Best Cheap Netbooks Under 300

Netbooks are designed to be the extension of laptops -- with improved weight, portability and (one can always hope) cost. Despite the fact that I did somehow manage to pull together a "laptops under 100" article, it can be really tough finding a highly functional and quality-built Netbook for the price.

What can we expect to reap from investing a few Benjamins? Admittedly, you have to be realistic. But the lowest common denominator needs to be that it can satisfy all media, social and business needs (save the extremely graphic intense such as large project editing).

Aesthetics are also important, there's no point in having a supercomputer with a 2 inch LED screen. The offers I have research will need to provide high functionality with practicality. If you like the idea of that, read on!

Acer have a knack for providing low-cost, high-quality electronics out into the market with stunning frequency. This model of Aspire One is currently Amazon's best-selling model and for good reason.

Looks have a look at the juicy details:

• 11.6 inch High Definition Widescreen LED Display (that's larger than average for a cheap netbook).
• Light-weight at a little over 3 pounds.
• 2048MB DDR3 RAM
• Radeon™ HD 6250 Graphics card.
• A claim of up to 7 hours battery life (or more realistically 4-5 hours in use).
• HDMI, wifi and built-in webcam.
• Windows 7 Home premium.

This is undoubtedly an amazing bargain for the price, as it doubles nicely as a fully featured laptop despite being lightweight and highly portable. The high-quality standalone video card and generous RAM are surprising given the price.

The focus of this cheap Toshiba model lies less in it's brute strength and more in it's networking capabilities, catering to a crowd which seeks something even more inherently mobile than the aforementioned Acer.

Toshiba's integrated wireless features are highly stressed. Namely, easy wireless syncing of many devices such as smart phones. Extensive Wi-Fi capabilities, WiMax technology and 3G mobile broadband. Complimenting these portable benefits are its lightweight nature and slim design.

• 10.1 inch LED display.
• 1 Gig of DDR2 RAm.
• Intel Atom N455 processor (1.66 GHz).
• 250GB (5400 RPM) hard drive.
• Integrated and somewhat underwhelming video capabilities.

Those looking for more power and less portability may prefer the Acer model above or might benefit more from looking at my laptops under 300 deals article instead!

Alright, so I'm cheating a little here. The N600 clocks in at a little over the price I'd promised, but there's a reason I felt I should include it.

Take all of the advantages listed in the NB505 above and plug the few performance holes (which for the price are still more than understandable) it has, and you have a very solid mobile platform. The listed spec differences may seem negligible at first glance but the difference between their CPU speeds are notable.

The 1.5 GHz Intel Atom N550 processor is quite literally head and shoulders better than its young brother, the N255. Boasting 4 threads and 2 cores as well as a 1 MB L2 cache.

The only problem with this setup, as always, seems to be the lack of RAM. Reviewers find that adding another stick of 1gig helps round the performance upwards. But given that we're already at the debatable cusp of the prices I had promised, the investment may seem a little steep.