- Some Amazon third-party sellers list cheap laptops with 1.1 TB of storage
- In fact, these laptops have OneDrive subscriptions bundled, so the reality is that 1TB of storage is in the cloud and the local drive is 128GB
- It’s designed to mislead buyers, and in some cases the deficits around this get even worse
There is a worrying trend with laptops listed for sale on Amazon (or indeed other retailers) where the sellers lump cloud storage with the stated drive space when it comes to listing the specs.
Neowin picked up on this Reddit thread and observed that this is a practice that is currently creeping in with third-party sellers, and is becoming more prevalent on Amazon, but also other retailers in the US like Newegg.
What happens is these sellers advertise laptops like this with the headline: “HP Ultrabook 15.6′ Laptop, 1.2 TB Storage, Microsoft 365 Included, Intel 13th 4-Core.”
Now, after that, as the second line of the product description, you’ll find that it says: “1TB OneDrive, 128GB UFS, no Mouse, Moonlight Blue.”
What this actually means is that the 1 TB of OneDrive storage that is part of the Microsoft 365 package (for one year) that comes with the laptop is part of the stated 1.2 TB of storage. On top of that, the SSD (a UFS model) is actually only 128GB, so it’s been rounded up to 0.2TB somehow, when really, even with the cloud storage, it should be quoted as 1.1TB.
There are several examples of this on Amazon, some of which admittedly make it clearer, listing storage specs 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 they’ve rounded down, not up, even with the SSD).
But still, even in these cases, less tech-savvy buyers might just look at 1.1TB and blank out the bracketed bit.
Going back to the first example of the HP Ultrabook 15.6, this is even more of a double whammy because it only mentions the RAM load in one place (which is easy to miss). The laptop only has 4GB of system memory, yet the seller says in the full specification: “Up to 32GB of RAM can seamlessly run your games and photo and video editing applications, as well as multiple programs and browser tabs at once. 1.2B [sic] Storage leaves power at your fingertips with the fastest data transfers currently available.”
Again, mentioning that the laptop has ‘up to’ 32GB of RAM is technically true (as other models in the same range could pack more), but obviously the seller is hoping you’ll read this as the laptop actually has 32GB of RAM.
And you won’t run anything “smoothly” in Windows 11 with 4GB, let’s face it. (Although that’s technically the minimum RAM spec, you’ll need 8GB for anything resembling a decent experience in Microsoft’s OS, and even that looks a lot shakier these days).
The mention of 1.2TB (with a typo) of storage 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 be aware of
There are plenty of pitfalls out there in the form of shady third-party sellers flogging 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. But as one Redditor in the above linked thread puts it, “I know so many people around me who would just fall for this…”
It pays to read the specifications carefullythat is, and being skeptical of anything that looks too much like a red-hot deal – because you might just end up getting burned. If you’re in doubt, check with a PC friend, and don’t forget that here at TechRadar we regularly highlight cheap laptops – especially during the big sales like Prime Day or Black Friday – and you can be sure that these deals are golden.
As for the dangers out there, especially watch out for hidden low amounts of RAM, as we saw above, and slow old processors that very cheap laptops are often built around (typically aging Celerons). But the latest trick, as shown here, is cheap basement laptops with 1.1TB or 1.2TB advertised that are really just bundled free OneDrive subscriptions for a year. You’ll never get a laptop with a 1TB SSD for just a few hundred dollars.
Something else to watch out for as a catch are laptops that have something like “628GB of storage” when in reality it’s a 128GB SSD with a 500GB external hard drive included. While it’s still handy to have the extra storage space – or indeed a free 1TB disk space on OneDrive (albeit only for a year before you have to pay for it) – it’s of course very different from having the space on the local drive.
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