How to buy a laptop when everything’s expensive | The Vergecast

Welcome back to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of trying to buy a computer when it's impossible to buy a computer. I'm David Imel. If you've been listening to the Vergecast for a while, you know that David Pierce has been issuing many, many warnings about how you should buy all of your tech as soon as possible before the RAM shortage makes everything way more expensive. And if you ignored those warnings, I'm sorry. But if you're in the market for a new laptop, we are here to help. So today we're talking to The Verge's laptop reviewer, Antonio G. Di Benedetto, for another installment of our ongoing series, The RAMageddon Survival Guide. His recommendations are coming up. But first, here's what's happening on The Verge today. This is 90 Seconds on The Verge for Thursday, August 27th, 2026.

Apple has formally announced its September iPhone event, where it's expected to unveil the new iPhone 18 Pro series of phones, a new Apple Watch, and most importantly, its first foldable smartphone. The event will take place at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time on September 9th. Hopefully, we'll see a new Apple polishing cloth ultra. Microsoft has announced a new feature that will allow Xbox owners to digitize their existing game collection. Owners will receive a digital entitlement tied to that specific disc. So, if they sell the game, they'll no longer have access. Similar to real life, Microsoft also started selling a limited edition translucent Xbox Series X for $899, which sold out in minutes, so it seems like they're doing okay.

And finally, game developer and Playdate manufacturer Panic has started issuing tariff refunds for customers. The company charged a tariff while the government was illegally charging to import goods. And after being overturned by the Supreme Court, the government was forced to issue tariff refunds. We've seen refunds ranging from $12.36 to $23. So, check your email if you bought anything from the company. Panic is one of the first companies we've seen to actually start giving people their money back after these illegal tariffs. So, hopefully we start to see this happen more in the future. You can read more at theverge.com. That's 90 Seconds on The Verge for Thursday, August 27th, 2026.

RAMageddon is coming for us all. Antonio, welcome back to the Vergecast.

Hey, hey, good to be here and happy to talk laptops even though laptops kind of suck right now.

They do. They do. First of all, I'm very excited that we get to talk because we have known each other since before both of us were working at this place. So, that's kind of cool. On a scale from 1 to 10 in terms of bleakness, in terms of despair, where are people right now who are in the market for a new laptop?

I love the despair scale of 1 to 10. Maybe I can suggest that the next time we talk about restructuring our reviews program. But where does it rank on the despair meter?

Despair meter?

I think our despair meter is probably at like an eight, and I have to give some wiggle room that it can just go higher and just get worse. But things have been rough obviously across laptops. Like prices have risen. Apple raised all their prices. You know, we've seen new laptops come out that get price increases, or they come in at a higher price than expected, or they get increases shortly after they come out, or right as they came out. I think one of them, like an Asus ZenBook A16, it was $100 more the day it came out than what Asus was telling us. And it's just weird things happening. And then you have like the Framework Laptop 13 Pro. The review unit hit my door, and within a week before the review was going to come out, the price of that exact SKU went up $800.

$800.

Yeah. Like what is happening? You know, things that were affordable-ish are just not feeling so affordable anymore, and anything higher-end is just getting ludicrous in some cases.

Yeah. So, you've been reviewing a lot of laptops recently, and I just saw an article from you called 'An Okay Laptop with 16 GB of RAM Is Better Than This Nice Laptop with 8 GB of RAM.' Can you explain that a little bit? Because, you know, there have been like many eras of laptops, and the MacBooks came out and people said, 'Oh, you don't need 16 GB of RAM.' And now you kind of do. Is that just a Windows thing or what's up with that?

Okay, long short is it kind of is a Windows thing. Like I know some people get angry about that or feel differently. Obviously everyone has different use cases, but you know, we'll just put a caveat, pin in the whole like the MacBook Neo works with 8 GB of RAM and it's passable and it's a very good laptop with it. It's maybe not going to last as long as something that already comes with 16 GB of RAM and you get more headroom.

With that laptop you're speaking of, that's a Windows laptop. That's the HP OmniBook 316. So, I mean, it's like $500-ish. It's one of those because a lot of Windows laptops, they have an MSRP that they sometimes just never sell for. So, that laptop might really have some secret MSRP of like a thousand bucks or something, but that's maybe only on HP's website and it never actually sells for that price.

