- Some third-party Amazon sellers offer cheap laptops with 1.1TB of storage
- In fact, these laptops have OneDrive subscriptions included, so the reality is that 1TB of that storage is in the cloud and the local drive is 128GB.
- This is designed to mislead buyers and in some cases the subterfuge around this gets even worse.
There is a worrying trend with laptops listed for sale on Amazon (or even other retailers) where sellers are bundling cloud storage with listed disk space when it comes to listing specifications.
Neowin picked up this Reddit thread and noted that this is a practice that is currently spreading among third-party sellers and is becoming more prevalent on Amazon, but also other retailers in the US like Newegg.
What’s happening is that those sellers are advertising laptops like this, with the headline: “HP Ultrabook 15.6 Laptop, 1.2TB Storage, Microsoft 365 Included, Intel 13th 4-Core.”
Now after that, in the second line of the product description, you will find that it says: “1TB OneDrive, 128GB UFS, No Mouse, Moonlight Blue.”
What this really means is that the 1TB of OneDrive storage, which is part of the Microsoft 365 package (for one year) that ships with the laptop, is part of the 1.2TB of storage cited. On top of that, the SSD (a UFS model) is actually only 128GB, so it’s been rounded up to 0.2TB somehow, when in reality, even with cloud storage, this should be quoted as 1.1TB.
There are several examples of this on Amazon, some of which certainly make it clearer, stating storage specifications such as: “1.1TB Storage (1TB OneDrive + 128GB SSD).” With the breakdown right next to the figure here, you can at least immediately see where this 1.1TB comes from (and at least it’s also been rounded down, not up, with the SSD).
But still, less tech-savvy buyers may, even in those cases, simply see 1.1TB and skip the part in parentheses.
Going back to the first example of the HP Ultrabook 15.6, this is even more misleading, because it only mentions RAM loading in one place (which is easy to miss). The laptop has just 4GB of system memory, but in the full specs breakdown the seller says: “Up to 32GB of RAM can seamlessly run your games and photo and video editing apps, as well as multiple programs and browser tabs, all at once. 1.2B [sic] “Storage puts the power at your fingertips with the fastest data transfers available today.”
Again, mentioning that the laptop has “up to” 32GB of RAM is technically true (as other models in the same line could include more), but the seller obviously expects you to read this because the laptop actually has 32GB of RAM.
And you won’t be able to run anything “smoothly” on Windows 11 with 4GB, let’s face it. (While that’s technically the minimum RAM spec, you need 8GB for anything resembling a decent experience on Microsoft’s OS, and even that seems a lot more unstable these days.)
The mention of 1.2TB storage (with a typo) in the detailed specifications also suggests that this is the full size of the SSD, and the description of having the “fastest data transfers currently available” is clearly ridiculous.
Analysis: shady practices to watch out for
There are a lot of traps in terms of shady third-party sellers slapping cheap laptops with what appear to be too-good-to-be-true specs. And as the old saying goes, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. However, as one Redditor says in the thread linked above: “I know a lot of people around me who would just fall for this…”
Spec details are worth reading carefullySo, and be skeptical of anything that looks too much like a hot bargain, because you could end up getting burned. If you’re in doubt, ask a friend who likes PCs, and don’t forget that here at TechRadar we regularly highlight laptops on sale, particularly during big sales like Prime Day or Black Friday, and you can be sure those deals are golden.
As for the dangers out there, be especially wary of low amounts of hidden RAM, as we saw above, and the old, slow processors that very cheap laptops are often built on (usually aging Celerons). But the latest trick, as shown here, is the cheap laptops with 1.1TB or 1.2TB of storage advertised that actually only include free OneDrive subscriptions for one year. You’ll never get a laptop with a 1TB SSD for just a few hundred dollars.
Another thing to look out for are laptops that have something like “628GB storage” when it’s actually a 128GB SSD with a 500GB external hard drive included. While it’s still useful to have that extra storage, or even a free 1TB of space on OneDrive (although only for a year before you have to pay for it), it’s very different from having the space on your local drive, of course.
The best laptops for all budgets
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