Recommendations for a small used laptop

Thinkpad X1 Nano. Great specs, approx. 920 grams, super lightweight. Decent CPU and RAM (I did some light video editing on mine and it's great), and a 2k screen (13 inch).

I'm using Debian on mine, works out of the box (like all Thinkpads, in my experience).

Generally, I would recommend getting an enterprise laptop such as Lenovo T or X series, Dell Latitude, or HP EliteBook. In that order.

Interestingly though, these models are supported by W11, because they’ve had various security features for years. If you want something specifically unsupported by W11, the selection is suddenly narrowed down to consumer-grade crapbooks. They should be cheap though, so might as well buy two while you’re at it.

Any used Thinkpad will work well for you, just search eBay with your price cap and screen size.

Specs aren't too important. I like my distros lightweight, and a web browser will be the most demanding thing it'll run.

web browsers are pretty fucking heavy these days, I think the minimum spec for an "ok" experience is a 3rd gen quad core "mobile" chip like the 3612qm or an 8th gen quad core "ultrabook" chip like the 8650u

Thinkpads are super durable and kind of fun. I got a bunch of T420s (nice) from my boss for free and they’re all running Mint fantastically, as well as some 90s games. (They are being used for the occasional LAN party)

The T420 is from around 2011, so if you spent money on one you could get a better one easy.

Thinkpad T480s with an i7 cpu. Lightweight, portable and useful.

The Pinebook Pro is unfortunately not a very good laptop. It's very slow, has a weird storage setup, and the hardware isnt 100% supported by any distro even now, years later. The battery also takes forever to charge and doesnt last all that long.

I get better performance on a Raspberry Pi 4 and even that is too slow for me

It was a cool idea and if the software support was there it might have become a very compelling laptop, but as it currently exists the PBP is not worth what it costs

Thinkpads were basically made for Linux, depending on your Budget you can get a Thinkpad X220, X230, T420 or T430 for small money - perfectly usesble machines and Linux (my experience is CachyOS & Arch) work out of the box.

For a bigger budget i could recomment the T480, it's still upgradeable.

And for a bigger budget i'd recommend a T14 GEN2

10-year old lenovo thinkpad unanimously wins, as expected

eBay Thinkpad all the way. T460-480 are what I usually go for. Easily less than 200 bucks.

Since people allready recommended Thinkpads and Elitebooks I can only add up on that.

If you don't mind thinkering a bit you can buy old cromebook for really cheap. You can install linux on them and they usually have pretty nice screen, even if specs could be lacking (but for linux and web browsing it would be fine)

As expected, ThinkPad. I have a Yoga X1, the stylus and touch works fine. But if you're installing Linux take great care of to have copious amounts of swap or swapfile because ram is low.

Here is a good resource for whether you can install another OS on a particular Chromebook

For under $200 you can either get a used thinkpad t series or a dell business notebook. You can also get an Intel mac for around that price. The difference in serviceability is often what can be done by you with a screwdriver set and guitar pick versus needing a hair dryer and plastic putty knife.

I have a Thinkpad X395 which I bought refurbished. I has average specs for a laptop, you can find it with up to 16 GB of RAM and a quite nice 1080p touchscreen (depending on the configuration). Also it may come with a fingerprint reader, an LTE modem or a Smartard reader. I don't know how serviceable it is because I have never opened it but you can easily remove the keyboard by unclipping some clips and undoing some screws, you don't have to open the case

I got a thinkpad E14 off of eBay for $400. There was a slight haircrack in the hinge, but it came with 40gb of ram 1tb ssd and amd ryzen 7730u I believe. I always recommend looking on eBay first, it's likely you can find a $1000+ laptop for $400 like I did.

I love thinkpad L480. Also, if you get a good deal then try getting Macbook 2017 Intel version. You could install Linux on that and it's quite light weight.

I got two laptops from local electronics recycling this past month. One of them is 2020 spec and just needed a charger and some dents smoothed out. Can't beat rescuing something that's going in the trash, sustainability wise. If you're going on the actual used market, Thinkpad like everyone else said.

I recently got a think pad from the prior generation, so like 2-3 years old. It's been good for most things, but I'm not trying to play the latest graphics heavy game on it either.

I like my Panasonic CF-RZ6 a lot, it has i5-7y57 with 8GB ram and mSATA 512GB SSD. 10" size and 1920x1200 display about ~700g, also has many USB3, RJ45, 3.5mm jack, HDMI and DSUB(!). Sadly the battery life is mediocre, parts are impossible to find. And it's generally hard as hell to find outside japan. I'm not in Japan but was very lucky to find one for about 150$USD in second hand market.

