This $600 HP laptop is a smart buy for remote workers (45% off)

If you’re on the hunt for an affordable laptop that can weather your day-to-day tasks, the HP OmniBook 3 is worth looking into—especially now that it’s on sale for $600 at B&H. That’s a $490 discount (45% off) from its MSRP and a solid deal for the specs.

At this price, this laptop is a great pick for students and remote workers who are on a budget but still want competent performance. The AMD Ryzen AI 5 340 with 16GB DDR5 RAM won’t choke on Windows 11, and that CPU qualifies it as a Copilot+ PC, so you get access to all the AI features in the operating system. That RAM is user-upgradeable, too, so you can push it up to 32GB later (when the RAM shortage subsides).

The 15.6-inch 1080p screen is standard but sharp—good enough if all you’re doing is work, browsing, and watching YouTube. The 1080p webcam is great for remote workers who need to jump on calls a lot, and the laptop itself is portable thanks to its 3.75-pound weight (lighter than most laptops in this class).

Who shouldn’t get this laptop? If you need all-day use on the go, skip it. The 41-watt-hour battery will only provide a few hours with real-world usage. If you can’t stand cheap-feeling laptops, you’ll likely be bothered by the keyboard and touchpad here. And if you want to do serious gaming, look elsewhere. The integrated AMD Radeon 840M graphics are fine for light fare, but nowhere near as good as a dedicated GPU.

Good laptop deals are getting harder to find with the RAM and SSD shortage driving prices up, so don’t pass this one up if you need a productivity laptop right now. If your budget is even tighter than this, check out PCWorld’s picks for best laptops under $500.