People may not like the idea, but you can get pretty decent laptops from AliExpress for like 250$, which was like 50% of the price of a similar laptop from any local sales channel at the time.
I did buy one for my son when he entered university and it still runs well: 5-6 hours battery life, 8 MB RAM, some older generation core i7 inside, full HD screen. The touchpad and keyboard are not great, but after 3 years they still work.
The specs today would be better, I guess.