Best 17 Inch Laptop Under $500 In 2025

In this guide, we’ll recommend the best 17 inch laptop under $500, and we only give you three of the best high-performing options in the market.
But first, we’ll give you an overview of what to buy and what not to buy.
Online marketplaces are filled with dozens of laptops that highlight specs like 32GB RAM & 1 TB HDD, specifically in Amazon listing. You’ll see tons of 17-inch laptops that offer enticing pricing with the highest RAM and storage, but those are not ideal options for you. .
When you look under the hood, a laptop’s heart, the ‘processor’ will be much less powerful and of an old generation (sometimes 5 years old). This might be a nice choice when you want a laptop under $200, but for 500 bucks, they are utterly disappointing.
So, don’t just look at the RAM and storage. Make sure that the processor is the latest and is powerful enough to do all your tasks. (See our table below to see processor and other specs recommendations)
Another thing to watch out for in a 17-inch laptop is the display resolution. Usually, low-price 17-inch laptops are shipped with either HD (1280 X 720) or HD+ (1600 X 900) resolution, and neither is ideal. A 17-inch display will have more real estate, and when paired with the low-resolution panel, it will give low pixel density and slightly blurry images, making it harder to read or work for long periods. This might be a major issue for the elderly. So, we recommend that you get at least FHD resolution (1920 X 1080 Pixels).
Here are the specs we recommend you get in a 17-inch laptop under $500.

Specs	Buy	Don’t Buy
Processor	Intel – i3 or i5 processor from  11 generations or above generation, the higher the generation the better (eg. i3-1215U where 12 represents 12th generation) AMD – Ryzen 3 or Ryzen 5 processor from 5th generation or above (eg. AMD 7520U where 7 represents 7th generation)	Don’t buy a processor like Intel Pentium Silver or  AMD Athlon processor
RAM	Get a Minimum of 8 GB RAM.	4 GB RAM is a big no.
Storage	Always buy an SSD for fast bootup and performance during multitasking.	Say no to HDD.
Display	FHD (1920 X 1080 pixels)	Avoid HD and HD+ resolution

*Prioritize processor and display resolution; some laptops’ RAM and storage are upgradable. If not, pick a laptop with a minimum of 16 GB RAM.

Best 17 Inch Laptop Under $500 In 2025

1) HP 17.3

2) Asus VivoBook 17

3) Acer Aspire 5

1) HP 17.3

This HP laptop is one of the best value-for-money products with a roomy 17-inch display. It has a reliable processor and ample memory to run all your tasks without breaking a sweat. You also get a comfortable keyboard to type and a smooth trackpad for easy scrolling.

How is the Display?

One of the major issues with a 17-inch display is that text seems blurry and sometimes, pixels are more noticeable on the panel. This is due to bigger panels requiring more pixel density to produce clearer and crisp text. Thankfully, HP 17 is not affected by this issue. It has a 1920 X 1080 pixels full HD resolution that offers high-quality pictures and crisp text with minimal blur.

The brightness of the panel is admirable and allows you to work freely in dimly lit surroundings. The anti-glare coating ensures minimal glare when you work outside. The color accuracy is okay, though.

Let’s talk about performance

Inside this laptop lives an office-work-oriented processor, AMD Ryzen 5 7520,U and AMD Radeon graphics card. Both hardware are powerful enough to run day-to-day activities, including web browsing, Microsoft Office work, and running a couple of apps simultaneously. Moreover, you can edit basic photos and videos from its 16 GB RAM. In my own testing, I edited blog banners for a couple of my articles in Adobe Photoshop, the performance was acceptable. However, it has taken some time to open Photoshop, and during these tasks, the laptop roars like a jet engine. So, I wouldn’t recommend keeping it on your lap while working on heavy tasks.

The 16 GB RAM perfectly combines with the Ryzen 5 processor to maintain smooth performance for a long time and allows fast boot time and multiple tabs browsing without any major issues. There is also 512 GB of SSD to store data locally. The Integrated Radeon graphics card isn’t praiseworthy but not bad either. I haven’t tested any games on it (this is not a gaming laptop), but I can confidently say that it can run entry-level games at decent frame rates. But don’t expect games to run at 1080p.

Other features

The HP 17 is definitely heavy for the daily commute, given its larger 17.3-inch display. I had hoped for better or longer battery backup from the laptop, and it heavily disappointed me at that. You can expect only 6 hours of battery on normal tasks,s which is half of what Acer Swift and Dell Inspiron 16 have to offer with the same processor. The 720p webcam offers decent pictures, but the color looks terrible.

As far as ports are concerned, the HP offers two USB Type-A ports, one type-C port, one HDMI, and one headphone jack.

It’s hard to find the best 17-inch laptop under $500, but the HP 17-inch ticks most of the marks a decent laptop should offer, and you won’t have any major issues with this for everyday usage either.

2) Asus VivoBook 17

The Asus VivoBook 17 is amazing for routine tasks such as web browsing, binge-watching Netflix, running Office apps, and more. It has one of the best displays in the segment with great accuracy in colors. While it isn’t the most powerful notebook at the price, its portability, long battery life, and excellent display make it one of the best 17-inch laptops under $500. If you need a 17-inch laptop that you can take anywhere, this might be it.

