Black Friday is this week, but the deals are already dealing. We've scoured the web for the best laptops on sale ahead of the big weekend on devices from all price points from Apple's MacBook Air, to Lenovo, HP, Dell, and more.
Also: The best Black Friday deals live now
We've gone hands-on with the vast majority of these devices, so we feel confident vouching for their performance. From the light and portable Apple MacBook Air M3 (which is $100 off on Amazon) to Samsung's ultrathin and fast Galaxy Book 4 Edge ($500 off at Best Buy), these are the most noteworthy deals we've found after scanning the big retailers ahead of Black Friday/Cyber Monday.
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 one of the thinnest and lightest laptops out there. 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.
Dell's Inspiron 14 2-in-1 is a well-rounded laptop that can easily swap between different use cases, both due to its 2-in-1 form factor, and solid hardware. This accessible configuration with an AMD Ryzen 5 processor, 8GB of RAM and 512GB of storage makes for a device that gives a lot of bang for your buck.
Microsoft's flagship Copilot+ PC is a sleek, well-optimized laptop with a marathon battery. We named it our top pick for best overall battery life out of all the laptops we tested in 2024 thanks to the energy-efficient Snapdragon X Elite processor, which keeps it running cool while also providing stand-out performance.
Samsung's debut Copilot+ PC features the most high-end of the new Snapdragon X Elite chips that were released this summer. The Galaxy Book 4 lives up to its flagship status with a gorgeous AMOLED display, sleek form factor, and fantastic battery life.
This high-end gaming laptop is one of our favorite gaming laptops of 2024, but it'd also perform well as a content creator's dream machine. It's a beast with a GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card, Intel Core Ultra 9 processor, 64GB of RAM, and a massive 2TB SSD.
Black Friday occurs the day after Thanksgiving. This year, it's on Friday, Nov. 29, 2024.
Cyber Monday falls on the Monday immediately after Black Friday. This year, it's on Monday, Dec. 2, 2024.
Absolutely! Amazon has added tons of devices from all the big brands over the past few years to hype up their Black Friday sales events, and they've gotten quite good. For example, when Amazon first started selling Apple's MacBooks and MacBook Pros at discounted rates, it was one of the first online retail outlets to do so.
Black Friday has traditionally been a more general sale day to kick off the holiday shopping season. Cyber Monday specifically refers to sales offered by online retailers that aren't available in physical brick-and-mortar stores. These deals are often sharply discounted, as retailers can adjust prices far more easily online than on physical products on a shelf.
There are tons of Chromebook deals out there, but we only highlight products we've either gone hands-on with personally or would consider ourselves. For example, laptops and Chromebooks come in a myriad of configurations and versions. If we've tested one model that we recommend, but a lower- or higher-end configuration is on sale, we'd still feel confident recommending it.
We also looked over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the deals we're recommending. Our recommendations may also be based on our own testing -- in addition to extensive research and comparison shopping. The goal is to deliver the most accurate advice to help you shop smarter.
The biggest retailers for laptops (that also have the best sales) are Best Buy, Walmart, Amazon, and B&H Photo Video, and many of our top-rated sales come from these destinations.
ZDNET's experts have been searching through Black Friday sales live now to find the best discounts by category. These are the best Black Friday deals so far, by category: