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

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 can’t 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 ...