If you are super cheap like me, but enjoy well made machines try out an ancient macbook pro. I have a 2011 macbook pro 13" with the first gen (I think?) I5 CPU and 4gb ram. Got it from eBay, it used to belong to a school and someone ground the engraving off the lid, but there is a vinyl skin covering the damage.

It only cost me $40 Canadian, the battery lasts like new, and it came with a new charger. I installed arch Linux, on a new sata ssd, and its been great! WiFi was harder to get setup, but I figured it out. Can't get Bluetooth working...

I love that it has a DVD drive, many ports including Ethernet, SD card, enough USB.

Its slow, but keeps up with everything I do... Mainly use it for watching YouTube, watching my jellyfin library, listening to music, using telegram, light python projects, some web site development with Hugo, and I ssh into my main PC with it.

Depending on your budget, I often find there are good refurbished deals on semi-recent models on ebay. That's how I got my current laptop. Most business models will have upgradeable RAM/storage/wireless cards. Externally removable batteries have not been a thing on laptops in a long time, but replacement batteries for common business models should be available as long as you are okay with taking off the back lid, which it sounds like you are.

A quick look on ebay (Your local market may vary) suggests there are some decent deals on 11th-13th gen 13" HP/Dell/Lenovo business laptops in the $300-400 range. Maybe something like this HP 630 G10?

If your budget is less, the usual 8th-10th gen Intel business laptops are always a good option and usually go for $100-200, maybe even under $100 once you get into some of the lower spec or scratch-and-dent models (Also, yes, I know AMD is a thing, but businesses almost always use Intel in my experience). My travel laptop is an old 8th gen Acer Swift with a dent in the back lid, but it otherwise works fine and has handled many trips in my backpack. Maybe something like this Dell 5310 with a scuffed lid? I'm sure you can look around and find something which works for you.

I got a nice Dell Latitude 7390 for like 250€ a year ago. I usually just have an eye on the sales page of my local laptop refurbisher and go for the best Dell or Lenovo laptop in my price range. Since that's mostly devices returned from leasing by businesses, they're the more serviceable models than regular consumer models. But serviceability is somewhat limited these days. You'd have to check individually how many RAM slots are available (if any) and whether the BIOS accepts random wifi cards.

I love the Panasonic toughbooks. Most of them have a handle so they're great to carry around like a briefcase. Had mine in the boot during driver safety training, it got knocked around voilently, not a single scratch. Also put a SSD in, running it with pop OS since many years.

You could try to get a dell xps 13”. I currently have fedora installed on my xps 15 that’s about 11 years old and it’s been working pretty well. I’ve replaced the battery and changed storage on mine so they’re fairly serviceable. Built pretty sturdy and have great keyboards and trackpads. Good screens too.

I don't have any specific recommendations for you, but I will say that

• pretty much every modern Chromebook will be able to have Linux installed over ChromeOS. You might have to open it up and remove a write-protect screw.
• Linux is a surprisingly good platform for games these days, actually. Steam has done a lot of work to get it there.
• If you're wanting lightweight specs, you're probably going to find the best bang for your buck in an old Chromebook; however, I don't know if you'll see as many of those coming on the market, and you'll want to watch out for old school devices. Those things get worked over pretty hard.

Check thrift shops.

I've seen plenty of Chromebooks and older Windows laptops for $10-25.

MX is my preferred distro to put on them, though there are plenty of good, small distros.

Look for dell latitudes with 7th and maybe 8th gen Intel CPUs. Those are solid machines that aren't considered upgradable to win11. They also have removable RAM (DDR4 IIRC) so many can be upgraded to 32GB max.

While an old macbook air won't be serviceable, they are cheap, super portable, and you can replace the battery.

Try locally. Facebook marketplace is huge in the USA. It's a royal pain to sell tech offline, so you get good deals. Selection is worse so just broaden your search or be patient.

Business laptops are more rugged and serviceable. 4chan's /g/ has a thread for "thinkpad general" which is all the business laptops. (Mind the 4chan racism and transphobia.) I've found that Dells are far more common (and thus cheap) than comparable HPs or Thinkpads.

For some price comparison, I sold a 6th gen Intel Dell laptop with a 1080p screen for about $60. On ebay they run $40-$100.

I've had good luck with a couple Latitude 7280 laptops. Replaceable parts, with support for an NVMe drive. There's only one RAM slot, compared to the 7390 (I think), but a 16gb DDR4 SODIMM stick shouldn't be hard to find.