CHEAP LAPTOP FOR SIMS

@islahj28  What are the specs of your Mac?  Depending on the model, it might run Sims 4 a lot better than any new laptop you could get for $300 U.S.  If this is a possibility at all, please list everything under About This Mac except for the serial number, and also let me know how much free and total storage the Mac has.

Good laptops for Sims 4 start around $400 or a little under, other than the occasional Black Friday-level sale.  Below that, the hardware isn't really sufficient to run the game properly.  I wouldn't want to list the "best" $300 laptop that still wouldn't handle Sims 4 well.  On the other hand, if you're willing to take a risk on a used model on Ebay or Craigslist, you could find something suitable for that price.

Thank you for the reply! I don’t know the exact specs of my Mac (not a tech person at ALL) but I do have a MacBook Pro from around 2020 ish? I use that mostly for school with a couple of downloadable games here or there. Nothing serious like the sims. 

I really just want to play the sims, I’m not too concerned with how fast or slow it runs honestly. The laptop would literally only be used for the sims lol. 

what brand would you recommend for that? I know some brands are worse than others…

@islahj28  If you click the Apple icon in the upper-left corner of the screen and select About This Mac, you'll see a list of specs.  That's what I'm looking for, other than the serial number of course, which should never be posted publicly.

I understand you don't need an overpowered machine, but the drop-off between a $400 laptop and a $320 laptop is significant.  It's the difference between being able to play fine on medium settings and using the lowest graphics settings, or possibly getting frequent freezes and crashes, or needing to change your play style just to make the game work at all.  Some people do have okay experiences on this kind of low-end hardware, but not everyone, and I don't want to make a recommendation that falls into the "maybe it'll be okay, maybe you'll have just wasted your money" category.

As far as brands go, there are some bad ones, but nothing better than the other options, at least in this price range.  The point to keep in mind is that these brands buy the same components from other companies (Intel, AMD, etc.), so you can see exactly the same hardware in laptops from several brands.  That in turn means that as long as the manufacturer didn't make any mistakes, the laptops should perform about the same, plus or minus a few percentage points due to tuning.  So it's less about the brand, other than avoiding the sketchy ones, and more about finding the best combination of hardware and price.

For that, I can help, but again, I don't want to even suggest a laptop below a certain level because of the possibility it won't run Sims 4 properly at all.

It’s a MacBook Pro M1 2020 8GB. 

Ugh, I understand. Thank you for keeping your integrity alive, I completely understand. What’s the cheapest you’d go for a laptop that’ll effectively run the sims? I once had a super old Dell that ran sims like a charm. I miss it.