Top 100 Best Budget Buys: Affordable, Tested Tech That's Actually Worth It
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The dictionary defines "testy" as easily annoyed or bad-tempered. But maybe it should refer to PCMag?
Testing tech products is our whole schtick, after all. We do it more than 2,000 times a year, striving for the unbiased, lab-based results that make us the independent guide to technology . And we enjoy seeing the latest $5,750 mobile workstation or $3,000 OLED TV or the loaded $7,999 Apple Mac Studio . Why shouldn't we? Car magazines review Ferraris, after all.
Most folks, however, don't drive them. And most of us don't buy cost-no-object technology, especially in an age of inflation and supply-chain shortages. That's why we're particularly pleased when we find products that deliver both performance and value, elegance and affordability, features and frugality. Telling you about bargains is the best part of our job, and now we're doing it in a nifty new way.
Value hunters, unite! Presenting The Cheap Tech 100: PCMag's recommendations of outstanding values in 100-odd product categories from hardware to software, from home entertainment and health to PCs and smartphones. Our editors scoured our vast field of reviews to assemble this mega-guide of picks. And we will be updating it monthly, as a cut-to-the-chase supplement to our many bargain-conscious buyer's guides. (Examples of those include The Best Cheap Printers , The Best Cheap Robot Vacuums , The Best Cheap Gaming Laptops , and lots more). We hope it helps you spend wisely and keep a little more money in your wallet.
This summer, we seem poised on the precipice of a protracted global trade war. And that could reverse a trend most of us take for granted: That, over time, mainstream tech products tend to get cheaper. The onset of tariffs , or even the mere threat of them, could upend the steady price decreases of everything from jumbo OLED TVs to Wi-Fi 7 routers.
With tariff uncertainty surging and ebbing by the day, savvy tech enthusiasts have little choice but to do what they've always done: Be ready to snap up hidden bargains on cool products. Of course, you need to know where to look for them—and that's where we can help.
Behold our comprehensive budget-tech shopping guide, backed by PCMag's world-beating corpus of reviews. Some of our favorite products and services—out of the more than 1,500 that we review every year—are completely free. Others do far more than you'd expect for their bargain-basement prices. We're not talking about bandwidth-limited VPNs or $50 printers that require many times that in yearly ink costs (though we review those, too). We perk up when we find products that deliver both performance and value. Elegance and affordability. Features and frugality.
Below, check out our current favorite value buys across all the categories we test: from hardware to software, home entertainment to health, beefy desktop PCs to slim smartphones. Keep this list of the latest bargains on your radar. (On the flip side, if you're ready to splurge, also check out the absolute best products we've tested, regardless of cost, and our latest winners of PCMag's Editors' Choice award .)
