's the best bang for your buck for the lower end. Even something like a $200 tablet like a Samsung A9+, which I own, is pretty capable of running most stuff Id wanna run. And if you wanna invest in an actual gaming handheld for $200, you got a lot of options.
Still, given how powerful my older samsung s6 lite is, and how it competes with the above celerons. I suspect we'll approach new levels of low here today. On the one hand, gaming on android is like gaming on a curve, you can go a lot further given how undemanding the OS is and how the games are designed for this hardware level, but on the other hand...ewaste exists on android too.
The problem when I look at cheap android tablets, the market is flooded full of machines that dont have their specs published honestly. Theres a lot of tablets with chips that aren't even named, and RAM amounts that include a page file off of your drive so youre getting WAY less RAM than you're supposed to. As such, it's hard to properly evaluate them, especially if I do not own them, and I aint buying ewaste just to make this article.
Still, there's a few for under $60 which have 2 GB RAM, and an unnamed quad core processor, probably an allwinner model. I would not recommend buying these, but again, I'm trying to find the worst tablets I can.
Looking up allwinners on google I get:
Allwinner quad-core processors are cost-effective System-on-Chips (SoCs) featuring four ARM CPU cores (often Cortex-A7 or A53) and integrated GPUs, designed for entry-level to mid-range devices like Android boxes, tablets, IoT gadgets, and smart displays, offering capabilities like 4K video decoding (H.265/HEVC) and supporting various connectivity options at low price points. Key examples include the A33 (Cortex-A7), H3 (Cortex-A7), A64 (Cortex-A53), and H618 (Cortex-A53), powering budget-friendly hardware with features like 4K video and Android/Linux support.Key Characteristics:
- CPU Cores: Primarily ARM Cortex-A7 (older, more power-efficient) or Cortex-A53 (newer, better performance).
- GPU: Often integrates Mali-400 MP2 or Mali-G31 MP2 for graphics.
- Video Support: Hardware decoding for H.265/HEVC (4K @ 30fps) and H.264 (1080p @ 60fps) is common.
- Target Markets: Entry-level tablets, smart home devices, OTT/Android TV boxes, automotive systems, and single-board computers (SBCs).
- Cost-Effectiveness: A major selling point, making quad-core performance accessible in budget devices.
Basically, they're junk. I know the mali 400 and the mali g31 are really outdated chips I saw common in budget tablets like...a decade ago. I mean just comparing it to my samsung s6 lite 2020, we're talking 5% of the GPU power. With it refusing to run a lot of benchmarks at all. Dont buy devices like this guys. I mean, at this point, youre gonna have a lot more problems than not running games, these devices won't run much of anything at all. They will probably lag doing anything. Don't buy these kinds of devices.
Conclusion
So yeah, I'll be blunt. Dont buy the worst electronics you can. While you can occasionally get deals at the low end if you know how to shop and know what youre looking for specs wise, you can get good deals, for the most part, the actual bottom end of the market is an endless void of ewaste. You'll get something that not only won't game, it won't even run smoothly out of the box for the most part. It will be a terrible and frustrating experience. You probably won't even be able to run those browser games that I bashed.
Still, if you know what to look for, and are maybe willing to spend a bit more, you should be able to find something decent.
With laptops, I'd spend at least $250-300 for windows, and aim for at least an i3/r3 with 8 GB RAM. Anything with 4 GB RAM, or celeron/pentium/athlon processors are more or less certified ewaste at this point in my view. If you really know what you're doing and really patient with sales, you might even score something decent for $300-400 like an old i5/i7/e5/r7. You probably wont see laptops with dedicated GPUs until you hit like $500 on sale and those go quickly, but yeah.
Honestly, I'd probably just say buy a steam deck, but I understand people would rather buy a device for like school or office work too and non gaming tasks.
With chromebooks, just...don't. They're not meant for gaming and seem to be designed for sadists (or parents/school administrators) who dont want you to game on the things at all. While they should run stuff off of google play, a lot of the time they wont be compatible with actual games, and have limited storage. They make ideal work/school machines though due to their low cost and locked down nature (as in, they're made for people who DONT want you to game on them).
With android tablets....the sub $100 market is a black pit of awfulness. Just avoid. Still, in the $100s at least you should be able to score like a 4 GB Samsung A9+ or a cheap Lenovo tab based on my recent research and near $200, you can get the better 8 GB version of the A9+. Still, looking now it looks like the A11+ is out and is a bit better, but also more expensive ($220-250 for the 6 GB model). Yeah, i'd buy a A9+ on sale or a A11+ honestly. Just avoid the junk of the low end market.
Assuming you shop smartly and get something that's...not terrible, a world of gaming is open to you. A samsung tab should run most apps on the play store, although might not play the most demanding ones. And again, with PCs, something capable of running games at least through the mid point of gen 8 should be doable, and if you take my "just get a steam deck" advice, pretty much all of gen 8 minus multiplayer games, as well as early/lighter gen 9 titles.
Just...for the love of god avoid chromebooks. I'll have to research them more but again, they're literally made by the people who want cheap work machines that are extremely barebones and locked down on gaming. So yeah, I guess at the extreme low end gaming hell still exists. Which is the point of this. Just...how bad can it get? Now we know. Pretty fricking bad. Shop smartly, people.
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