Whether you can get away with a cheap laptop really depends on what you’re doing.
Like for someone who works in Photoshop/Illustrator/Sketch/Figma even a little will need a great screen and almost without exception you’re not going to be getting that in a $200 laptop. This admittedly can be worked around with a “cheap” $300 IPS external monitor, but at that point you’re spending more on the monitor than your laptop which feels upside-down. (I know this from experience — at one point I had to do PS work on a $500 Gateway laptop and it was miserable because a quarter of the document’s details weren’t even visible).
Or if you’re compiling code a lot, you’re going to want more oomph than a $200 laptop can provide, because otherwise you’re going to be twiddling your thumbs and getting distracted and breaking flow waiting for code to compile. For me this is particularly impactful, and any reduction in compile times is easily felt.
As for hinges, on even a number of “mid tier” laptops, they tend to get loose and wobbly over time. I’ve seen a number of IdeaPads owned by friends and family suffer this fate.
You can still do a lot of great work and have decent screen by just focusing on second hand stuff. I never bought a personnal laptop as new and right now my main laptop is one I bought from my previous company when leaving. The bonus is usually once you get them they are already fully supported and stable on Linux.
It only costed me 375 euros. It is not a high end model, but a mid range (Lenovo E580) from a few years ago that was specced with the fastest i7 cpu and with as many ram (32GB) as supported. It is not Macbook M1 whatever fast/nice but for me it is still pretty much current. I cringe when people say they cannot work with 1080p screen but the reality is you are perefectly comfortable on them as long as you don't know better. This is something I have learned with different domains, not just computing but also sport equipment, music hardware. You don't necessarily miss the new tech until you tried it and you are not necessarily less productive, comfortable, creative or competitive on older tech, only expectations changes. But once you tested the new drug sure it is hard to come back.
I won’t argue that there’s high value in used machines. I will say that I probably wouldn’t buy a used consumer grade laptop… their specs are often mediocre even when new and their build quality often doesn’t hold up to the rigors of time. I would only give used business and workstation laptops serious consideration.
Personal anecdote: at one point in the early 2010s I was cash strapped and needed a reasonably capable machine. First I tried that $500 Gateway I mentioned, which was terrible to use across almost all dimensions. I ended up returning that machine and instead putting it toward a used Dell Precision M4400 workstation laptop, which was expensive when it was new in 2008 but I got it along with a bunch of accessories off of Craigslist for $350. That thing was immensely better than the cheap 4 years newer Gateway in every way, and much much more usable for work. That machine held out for me for several years until I could afford something better.
As far as screens go, resolution is less important to me than panel quality. I’ll take a 1280x800 screen with decent color performance over a 1920x1080 screen with garbage color. In the case of the cheap Gateway, the screen’s unusability had more to do with it being a terrible bottom of the barrel TN display than it having a 1366x768 resolution. While the Precision’s panel was higher rez (1920x1200) it also handled color much much better which is what made the difference for me.
Like for someone who works in Photoshop/Illustrator/Sketch/Figma even a little will need a great screen and almost without exception you’re not going to be getting that in a $200 laptop. This admittedly can be worked around with a “cheap” $300 IPS external monitor, but at that point you’re spending more on the monitor than your laptop which feels upside-down. (I know this from experience — at one point I had to do PS work on a $500 Gateway laptop and it was miserable because a quarter of the document’s details weren’t even visible).
Or if you’re compiling code a lot, you’re going to want more oomph than a $200 laptop can provide, because otherwise you’re going to be twiddling your thumbs and getting distracted and breaking flow waiting for code to compile. For me this is particularly impactful, and any reduction in compile times is easily felt.
As for hinges, on even a number of “mid tier” laptops, they tend to get loose and wobbly over time. I’ve seen a number of IdeaPads owned by friends and family suffer this fate.