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These home office-worthy laptops are on sale for as little as $399

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If you’ve been told to work from home due to the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19), chances are you may have to kit yourself out with a new laptop so you can work remotely. You’ll want something that’s affordable yet won’t hold you back — and that’s where our laptop deals roundup comes in.

We’ve picked out three home office laptops that will be perfect for this period of enforced isolation. Each will let you get on with your work with minimal fuss, yet won’t break the bank in the process. Let’s take a look at the deals.

HP x360 14 Chromebook — $399, was $599

HP x360 14 Chromebook
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Most Chromebooks sit firmly at the budget end of the market; while they may get the job done, they often look and feel decidedly cheap. Not so the HP x360 14, though, which brings a notably premium edge to the table.

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While that often means you must fork out a little extra, that’s not the case right now. Best Buy has slashed the price of HP’s classy Chromebook by a tasty $200, bringing its price down to $399. That makes it ideal if you want an affordable laptop that looks the part while you work from home.

What do you get with this deal? The model in question comes outfitted with a dual-core Intel Core i3-8130U processor, 8GB of memory, and 64GB of eMMC storage. That’s a lot better than you’d normally expect to get with a Chromebook, most of which are often equipped with Intel Celeron or Pentium chips and 4GB of RAM.

Elsewhere, you get two USB-C ports, a USB-A port, a Micro-SD card reader, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. And as the x360 name implies, HP’s Chromebook can be flipped over and used as a 2-in-1 tablet. That gives it an extra degree of flexibility that could come in very handy if you want to make use of its touchscreen capabilities.

Asus VivoBook 15 — $440, was $470

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If you want to have a larger display at your disposal and need powerful specs to go along with it, the Asus VivoBook 15 is a great choice. Right now, you can get one for $440, knocking $29 off the price. While the saving isn’t as high as with the HP Chromebook, the deal itself is a corker, since you get so much power in return for your money.

For starters, the Asus VivoBook 15 comes with a spacious, immersive 15.6-inch 1080p display with a slimline bezel, giving you plenty of space to work in. While it’s not foldable like the HP, the extra screen real estate will be noticeable in your day-to-day work.

But it’s the internal specs that make this deal truly impressive. The model we’ve highlighted comes with an AMD Ryzen 3 3200U processor, a discrete AMD Radeon Vega 3 graphics chip, a whopping 16GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD. At this price point, that’s an unbelievable bargain.

Having so much memory will make multitasking an absolute breeze, which is essential if you need it to work from home. The roomy 256GB drive is also an SSD as opposed to eMMC storage, giving it an edge in terms of speed.

Throw in a good range of connections, including one USB-A port (3.1 Gen 1), two USB 2.0 ports, one USB-C port, an HDMI slot, and a headphone jack, and you should be covered no matter what peripherals you need to hook up.

MacBook Pro 13 (2017 renewed) — $750, was $1,300

MacOS Catalina Hands-on | Macbook Pro
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Getting a MacBook Pro doesn’t have to mean spending a small fortune. Thanks to this deal, you can grab Apple’s high-end workstation for $750, saving you a princely $549.

Apple’s MacBook Pro laptops are well known for their exceptional build quality and premium aesthetics; there’s no mistaking one of these devices. The all-aluminum construction is solid throughout, with no flexing or bending marring its design.

We also love the large Force Touch trackpad, which is the best in the industry. Its spacious design works with a large number of MacOS gestures, giving you plenty of ways to speed up your workflow. It also has no moving parts, instead simulating button clicks, meaning you can press anywhere on the trackpad and still get the same response.

This MacBook Pro deal comes with a dual-core Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 128GB SSD. The i5 chip is perfect if your work involves demanding tasks, and it will be able to chew through workloads in a way that the HP and Asus laptops can’t.

And while both the HP and Asus devices come with USB-C ports, they run at USB 3.1 Gen 1 speeds, which top out at 5Gbps. The MacBook Pro’s USB-C ports, meanwhile, run at Thunderbolt 3 speeds, which hit a massive 40Gbps.

While the MacBook Pro is a little pricier than the other laptops listed here, it’s the one to go for if you need a powerful processor and super-fast USB ports. It also features the largest savings here.

That’s a laptop sorted. Now why not check out the rest of the home office deals out there?

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Alex Blake
Alex Blake
Computing Writer
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