I bought the cheapest laptop on Amazon - here are 3 reasons why you really shouldn't do that

Date:
Thu, 25 Dec 2025 21:00:00 +0000

Description:
Can you get a decent Windows 11 laptop for a two-figure price? Probably not - but I'm going to waste TechRadar's money on it anyway.

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As any savvy online shopper will tell you, it's wise to be a bit selective about your purchases, especially when it comes to tech. It's like choosing a bottle of wine in a restaurant; the absolute cheapest option often isn't really the best value for money.

But with sites like Amazon and AliExpress awash with ultra-cheap laptops,
it's hard not to be tempted at times - especially with the current RAM crisis threatening to increase the prices of both desktop and laptop PCs in 2026. Sure, it seems unlikely that these budget machines could threaten any of the best laptops , but they cant be that bad, right?

This was the question I set out to answer, cheekily procuring a whopping 90 (around $100) of discretionary budget from the TechRadar coffers to waste - sorry, spend - on the cheapest laptop I could find at Amazon UK. The price
has gone up since, but the prices, pictures, and even brand names of these Chinese-made laptops can fluctuate on a frequent basis if you track Amazon closely. Cheaping out

At the time, before the Black Friday sales kicked off in November, the cheapest laptop was the Azeyou 11.6 Inch Laptop . Im not entirely sure if thats even the right product name, but thats all the Amazon listing is giving you - along with a basic spec sheet, AI-generated (or at least badly AI-translated) marketing one-pager, and some very mixed reviews. Its never a good sign when the majority of reviews are either 5 stars or 1 star. It's certainly compact, but this laptop was heavier than you'd expect for
something so small and basic. (Image credit: Future)

Before I get into the meat of why this thing is (unsurprisingly) not very good, one quick disclaimer. I was only looking for Windows laptops here,
since its actually possible to spend very little on a Chromebook and still
get reasonably good performance thanks to the resource-light nature of ChromeOS. Windows, on the other hand, is a far more powerful and versatile operating system, but takes a heavier toll on the system running it - which
is why super-affordable Windows laptops can be hard to find.

Unboxing my prize when it arrived after a lengthy two-week wait for shipping, I was initially hopeful. Granted, it didnt look amazing, but the plastic casing and screen hinge felt a bit sturdier than I had been expecting, and
the rose-gold finish looked quite nice. Unfortunately, my hopes were short-lived; here are the three main reasons I would strongly advise against spending your own money (or your employers) on a laptop like this. Its just slow

As soon as I booted up the Azeyou, we were off to a bad start. The Windows 11 setup process, which should take perhaps 20 minutes on the average modern laptop, took a whopping four hours and ten minutes. Even once I was in,
things werent loading fast; just opening the Edge browser from the desktop took several seconds, a process that takes place near-instantaneously on my desktop PC.

The problem here, as you might have guessed, is the absolutely abysmal specs on this laptop. The processor, an Intel N4020C, is not only five years old
but even when it launched was considered an ultra-budget chip for mass-produced office laptops. With a measly 4GB of RAM backing it up, trying to do more than one task at a time immediately caused system lag and stuttering, almost to the point of rendering the laptop unusable. At one point, the laptop sat stuck on this screen, unresponsive, for almost five minutes. (Image credit: Future)

Even in the present memory climate, 4GB of RAM for a Chromebook - let alone a laptop running Windows 11 - is a risky investment. Considering that Microsoft itself previously pushed for a new standard of 16GB RAM for laptops , these specs dont feel future-proof in the slightest. Even worse, the measly 128GB
of local storage is an eMMC drive rather than one of the SSDs found in many modern laptops, and its quite agonizingly slow. Moving and downloading files takes forever. Interestingly, there is a slot with a removable cover on the underside where you can install a proper SSD, which would probably help matters - but then again, you could just spend that extra money on a better laptop.

