I’m looking to get a new laptop that’s on the affordable side.
I’m assuming a Taiwanese brand would be fairly cheap here, hence the Asus or Acer in the title.
I have no specific demands—I just want to replace the secondhand Lenovo Thinkpad I bought five years ago.
Does anybody have any suggestions?
Thanks in advance.
Well… all electronics are more expensive here in Taiwan.
If you are looking for a deal, you’ve just missed the promotion season from Oct to Dec.
If you are not looking to game, and don’t mind a smaller screen, you can get a decent office laptop for under 18K. I’m going to skip over brands owned by China.
Dell Inspiron i5, Acer Aspire 5 i5, Asus Vivobook i5, msi Modern i5 are all under 18K.
If you go even cheaper, Asus Vivobook Go i3 and msi Modern i3 can be under 15K. Acer Aspire 5 with Intel i3 CPU can be under 14K, and Acer Swift 1 with Intel Celeron can be under 11K.
What do you consider affordable? That means different things to everyone.
I opened Facebook Marketplace in Taipei today, saw a ROG Swift 13 with 12900h and 3050ti for 32k. Thought that was a pretty good price as it’s not that old, and pretty sure at least here in Canada it’s about double that new
Do you want to do (basic) gaming? No gaming? Serious gaming? This is the most important decision to make.
I miss my old Toshiba. But I am not sure if they even produce notebooks anymore. Before coming to TW bought cheap ACER but not sure if I can recommend it. The screen hinge broke 2 times already, but I think the 2nd time was because the screws were tightened to much by the repair guy. Around 2000 ntd per time and 1 - 2 weeks waiting time.
ASUS I have heard not too much positive things too. Maybe the high-end products are better.
I’ve only had terrible experiences with HP laptops. My last cheapo laptop and current laptop have both been from ASUS, and they’ve been workhorses, even the cheapo one.
I really love my zenbook right now. Although I’ve seen Japanese laptops in the 00s, and they were pretty unique and amazing.
All of the manufacturers make multiple tiers of equipment, ranging from the cheapest crap for students and home, (this is what you usually see in the stores), up to enterprise grade stuff that’s bomb-proof. The higher grade models usually come in at least two flavors, one with all the bells and whistles (appealing to executives), and one that’s more stripped down (what the accountants will approve for normal office use).
You only ever want the highest end stripped down model. It’ll be the best quality hardware but you won’t have to deal with the stupid glitchiness that comes with having the bells and whistles.
One more tip, look for one that’s already been out for at least a year or two - that’s long enough to work the bugs out (plus you can find out if any are true lemons, which can happen at any level) and you can watch for deep discounts as they try to flush inventory for the next model, but it will be new enough that warranty parts will be available for some years yet, (another reason to stick with enterprise models, the large corporate customers expect support to be around for a long time!)
For what it’s worth you can see elements of this everywhere, this approach can be applied to the vast majority of technology. 
P.S. brand quality does still play a part of course and so does specialization. For laptops specifically, given only the choice between Asus and Acer, and all other factors being equal, (similar model quality, functionality etc), I’d probably go with Asus even if it cost a little more.
I think its a good point. Whats a general price range for these kinds of notebooks you think? Or maybe some examples? No matter brand or something, but a model you would put in that category or maybe some from your own user experience.
Even better, I can give you answers (in USD) based on tens of thousands of datapoints (American market). YMMV etc.
Lowest possible price point, seen maybe once a year if you’re lucky and fast - $400
Typical “best” price point, seen at least several times a year - $500
Common “good” price (can probably find with some effort) - $750
Normal price (e.g. need it now, can’t wait for a deal) - $900 to $1000
Abnormal price (supply chain issues or unusual needs like same-day) - $1200+
Whats an example for this in your opinion? Or maybe what are you using?
Ever looked into MSi (Microstar) laptops?
I’ve had an Asus ZenBook which has served me flawlessly for the past 2.5 years.
I have had good experience with both Asus and Acer. I recently purchased two MSI gaming laptops. I chose based on specs and YouTube video reviews.
That’s across thousands of laptops purchased by my customers. What you actually get for your buck is faster/better every year, but I’m not in sales, I don’t pay attention to what’s what on a day-to-day basis, and my personal laptops are all 5-10 years old because I don’t do anything “big” with them. Those numbers are what the market coughs up year over year for higher quality current models. They represent the crossover curve between what manufacturers charge through the life-cycle of a model vs what people are willing to pay. 
MSI used to be crap, barely one notch above TwinHead and similar, and well below everyone else, including Acer, (which used to also be pretty bad).
But in the last 5-10 years both of them have improved quality across the board markedly. Their product lines are also a bit simpler, mostly an “okay” tier and a “better” tier, though Acer seems to be moving towards a three-tier lineup more, and I expect MSI will follow suit at some point.
The biggest challenge you’ll find with both of them is that even the best of their products don’t see wide-spread corporate adoption and they have a higher product “churn” as they target the retail market a lot more, so by the time you’ve identified a really good model that’s about to get a really good price because it will be discontinued soon, then there also won’t be much time after that where parts are still available because neither brand is required to maintain a large warranty parts stock for anything.
Yes I am the same. Once it’s the time to purchase a new item one is thinking about all the games and high end stuff would like to do with it. But in the end I never do it so having all the top notch stuff would mostly be waste of money for me.
So talking about the notebooks used by companies and corporations. Are we talking about the plain looking Dell and Intel items? Just curious.
Also I want to add I don’t like Apple products. Just for the record.
This is my vote.
Asus Zenbooks have been my go to laptop.
I used the the Zenbook pro before and liked it. I wanted something lighter for travel as I have a desktop for my office now. I currently use the Zenbook 13S which is only 1kg for travel. For my office I custom build a desktop.
hehehe
So many responses! Thanks for sharing!
I don’t have any specific needs like serious gaming or video editing or anything.
It’s mainly that my laptop isn’t functioning super well anymore, and I’m thinking repairing it is not worth it.
A lighter one like the Zenbook, as a few people have been mentioning, might be nice.
Also, I don’t care for Apple, either. I wouldn’t buy a MacBook.
I was thinking, since I’m in Taiwan, “Why not support one of the local industries?” But I guess it doesn’t really matter if I buy a Taiwanese brand.
I think something around $20,000 sounds okay.