If you can’t tell by now, I love equipment. And for some reason, I like buying cheaper equipment or figuring out solutions with the least amount of cost. It’s probably because I like to save as much as possible, but still, thinking of how to piece something together with less is probably never the best answer.

Anyway, here’s a nifty idea that does work if you need it to. Recently, for an event, we needed to have multiple tvs and monitors setup for different tasks. Some needed to play something interactive, some needed to showcase other live stats, etc. And as a way to save money, we looked at how we could have the cheapest video player out there.

Enter the cheap laptop. Micro Center is a fun place to go, and I’ve bought several different things from them over the years. I recently bought a Evolve 3 laptop, mainly because I was curious about how much a sub-100 dollar laptop could perform. I also bought a 45 dollar tablet from AliExpress, which is surprisingly chippy, but also lacks a lot of space for anything extra as well as no output ports that makes it not a good display device. Back to the Evolve-which again, is a super cheap, made for educational laptop. It’s a lot of plastic, but underneath has a decent processor that plays video. And that’s all that I needed it for, to load a 20 minute looping video and have it play. Simple, and very cost effective considering that it was only 70 bucks and I can use it for other purposes when I’m done. The HDMI port was a mini HDMI, which isn’t too hard to find adaptors or cables for, so it worked out really well. I would like the battery to last a little bit longer, but since you can plug it in, it’s not the worst case scenario.

The 45 dollar tablet, which lacks the outputs as I mentioned, can also function as a larger video player. It does play video smoothly (HD, don’t even try 4K), so you can set it up on a tablet stand and have it run some video display for you. I didn’t really try to use it as a table input, which maybe you could have as a email collection or something of that nature, but I’m guessing that the display is a little too slow for that. It is only 45 bucks after all. I’m also sure you could use an adaptor to get a video out but I haven’t checked and to be honest, I’m really not sure of that quality either.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that while you could use a device like an amazon firestick or something to play video, you’re still locked into their ecosystem unless you hack the device. I don’t particularly enjoy that unless I’m goofing around and not being paid for something that needs to work, so that wasn’t really a full consideration. There might be cheaper boxes out there that will display, but for what we needed it for, it worked and it worked well and quickly.

So, consider that a protip if you ever need a display or something to have run video for you. Beyond those tasks? You’re definitely barking up the wrong tree because anything else would overtask those devices. YMMV