New Delhi, Oct. 6 -- A friend's younger sibling messaged me last week with a familiar problem: college starts in a month, the family budget caps out around Rs.35,000 and every laptop in that range on shopping apps looks more or less the same on the surface. The real question wasn't which one is cheapest; it was which one won't feel painfully slow by the time he's in his second year, juggling assignments, video calls and a browser full of tabs. That's a fair worry, because budget laptops in this range vary wildly in how well they hold up, even when their price tags and marketing photos look nearly identical. Here's how to actually tell them apart.

Rs.35,000 sits in an awkward zone. It's enough to get a genuinely usable laptop, but it's al...