Build Quality and Display

The Asus VivoBook build quality is decent, it has minor flex on both the keyboard and display. It has fully plastic built and easily gets dirty when you rest your fingers anywhere on the laptop. The display has minor wobbling too.

When it comes to display quality, the Asus VivoBook 17 is truly amazing. It has amazing color accuracy, great contrast, and acceptable brightness. Although viewing angles can be better, it’s still a great quality display for a 17-inch notebook.

Let’s talk about performance

The Asus VivoBook 17 houses an Intel core i3-1215U processor that performs excellently on normal activities. You can run multiple Chrome tabs, multitask on your favorite apps, or do heavy Excel work, this laptop won’t let you down. The integrated Intel graphics cards are as good as they get, ideal for basic graphic-related tasks.

The laptops performed well on PC Mark 10 Extended benchmark and score around 5000. This score is excellent for productivity and office-centric tasks. Though, we don’t recommend it for gaming and content creation. I have tried to run older generation Adobe apps such as Photoshop and Illustrator, they opened and ran fine (2021 version) but the newer version (2024) eats a lot of computing power and memory leading to slower productivity and occasional freeze.

Apart from this, the laptop has 16 GB RAM and 512 GB SSD. The 16 GB RAM is soldered and you cannot upgrade it in the future. Same with 512 GB of SSD, it isn’t upgradable but there is an empty slot for HDD.

Keyboard and Mouse

The 17-inch laptop offers plenty of real estate, allowing you to fully utilize most of the keyboard and trackpad. The keys have adequate space between them and also have a very small amount of flex. The keys are easy to type, and the layout is easy to get familiar with. The trackpad is also large making it easy to scroll through documents and social feeds. The palm rejections is excellent too.

Other features

The speakers are placed underneath the laptop and delivers loud audio, but lacks bass. The Webcam is okay and produces grainy images. When it comes to the battery, the Asus Vivobook 17 lasts around 8 hours on my test that includes a display at 50% brightness and I’m doing my daily activities, typing on Google Docs, watching Youtube Videos, and mindlessly browsing the web.

If you don’t want to push your budget too hard and want a decent-performing laptop with a 17-inch display, the Asus VivoBook 17 is a top-notch choice for you.

3) Acer Aspire 5

Acer’s Aspire is one of the iconic yet affordable series from a brand that offers excellent value for money. The Aspire 5 series comes with different display sizes 14, 15, 16-inch, and 17-inch. The 17-inch Aspire 5 comes heavy in both size and weight. It is a bulky machine that causes discomfort when you take it to commute, but it’s the only major drawback we’ve found when recommending it to a normal user. Leaving this drawback aside, the Acer Aspire 5 is hands down, the best bang for the buck.

Starting with the performance, Acer equipped it with the latest Intel core i5-1335U processor which not only excels at routing tasks but does the heavy lifting of content creation as well. You can edit photos and videos with great rendering speed. Although it’s not as great as the ‘H’ series processor, it still renders faster than most of the 17-inch notebook.

The 16 GB RAM is LPDDR5 which is 20% more power efficient than the previous generation and helps applications to load much faster and save some battery as well. It also has Thunderbolt 4 for fast data transfer. The 512 GB Gen 4 SSD offers ample space to store data. It’s worth noting that memory is soldered and there is no way to upgrade in the future.

On three laptops on our list, the Aspire 5’s cooling and thermal management is significantly better. It won’t heat up during normal tasks and keeps the laptop cool under mid-pressure, leading to a longer battery life.

The Aspire 5 Display & Build Quality

The Aspire 5 features a stunning 17-inch display with 1920 X 1080 pixels resolution, offering high pixel density and crispy text. The viewing angles are goo,d too. The colors are nearly accurate and ideal for content consumption. However, if you do editing where color accuracy important part of the job, you’ll be very disappointed with the Aspire 5 display output.

For normal users, this won’t be a major issue, and as I previously mentioned colors are nearly accurate. The contrast is rich and 300 nits of peak brightness makes it easier to work in a well-lit room.

The Aspire 17 built is fully plastic and looks bulkier. The build quality is above average with minor flex on the keyboard and some wobble on a hinge. Other than that I haven’t found any major issue with the build.

Keyboard, Battery, and the rest

Aspire’s keyboards aren’t the best in the industry, but they get the job done. They are spacious, have a good amount of traveling, and provide instant feedback. The keyboard in the 17-inch model comes with backlit features and allows three different backlight modes. I was expecting a large trackpad with the 17-inch model but found minor size improvement, leaving extra space not useful at all. It has good quality and fast response time, but a slightly bigger trackpad could make scrolling more efficient.

Battery life is mediocre and lasts around 6 hours before running out. It might decimate quickly if you maxed out on brightness and run heavy computing tasks, including editing and entry-level gaming.

With great performance and an affordable price tag, the Acer Aspire 5 17 top-notch choice when you search for the best 17-inch laptop under $500.