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With America's long-term (and even short-term) economic prospects shifting on Eric Cartman-like whims, some internet providers have begun offering multi-year price guarantees to provide a little stability amid the chaos. A couple of weeks after Verizon introduced a three-year price lock, Comcast has followed suit with a five-year pricing guarantee for new Xfinity residential customers.
On the bright side, the deal isn't linked to an annual contract requirement. But, as you might expect from a massive broadband company, there's plenty of fine print.
First, the offer only applies to 400 Mbps home internet plans with one year of Xfinity Mobile Unlimited (one line) — a package that
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There's one fly in this ointment, though. The laptop is refurbished and it's being sold by a third-party seller on eBay. They're including a two-year Allstate warranty, which is nice, but such warranties can sometimes be a bit of a hassle to actually use when needed.
That foible aside, I really can't overstate how good of a deal this is if you're looking for a super-cheap laptop that can handle Windows 11 smoothly. Both the Ryzen 5 processor and the DDR4 RAM are on the older side, but it should still be more than enough to run modern browsers without a hitch, including streaming high-res video and a little light gaming (thanks to AMD's excellent integrated graphics).
And the laptop isn't hurting for ports, with two USB-C ports (which can technically charge the laptop but apparently it's a bit iffy), two USB-A ports, and full-sized HDMI. The screen is not touch-enabled, but it is a 1080p IPS panel. That's good enough for me.
This isn't showing as some kind of special promotion or timed sale on eBay, so this HP laptop deal might last a while. That said, super-deep discounts on inexpensive tech tend to make them sell quickly. If you've been waiting for an affordable, decently powerful Windows laptop below the $500 mark, you might want to snag this one quickly.
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Throw in a pair of Touch Plus controllers and a free 3-month trial of Meta Quest and this $269 Amazon deal gets even better.
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At long last, NVIDIA has announced its budget GeForce RTX 50-series, but don't expect any major discounts over the previous models. The RTX 5060 will start at $299, just like the RTX 4060 did when it launched two years ago. Of course, it's unclear how many people will actually be able to nab it at that price, given the volatile nature of the GPU market and further fluctuations from the Trump administration's sloppy tariff deployment.
NVIDIA is also launching two variants of RTX 5060 Ti GPUs with 8GB and 16GB of VRAM, priced at $379 and $429, respectively. Those faster GPUs will arrive on April 16, but we don't have a firm date for the RTX 5060 besides a vague May release.
While NVIDIA touts the typical performance improvements, the real selling point of the RTX 5060 and 5060 Ti will be their full support of DLSS 4 upscaling and 4X multi-frame generation. In my reviews of the RTX 5070, 5070 Ti and 5090 cards, I was surprised how much DLSS 4 boosted frame rates while still delivering excellent image quality. But it'll be interesting to see if that technology will see much benefit from slower cards like the 50
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Whether you need a new laptop for work, school or personal use, it can be overwhelming to start the shopping process. There are so many solid laptops available now with excellent feature sets that determining what you really need, versus what's just nice to have, can be difficult. The good thing is that you do have a ton of choice, with laptop makers including Apple, Dell, ASUS, Lenovo and others making solid machines for all kinds of use cases at various price points.
Out of all of the notebooks we've tested and reviewed recently, we consider Apple's 13-inch MacBook Air M4 to be the best laptop for most people, and this is still the case for our top picks to start off the new year. It's powerful enough to handle most tasks (even light video editing); it has a great screen and built-in speakers; and its battery could last over 18hours (depending on what you're doing, of course). The MacBook Air M4 is also one of the lightest and thinnest systems we've reviewed, and it's dead silent, thanks to a fanless design.
Of course, not everyone wants a MacBook, and there are excellent Windows laptops and Chromebooks out there, too. Windows systems offer a range of configurations, from budget to high-end UHD screens with stunning IPS panels that boast high nits for vivid brightness. Chromebooks, on the other hand, tend to be more affordable and are great for users who mostly work online. Whether you need a powerhouse for creative work, a compact system for note-taking, or a laptop that can handle family movie night, there's something for everyone in today's laptop market.
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Best laptops of 2025
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