That thing is constantly on, constantly just being sold by Walmart and Amazon for like 500-ish. Like sometimes it actually dips below 500. Okay. And it's nothing amazing. I think I wrote in the review, like there's really nothing here to write home about except that it's 2026 and this comes with 16 gigs of RAM and a 512 gig SSD, not even 256. And it's a base-level Snapdragon X chip, so it's Windows on ARM, so there's all the caveats that come with that. You know, it's definitely not going to play many games at all. And there's maybe some now, you know, it's pretty rare now, because Windows on ARM has gotten pretty good, but some apps might not be fully compatible or ideal to use with it, but for the most part, it's like it's a fine laptop. Are the speakers good? No. Is the screen really nice? No. It's big, though. It's big and cheap, and people like big cheap screens, right?

So it's kind of fine as long as you don't mind some plastic creakiness. I think the people that are going to spend that price, they're just kind of already used to that maybe.

Yeah. We're not asking for much out here. We're just asking for something that it can actually run and doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

Exactly.

How do you think that HP can get away with selling a computer for this price when everybody else is upcharging their laptops by so much, especially with this much RAM?

I genuinely don't know. I'm wondering if they've just forgotten that it's at that price still. It did come out this year. I don't know. But I think I also wrote in that review that it's like maybe this is just a matter of time before the price rises on this too. Or it just starts to fluctuate more. And I mean we already saw, like I said, it dipped into the 400s at one point. Maybe that doesn't happen anymore and maybe then it starts to be instead of like 520-ish, it's like 550, 580. I don't know. You know, it's like not all of this stuff happens in an instant. So it can be very hard to track. And the people who are going to see it the most are the ones who are day-to-day checking because they're shopping maybe over the course of a few weeks or a month or something like that for their laptop. And if you see a price change on you, that's the worst feeling. It's awful.

Yeah. Generally, right now, if I was in the market for a new laptop, obviously, I'm probably not going to want to buy a new one because it seems untenable to afford new computers right now. What do you think is the best route? Because there's used obviously, but the used prices are probably going up because the new prices are up. Is it refurb, used? You know, your local Facebook Marketplace. What do you think is the best route?

Facebook Marketplace. I mean, like, look, you can always maybe some people can find some sweet deal locally or, you know, someone off, but I just don't think it's worth it. You're doing a lot of legwork to maybe save not that much. Yeah. With stuff like that. I think when it comes to refurbs, you know, usually the safe bet with refurbs is go to a trusted retailer. And a lot of times it's actually direct from manufacturers. Apple's refurbs are practically new. Like that's like, you know, you bought the CPO Mercedes or something. And it's practically a new car. It's practically a new laptop. And it comes with a warranty and everything. And Lenovo sells a lot of refurb ThinkPads. Like so you can get stuff coming from like on the Windows side, things that were in business fleets that are from a few years ago and you can save some good money. They're not always going to be like dirt cheap unless you go much older. Because those laptops, like maybe some of them, like Lenovo ThinkPads, can easily be like $2,000 plus brand new. They're built like a tank and they can last a very long time, but you know, depending on where your budget is, you may have to backtrack far enough that you're getting like an older Intel chip, for example, that these days is just not the same kind of battery life that we're used to seeing on modern chips. And it might be okay if you're the type of person that just leaves your laptop plugged in all day. Maybe that's fine, too. But there are other places, like actually some sellers on eBay do a lot with refurbs and used sales. Ideally you want something that's a trusted seller and has a warranty. And surprisingly, actually, Acer has a very good eBay store and it's just where they channel their refurbish through. And it's not just laptops. You can also get monitors and stuff like that. And it's Acer. A lot of it's budget-oriented. Some of it's like you wouldn't want to touch because it's old or whatever, but like if you look every so often, you might find something good. And then there's obviously Best Buy. Best Buy sells lots of refurbs. They sell open-box items. I bought a gaming laptop back in the pandemic as an open box and at the time it was actually a great deal by just saving a couple hundred bucks on something that was already discounted. It's like I maybe saved like $400 to $500 then on something that would have been a little tougher to swallow if I bought it new.

So do you think the best channel for most of these things, because most of these manufacturers don't directly sell you computers, right? Like a lot of people buy their computers on eBay. A lot of people in my day-to-day life have actually hit me up to ask about services like Back Market. That seems to be an industry that's kind of popped up recently. They certify these repairs, these refurbs. Do you trust those sites? Like what do you think about those?