Now, Im tempted to lay the blame for this one with Microsoft, rather than whatever factory in China assembled this atrocity of a laptop. Windows 11 in its current incarnation is pretty horribly optimized for low-end hardware, as well as being rammed with unnecessary bloatware that clogs up your device.
But regardless of who should be considered liable, the experience for the end user here is simply bad. The keyboard feels awful

While the Azeyou admittedly wasnt the flimsy piece of garbage I was
expecting, it certainly didnt feel great to use. The outer casing is fairly robust, at least. Combined with the low price, that makes me think that maybe this could be a decent first laptop for a child.

A child also probably wouldnt have the first big problem I had with actually using the Azeyou, which was typing on it. Despite the chunky, ugly bezels around the 11.6-inch screen, the overall size of the chassis is small, and that means a small keyboard. The keys appear well-spaced at first glance, but theyre all scaled down just enough from the usual ultrabook standard to throw off your typing if youre used to a regular-sized laptop. I was constantly fat-fingering two keys at once - though Ill admit that as a 63 man with large hands, there are likely folks out there with daintier digits who wont have
the same problem.

However, those slender-fingered users will still have to deal with how horribly cheap this keyboard feels to type on. The barest bit of pressure makes the whole housing flex downwards noticeably; there isnt enough key travel, and every press feels spongy and unsatisfying. Ive typed on some crap keyboard over the years, but this is a genuine contender for the absolute worst. Notably, several negative reviews on the Amazon listing directly mention keys falling off after extended use. The touchpad is acceptable (though not particularly responsive to soft touches), but the keyboard is decidedly poor. (Image credit: Future) The screen is just bad

Look, Im not a monitor person. I have a guy for that (the lovely Jeremy Laird , who I met while working on Maximum PC magazine, and knows far more about computer screens than me). Its the one area of the computing industry that I freely admit just doesnt interest me much; Im quite easy to please when it comes to my screens, and Im generally not too bothered by a cheap laptop having an unimpressive display.

All that said, I hate the screen on the Azeyou. The resolution is described
as Full HD on the Amazon listing, but its not. To be exact, its 1366 x 768, which is sometimes described as HD Ready and was pretty popular for budget devices five or ten years back. But these days its pretty dated - and it shows. Full HD typically refers to 1920 x 1080 resolution or higher, and when I compared the Azeyou to an actual FHD laptop screen, the difference was immediately clear.

The color and contrast are visibly bad, too; everything looks washed-out and
a little grainy, and it actually gave me a mild headache after using it for work for a few hours. Granted, its possible the headache was stress-induced from how bloody slow everything was , but Im sure the crappy display wasnt helping. Please, do not buy this laptop

In conclusion, I cannot remotely recommend the Azeyou 11.6 Inch Laptop. Its just not a good product. Even the battery life, sometimes the saving grace of an underpowered system, is poor; my tests saw it fall short of six hours of continuous use, meaning it cant even make it through a full workday without needing to be plugged in - oh, and the power cable is a weird proprietary
one, too. No USB-C here. The port selection is poor, but inexplicably
includes a Mini HDMI port, which I haven't seen on a laptop in years. (Image credit: Future)

Unless you urgently need a Windows laptop and your budget cant possibly stretch into triple digits, I beg you to save up for a little longer and buy something with a brand name you actually recognise. I can practically guarantee 'Azeyou' will be non-existent as a brand this time next year, replaced by a new jumble of letters stamped on the lid of an identical laptop most likely made by the same Chinese company.

Consider a Chromebook from our list of the best cheap laptops instead, or
wait until sales events like Prime Day and Black Friday to scoop up a discounted model. Beg a friend to lend you some money or let you borrow their own laptop. Rob a bank! Okay, maybe not that last one, but seriously - do everything in your power to avoid buying this piece of tech trash.



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/computing/windows-laptops/i-bought-the-cheapest-lapt op-on-amazon-here-are-3-reasons-why-you-really-shouldnt-do-that


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