"For a laptop in the $200 range, your best bets are Chromebooks (like HP, Lenovo, Acer) for web-based tasks or refurbished business laptops (like Dell Latitudes) for better Windows performance, focusing on models with at least 4GB RAM, a decent Celeron/Pentium processor (or better), and prioritizing ChromeOS for speed if you mostly browse, stream, and use Google Docs, as Windows struggles in this budget.
Top Recommendations:

#5

That might be ok for a Chromebook.

The PCs for People apparently gives yuge discounts of fairly high powered refurbs to low income folks.

I've been using Brave a bit as a browser; it's a quick and easy switch with a built-in VPN.

Good job, Laura!

Now plug it into your big screen tv, get you a nice wireless keyboard and mouse, and you can be all cinematic.