Amazon's Prime Big Deal Days sal kicks off next week, meaning substantial markdowns of laptops from all price points. But smart shoppers know the days leading up to these big events feature sweet sales, too. We scoured the sales for some of the best markdowns on the best-rated laptops right now from a wide range of budgets live now before Prime Day 2024.
From Apple's industry-leading MacBook Pro M3 (which is nearly 20% off right now), to accessible and super-affordable Chromebooks (like Asus' CM14 for just $168), we've got you covered when it comes to early deals. There's no doubt that prices will shift significantly once the main event starts on October 8th, so be sure to stay ahead of the curve with these early deals.
Apple's M3 MacBook Pro sets the standard for performance and portability, with 8GB of RAM and a 512GB hard drive. The cool and battery-efficient M3 processor is industry-respected for blazing through productivity tasks and demanding workloads like editing 4K video, graphic design, entertainment, and multitasking.
The MacBook Air M3 is as high-performing as it is ultraportable. The latest in Apple silicon provides a powerful and battery-efficient core to a thin and light laptop that is under half an inch thin. With a 13.6-inch liquid retina display, 8-core CPU and 10-core GPU, the MacBook Air set the standard in portability and continues to push the limits for what an ultraportable laptop can do.
If you're looking to save a little bit more on a light and thin MacBook Air, the previous version with the M2 chip is not a huge jump in processing power, and it's 20% off. The M2 version features a 8-core CPU and 10-core GPU like last year's version, as well as the same 500-nit liquid retina display that supports 1 billion colors for vibrant images.
As one of our favorite gaming laptops, Acer's Nitro 16 is a high-powered machine for a competitive price, especially as gaming laptops go. You've got an AMD Ryzen 7 processor and 16GB of RAM paired with an Nvidia GeForce RTX graphics card, making it a solid machine for someone who doesn't need the absolute top of the line for gaming but a machine that can blaze through their favorite titles on the cloud.
The Zenbook Duo challenged what a laptop could look like with its dual-screen form factor, and then committed to its design by making both displays 3K OLEDs with silky-smooth 120Hz refresh rates. Creators will gravitate to these gorgeous displays, but the powerful hardware on board (Intel Core Ultra 9 processor and 32GB of RAM) seals the deal as a performant machine for outside-the-box thinkers.
Amazon Prime Day event lasts from Tuesday, Oct. 8 through Wednesday, Oct. 9, but there are noteworthy deals both before and after those days.
Amazon hasn't historically been the premiere destination for laptop deals, but the ones it lists for Prime Day have been too good to ignore. The MacBook deals, for example, were pretty major when they first dropped, since Apple is notorious for being restrictive about sales. The deals on Prime Day have gotten better each year, with more and more manufacturers participating with a broader range of devices.
We searched for laptop deals on Amazon that are significant markdowns from their regular prices, and on products that we have either gone hands-on ourselves or can vouch for as solid laptops worth consideration. We also used various price trackers to ensure that a claimed deal wasn't spurious.
We have concentrated on quality products from leading vendors, as discounts on these laptops are likely to be most sought-after by potential buyers.
When compiling the list of the best deals, we considered the following:
ZDNET's experts are searching through Prime Day sales to find the best discounts by category. These are the best deals so far:
You can also find the best October Prime Day deals by price:
And the best deals from other retailers this week: