So you need a new laptop – now’s the time of year to look for one on sale. October’s Prime Day, like the past few years, has a ton of laptop deals to consider. All kinds of devices are on sale this year for Big Deal Days, from refreshed MacBooks to high-end gaming machines to already affordable laptops. But getting a good deal out of a barely acceptable deal (or worse yet, a bad deal overall) can be a challenge. Laptop prices on Amazon are all over the place, even when it’s not Prime Day, depending on the laptop’s configuration, brand, seller, and many other factors.
This is where Engadget can help you. We’ve looked at the Prime Day laptop deals available this year to select the best you can find on all types of computers. As always, if you’re super picky about what display panel you want in your next laptop, or you know you want to get as much RAM as possible, we recommend going directly to the manufacturers to customize your next PC. But if you’re willing to work with premade templates, October’s Prime Day deals could help you save money on your next laptop.
Best Prime Day laptop deals: MacBook
Apple’s latest laptops are the MacBook Air M4 and MacBook Pro M4, and we recommend getting them if you currently want a device that is as future-proof as possible. You’ll find decent MacBook deals on Amazon throughout the year, and most of them will be for base configurations. In a welcome update earlier this year, Apple recently made all base models of the M4 MacBook Air have 16GB of RAM by default (which is the same as you’ll find on the base Pros).
Best Prime Day laptop deals: Windows laptops
There are a wide variety of Windows laptops to choose from, and that can be a blessing or a curse. We recommend looking for a laptop from a reputable brand (i.e. Microsoft, Dell, Acer, Lenovo and others) and one that can handle the daily pressures of work or gaming. That means at least 16GB of RAM and 245GB of SSD storage, plus the latest Intel or AMD processors. If you’re in the market for a new gaming laptop, you’ll need a little more power and a dedicated graphics card to boot.
Best Prime Day laptop deals: Chromebooks
Most Chromebooks are already pretty cheap, but that just means you can get them even cheaper during an event like Prime Day. However, there are a ton of high-end Chromebooks available today that didn’t exist three years ago, so now is a great time to look for discounts on these models. In general, we recommend looking for at least 4 to 8 GB of RAM and at least 128 GB of SDD storage in a Chromebook that you plan to use as your daily driver.
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HP HD Chromebook (15-inch, Intel Pentium N200) for $319 (9% off)
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Acer Chromebook Plus (14-inch, Intel Core i3) for $360 (10% off)
