3 Best 2 in 1 Laptops Under $400 Reviewed

Comparison Table of Top 2 in 1 Laptops Under $400

What to Expect From Convertible Laptops in this Price Range?

Since you get what you pay for, you have to realize that the convertible laptops in this price category will not be top of the line machines.

In other words, you can expect entry level hardware here.

In terms of processing power, the most you can expect is low voltage Intel Core i3 processors. These have the “U” suffix at the end. While these are not as powerful as their mainstream counterparts, they consume low power and thus promise a very long lasting battery life.

Other than that, an average 2-in-1 laptop in this price range offers the Intel Pentium 5000 processor. While it is not as powerful as the Intel Core i3, it is more than sufficient for students and for casual office work.

In terms of hard disk, you can expect to find HDD, SSD as well as the eMMC drives. Some come bundled with free cloud storage for a year or two.

Finally, the maximum amount of RAM that you can expect here is 4 GB. This isn’t much, however, it is sufficient for basic work.

List of Best 2 in 1 Laptops Under $400 in 2021

We believe the following laptops truly stand out in this price category for convertible notebooks.

1. Dell Inspiron 5481 – 14″ – Best Performance Under $400

In terms of performance per dollar value, we find this to be one of the best 2 in 1 laptops under $400 price range. Let us look at what makes this laptop stand out among the rest.

Basically, this is the cheapest laptop of its kind to offer the Intel Core i3-8145U processor. Recall from earlier that the most powerful processor you can expect at this price range is an Intel Core i3.

Therefore, as far as the performance goes, it cannot get better than this. The processor itself is fairly respectable. It is more than just capable of handling your day to day school or office tasks. You may even decide to push further by performing casual editing work.

Furthermore, since this is a 14″ convertible laptop, its primary use case will be in the laptop mode instead of tablet mode – since you cant really carry a 14″ tablet on your palm easily.

In addition to that, this machine offers 128 GB of SSD and 4 GB of RAM. Both of these are respectable and the most you can expect at this price range.

While the 128 GB isn’t good enough for heavy multimedia users, its high speed performance will certainly make it worthwhile. Plus who doesn’t want an SSD these days on their computers?

Also, this laptop measures at 0.78″ in thickness and 3.88 lbs (1.76 kg) in weight. That basically makes it lighter and thinner than an average mainstream laptop.

In short, if you want the most powerful laptop in this price category at the lowest possible price tag, then this is among the best 2 in 1 laptops under $400.

Also Read: Best 2-in-1 Gaming Laptops

2. ASUS VivoBook Flip – Affordable 14″ 2 in 1 Laptop

Asus Vivobook Flip 14 is yet another highly recommended 2 in 1 laptop if you are looking for a 14 inch variant. Basically, this is cheaper than the Dell Inspiron 5481 above but offers a somewhat weaker processor as well.

Unlike the Core i3-8145U processor featured in the laptop above, this laptop offers the Intel Pentium 5000 processor. The following chart shows how the Pentium 5000 stacks up to the Core i3-8145U processor.

As you can see, the Pentium 5000 is fairly weaker than the Core i3 processor. What does that mean for you as a buyer?

Basically, Intel Pentium processor are built for seamless low key tasks. Where the weaker Intel Celeron processor can show lag even when performing low key tasks like browsing, the Intel Pentium processor can handle all low level tasks with ease.

This processor will only show limitations once you start pushing it towards heavier tasks like editing etc.

Besides an entry level processor, this laptop offers 64 GB eMMC hard drive and a 4 GB of RAM. While the RAM is quite sufficient, the storage is fairly lackluster.

In fact, a good chunk of this hard disk would be utilized by the system alone. So how would you manage the hard disk. You can expand the storage on this in many ways. You can subscribe to a cloud storage service like Dropbox or Google Drive, get an external hard disk or utilize its SD card slot.

The benefit of having an eMMC, however, is that it consumes far less power, as such, this laptop has a battery life of a whopping 9 hours.

Like the Dell Inspiron 5481 above this is also portable with its 0.75 inch thickness and 3.5 lbs weight.

In the end, if you want an affordable option with 14 inch screen size, then this is one of the best 2 in 1 laptops under $400 price range.

Also Read: Best Laptops for College Students Under $400

3. Lenovo Chromebook C330 – 11.6″ – Recommended Chromebook – Budget

If you are really tight on budget, then we highly recommend that you look into Chromebooks.

Now Chromebooks have a very weak hardware on the surface. However, you cannot compare the performance of a Chromebook the same way as you would compare a Windows or an Apple Laptop.

Chromebook heavily rely on the internet and cloud applications. As such, since they utilize the power of the cloud servers, they don’t really need a very powerful hardware of their own.

Basically, this laptop offers a MediaTek MT8173C processor – which i am sure you may have never heard of before, but it is highly optimized for Chromebooks.

Other than that, it offers 64 GB eMMC and 4 GB RAM. Therefore, as mentioned earlier, this may seem lackluster.

However, when using Chromebooks, you are expected to have a robust internet connectivity. Furthermore, you are expected to have cloud storage subscriptions etc.

You cannot install software on this the same way you would install them on Windows or Apple computers. So for example, if you want to edit photos, you cannot simply install Adobe Photoshop on this.

Instead, you would use online cloud based services like Pixlr for your photo editing needs. Furthermore, you can’t even imagine using Adobe Photoshop on such a weak hardware. However, if you use cloud services, you would be able to do so.

Furthermore, another benefit of Chromebook is that it works almost exactly like an Android Tablet. So you have the familiar icons as well as the Google Play Store. This is extremely beneficial for a 2 in 1 Chromebook.

You would be able to easily use this as a laptop as well as a tablet thanks to familiar Android environment.

All in all, if you are low on budget and you want to try out a Chromebook, then this one of the best 2 in 1 laptops in the market.

Final Words

As you can see, the best 2 in 1 laptops under $400 are no speed demons. They are not the fastest nor the most powerful laptops around.

However, they are sufficiently powerful for day to day school and office work. Due to their portability and longer battery life, you can easily carry them around and stay away from the power socket for hours. Thus bloggers and writers would find them highly useful.

The tablet mode definitely adds a layer of functionality. Of course the smaller the convertible laptop the easier it would be to carry around in tablet mode.