{"id":618470,"date":"2025-11-17T12:59:49","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T10:59:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=618470"},"modified":"2025-11-17T13:00:59","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T11:00:59","slug":"testing-the-cheapest-new-laptop-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/hardware\/618470-testing-the-cheapest-new-laptop-in-south-africa.html","title":{"rendered":"Testing the cheapest new laptop in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

MyBroadband tested the most affordable laptop in South Africa, priced at only R1,499, and found it to offer surprising value for the money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We were initially sceptical<\/a> about whether the Proline Celeron V116 would work at all after seeing many negative reviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Game salesperson also informed us that the warranty only covers software, but not the hardware on the laptop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Immediately, while unboxing the laptop, the build quality feels cheap. Everything is constructed out of low-end plastic, and the small 11.6\u201d screen makes it look more like a toy than a usable computer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The box indicates that the laptop should be fully charged before use. However, this is made difficult because there is no clear indication of the state of charge before it is switched on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the first startup of the laptop, we encountered an issue, which is likely a contributing factor to many of the poor reviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The laptop booted into a Windows recovery menu, indicating that it had failed to start up properly. We tried the simplest option, a restart, which fixed the issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The laptop took around 5 minutes and booted into the Windows 10 setup, where we could connect to a Wi-Fi network and create an account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we finally reached the desktop, the laptop battery was at 3%, even though it had been plugged in for nearly half an hour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We left the laptop to charge for a few hours before continuing with the Windows updates, which were numerous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We also noticed that Windows Defender virus protection was disabled by default, but we had no problems simply enabling it in the security dashboard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually, after about a day of setting up, we had a fully updated and charged laptop, and we were ready to start testing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Proline Celeron V116 unboxing<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Error message on first boot<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Hands-on with the Proline Celeron V116<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Our first impressions of the laptop were surprisingly good considering the R1,499 price.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The keyboard and trackpad do not come close to competing with high-end laptops, but we did not have any issues with missed keystrokes or poor accuracy while clicking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The screen resolution is only 1366 x 768, but at an 11.6\u201d size, it looks pretty good, and the brightness is acceptable for everyday use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We performed some benchmarks, tried web browsing and general productivity tasks, and the limitations of the slow Celeron N4020 processor, 4 GB RAM, and 500 GB spinning hard drive quickly became clear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Opening software is a waiting game, and a browser like Chrome takes about a minute to start up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Browsing worked fine, but sites were also slow to load, even though other devices on the same network had no issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Surprising YouTube performance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We were pleasantly surprised to find that we could watch YouTube videos at resolutions of up to 1440p or 1080p at 60 frames per second, without stuttering, when no other programs were open on the laptop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The screen resolution makes 720p a more suitable streaming option, which leaves some processing power for background tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even though the laptop was noticeably slower than our normal machine in every aspect, there was nothing in day-to-day productivity tasks that we were unable to do on the Proline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This laptop has lower specs than what we recommend anyone buy new in 2025, but for the price, it does work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everyday tasks will be slow, and resource-intensive tasks will grind it to a halt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Synthetic benchmarks<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Benchmark<\/th>Score<\/th><\/tr><\/thead>
Cinebench R23 Multi-core<\/td>420<\/td><\/tr>
Cinebench R23 Single-core<\/td>270<\/td><\/tr>
Geekbench 6 CPU Multi-core<\/td>414<\/td><\/tr>
Geekbench 6 CPU Single-core<\/td>270<\/td><\/tr>
Geekbench 6 GPU OpenCL<\/td>567<\/td><\/tr>
Geekbench 6 GPU Vulcan<\/td>539<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Comparing our benchmarks with results from other users online, we can see that the laptop is quite weak compared to other laptop processors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, it does compete with many single-board computers, like Raspberry Pis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is interesting because a new Raspberry Pi 5 is priced similarly to this laptop, and does not come with a battery, power supply, screen, keyboard or trackpad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Proline Celeron V116 is passively cooled, and the hard drive can easily be replaced with a different SATA drive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Raspberry Pi has extensive aftermarket support and easily accessible GPIO pins, but for many microserver use cases, the Proline may be a better buy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo of the Proline Celeron V116’s internals<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MyBroadband tested the cheapest new laptop in South Africa, and found it very usable for the price.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341074,"featured_media":618474,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,23],"tags":[8967,5514,37312,102156,11665],"class_list":["post-618470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hardware","category-reviews","tag-game","tag-massmart","tag-proline","tag-proline-celeron-v116","tag-walmart"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618470"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341074"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=618470"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":618539,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618470\/revisions\/618539"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/618474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=618470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=618470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=618470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}