On Thursday, 4 December, we tried to help a club member who wanted to buy a Windows 11 laptop for €300. All he could find online were “no-name” Chinese brands of which he was suspicious.
We discussed whether it would be wise to buy any tech at this time of year with”Black Friday” (week) and Christmas offers being promoted all over the place. This is the period during which companies get rid of surplus and old stock...and there are always the cowboys about. On the other hand, RAM prices may be on their way up next year, with AI data centres driving the market.
We looked at a recent review: “The best Windows laptop in 2025: our picks for every budget” https://www.techradar.com/news/best-windows-laptop#section-the-best-windows-laptop-overall – but the “budget” machine turned out to be over €500.
Amazon shopping didn’t list any named brand laptops around the €300 price point. We checked the specs of obscure brands and found that, as expected, the processors were old technology. e.g. the Core i3-8100Y was released back in 2018. We saw some well-known brands, but these turned out to be refurbished (second-hand) and in some cases, without Windows 11.
Another bugbear was after sales service. Was there a warranty period? …and where do you send it if the thing conks out under warranty? We saw that sellers were based all over the place, in Turkey, the US, China. So, even if you bought through Amazon, you’d have to deal with an overseas seller, although Amazon gives buyers a 30-day returns window, and you can pay extra for a warranty against accidental damage.
We looked at Chuwi https://es.chuwi.com (which we had visited before). This has a nice website and range of products. We checked out the CHUWI GemiBook Plus 15,6“ | Intel 12.º Alder-N N100 which seemed a good buy at €259 -The processor was released in 2023, so it wasn’t too old. https://www.devreviewhub.com/ChuwiGemibookPlus15.6
The “same” laptop, but with an N150 processor was €389 on Amazon, sold via an independent seller. Chuwi itself offers free delivery and a one year warranty and they have a repair centre in Germany. It seems to be a well established Chinese company (as per this 2022 review): https://www.techtimes.com/articles/279611/20220824/what-is-chuwi-and-how-good-are-its-products.htm)
However, we checked Chuwi in Trustpilot https://es.trustpilot.com. It has very mixed reviews!
We saw that the Spanish electrodomesticos franchises, Tien21 and Milar list cheap laptops on their web-pages. These are mostly without Windows pre-installed. Carrefour also has a range of laptops.
We agreed, that if in doubt, go to a shop where you can see what you are buying and talk face to face with a human being. Customer service at local franchises is pretty good. You may end up paying a bit more than if you bought on-line, but it would be worth it just to reduce stress.
Christine Betterton-Jones -Knowledge junkie