I love buying used laptops on eBay and refurbishing them myself. For example, about a year ago I bought four used and "for parts not working" ThinkPad T430 laptops with different specs and different issues and rebuilt them from the ground up into three working computers. One for me, one for my mother, one I sold back on eBay, and then I sent the leftover parts to the local free e-waste recycler. Not including brand new SSDs for the two I kept I spent like $150 on these two computers lol.
I do wish I'd gone a couple years newer, though. I don't know what size you want but I like 14" screen laptops so I'd check on eBay for a used ThinkPad T450. Looks like for about $200 you can get a decent one with 8GB of RAM and a 128GB or 256GB SSD.
Alternatively, if you're going to buy new, go to Best Buy or Costco and check out the computers in person. Make sure you like the way the keyboard and touchpad work because except for ThinkPads which always get that right most consumer grade laptops tend to get at least one of those things wrong. Make sure whatever you buy has an SSD. Dell, Lenovo, Asus, and Samsung are generally decent. I'd avoid HP, Acer, and Toshiba.