I haven't used Back Market. I only know a little bit about it. And I think it's just one of those things like you have to be, it has to be a bit buyer beware everywhere and anywhere. And you know, use your wits. The cliche of if it seems too good to be true, it probably is, still holds true. Like you know, if I remember years ago, when I was in school and buying camera equipment, it's like, oh, how does this random site have this for a couple hundred? It's like a $2,000 lens. And it's like, well, that's because it's fake. You know, that's just a scam. So if you see something scammy or see something weird, just avoid it. Just don't. And you have to kind of come to terms with the fact that in some of these cases there may not be a very good deal to get. But you can rest assured that most likely if you buy when you need right now, and if you determine that you really need that upgrade now, or you've got a kid in your household going to college or stepping up to high school and they need a laptop, they're not going to get anyone assigned to them. Then you got to pull the trigger. I think you know, just know that there's a good chance it might just get more expensive from here. So you're probably maybe you're just getting a deal even at MSRP in some cases. Tell yourself that. Just tell yourself and just you know, we can make ourselves feel better however we try.

Yeah, I mean on that note, like a lot of people who might be buying their first gaming laptop or their first workhorse laptop, they probably are wondering if the performance of these computers has actually gone up significantly in the last few years, right? Because they might be looking into used computers. They might be looking into computers from 3 or 4 years ago. Do you think that it's important to buy a newish model now or how far back do you think you can go before the performance starts degrading enough that it's just not worth it anymore?

Okay, so I'm going to say some broad strokes. I think for like, let's look at thin and light and productivity laptops real quick. Basically anything Apple, if you're getting an M-series chip, you're mostly fine, right? Like I know plenty of people that still use M1 MacBook Airs. I see folks in our comments on reviews saying like, my M1 MacBook is still going great, and that's awesome. Like it's still a very workable laptop. And so I think generally Apple, if you got M-series, you're probably good for a while. If you got an M-series with 8 GB of RAM, 256 gigs of storage, and it's like an M1, it's like, okay, well, how much runway do you have is the question. I think that's what it kind of comes down to. When you buy, you're buying an older one, it's just like buying a used car, right? Like picture like your odometer has already been run up a bit. How long is it going to last you before you start to feel the pain of maybe that's limited RAM or that slightly older chip? When it comes to Intel, the last-gen Lunar Lake chips are actually very good and a very nice balance of efficiency and power. Can do a little bit of gaming if you're not asking it to do very much. Those are like, if you can find a good Lunar Lake deal, do it. I love Intel Lunar Lake laptops for the most part as the chip. And it's kind of a similar story with AMD's Strix Point. Okay. But then also with the Snapdragon laptop, Snapdragon X, there's now a Snapdragon X2 generation and the X's are pretty fine, especially if you want a lot of battery life in a Windows laptop. They are not the best with graphics, but ultimately you're getting a very efficient and powerful enough laptop for everyday productivity stuff. Yeah, those are all like the last few years. Once you go back farther, like Intel Alder Lake, that's where things start to kind of get a little bit fishy. We're like, okay, that's still a good chip. I believe that was 12th-gen off the top of my head. And that's where like though battery life is going to not be the same. Like we're getting spoiled now by Apple, Intel, AMD, Qualcomm all offering good to great battery life in a lot of cases, except for obviously big gaming laptops that are not meant to even run on battery. So yeah, if you're picking any of those, you're probably pretty good. And then when it comes to gaming, I think you could maybe go as far back as like, let's just simplify it and talk like Nvidia RTX GPUs.

Yeah, that's a little simpler when we're talking about gaming specifically. Yeah.

Yeah. So like, you know, obviously there's a 50 series now. You're spending a minimum of $1,000 even to get into like an RTX 5050, right? Baseline. I recently reviewed the HP, well HyperX, but HP owns them, HyperX Omen 15, which is a pretty fine entry-level gaming laptop, but it's just one of those things that it kind of sucks that they used like an $800 laptop that you can get sometimes for a little cheaper and now it's like I think it was like 1,200 or something, or just over a thousand. Maybe you get around a thousand-ish when it's on sale or something. So, you don't need 50 series and I was like the 40 series stuff is still very good. You're just missing out on like the latest Nvidia DLSS stuff in like multi-frame gen. That's probably fine. Ask yourself what games you want to play on it. You know, like are you looking to play like indie games? Like are you playing Fortnite?

We're having a revolution right now, you know? A lot of people are playing indie games right now.

Yeah. And it's like that plays on like so much, that stuff can play on a potato, you know? So, it's like don't stress it too much. But if you want to be at the cutting edge of like whatever the latest, you know, game with ray tracing and like if you want to play Crimson Desert at like max settings, I'm sorry, you need like a really beefy machine. Yeah, you know, so or you just have to learn to compensate with playing in 1080p, playing on medium to low settings, not having all the fancy stuff, but if you want a workable frame rate, okay. But for gaming, I think even a 30 series may be viable if you get a really good deal, but I would stick 40 series for now. And you know, ideally, so you have again, you're a little more, just a tiny bit more future-proof.