Act fast! This Acer laptop with 16GB of RAM is just $400

Hunting for an affordable laptop is an ordeal right now. I’m sorry to all the kids who need a decent machine for college. If you need a decent laptop at a reasonable price, you might want to head over to Acer’s official eBay page. It’s offering a refurbished Core Ultra 5 laptop with 16GB of RAM for $500, and with a 20 percent off coupon, it’s just $399.99.

The laptop in question is the Acer Aspicer 14 AI, a decent all-rounder. With an Intel Core Utra 5 (8 cores, 4.5GHz maximum speed), 16GB of DDR5 RAM, and wa 1TB SSD, it would have been considered budget-to-mid-range about a year ago. Today, it’s absolutely generous at this price. Hell, the RAM and storage by themselves would cost approximately $400 if you were upgrading another laptop. (You can’t strip out the RAM and flip it, if you were wondering — Lunar Lake systems use soldered memory.)

Otherwise it’s a basic design with integrated graphics, though it does have a touchscreen. Ports are generous, with double USB-C (only on one side, alas), double USB-A, HDMI, and a MicroSD card slot. Battery life is 20 hours in a video torture test, which should mean 8-12 hours for normal web browsing. Not the best in the world, more than enough for a day’s work. For a full breakdown, be sure to check the PCWorld review.

This is a refurbished laptop, and Acer seems to love selling those on eBay from its direct account. You do get a two-year warranty (even better than new!) though it comes through Allstate (considerably less than new). Remember to use the coupon code BRANDS20 to get 20 percent off, and bring the price down to $400.

Act fast. With back-to-school time coming rapidly and laptop prices ballooning all over, I don’t think this will last very long.