You can get a pretty good laptop for under 500.
You can typically have a 6GB or 8GB RAM and sometimes 1 TB of memory for this money.
This type of laptop is versatile. You can even do some decent design works and even some online gaming depending on the type of software and gaming system.
Check out some of the best laptop at this price range:
HP Notebook 15-ay011nr 15.6-Inch Laptop (6th Gen Intel Core i5-6200U Processor, 8GB DDR3L SDRAM, 1TB HDD, Windows 10), Silver
HP 15-ay013nr 15.6″ Full-HD Laptop (6th Generation Core i5, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD) with Windows 10
Toshiba Satellite 17.3-Inch Laptop (Intel Core i3 Processor, 6GB Ram, 750GB Hard Drive, DVD Burner, HDMI, Bluetooth, WiFi, Windows 10)
ASUS X555DA-WS11 15.6-inch Laptop (AMD Quad Core A10-8700P 1.8 GHz, Turbo to 3.2 GHz , 8GB GDDR3 RAM, 1000 GB Hard Drive, Windows 10), Dark Grey
2016 Newest ASUS Premium High Performance 15.6″ FHD (1920×1080 display) Laptop(AMD A10 processor, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD, DVD,Windows 10- Black)
HP Pavilion 15 15.6″ Touch Screen Laptop – 4th Generation Intel Core i3-4005U Processor – 6GB RAM – 1TB Hard Drive – DVDRW – HDMI – WebCam – Windows 8.1
Toshiba Satellite Fusion L55W-C5352 2-IN-1 CONVERTIBLE Laptop: 15.6″ (1366×768) TOUCHSCREEN | Pentium Dual-Core 3825U | 1TB | 4GB | Windows 10 – SATIN GOLD