Amazon’s Prime Day event launched today and brought a ton of amazing deals on impressive tech. That means it’s a good time to buy a laptop if you’re heading off to college in the fall or are looking to upgrade your current computer. There are some impressive deals available right now on some of the best laptops available — from lightweight ultraportables to powerful gaming laptops. Taking advantage of these limited-time discounts can potentially save you hundreds of dollars, making it possible to grab a better laptop at a lower price.
And Amazon isn’t the only retailer dropping prices on laptops right now. Best Buy, Walmart and other stores have competing sales going and even PC makers like Dell, Acer and HP are offering discounts when buying directly from their sites, too. One thing you should know when it comes to Amazon’s sales, though: For Prime-exclusive deals on Prime Day, you need to be an Amazon Prime subscriber ($139 a year). There is a way around it, though.
As one of CNET’s PC experts, I’ve scanned the current sales and dropped some of the best deals I’ve found so far. These are laptops I wouldn’t hesitate to buy for myself or recommend to friends or family. We’ll keep updating this list as older deals expire and new ones drop, so check back for the latest offers.
Best Prime Day deals on laptops
The 2020 M1 MacBook Air is Apple’s least expensive laptop… and it’s still $1,000. For Prime Day, though, Amazon has it for only $750. That’s as low as it goes for this excellent little laptop. This configuration has 256GB of storage and 8GB of memory, so if your computing needs stretch beyond the everyday for school or the home office, this might feel limiting. But as an entry-level MacBook, it’s pretty great.
Read our Apple MacBook Air M1 (Late 2020) review.
This 14-inch laptop regularly sells for about $930 and gets you impressive specs for the price. Its performance was strong and it can handle basic content creation such as editing photos and video. And although it’s not made specifically for it, the Swift X 14 makes a good casual gaming laptop, thanks to its entry-level Nvidia RTX 3050 Ti graphics chip. Battery life lasted for more than 12 hours in our tests too. There is one catch to getting this Prime Day deal, however:
Asus makes so many gaming laptops it’s a bit hard to keep track. The ROG Strix Scar line is focused on straight-up performance. This is the 2022 model, but it’s definitely not outdated — especially at this price. It’s built around an esports-quality 240Hz IPS QHD display (100% DCI-P3 color coverage) with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti pushing pixels. The CPU is a top-of-the-line Intel Core i9-12900H paired with 16GB 4,800MHz DDR5 and a 1TB PCIe NVMe SSD. This configuration lists for $2,050 and Amazon’s regular price is $1,778 but is reduced $278 to $1,500 for Prime Day.
Most PC makers have decent entry-level aka budget gaming laptop options. Acer has its Nitro line, HP has Victus, Asus has Tuf and Lenovo has Loq. Dell sits at the top of the list for us with its G15 and G16 models for its mix of features, design and performance at more affordable prices, particularly when they’re on sale. For Prime Day, this Dell G15 is a solid midrange gamer with an Intel Core i7-12700H, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 GPU, 16GB 4,800MHz DDR5 RAM and a 512GB PCIe NVMe SSD for storage. And to help smooth out gameplay, the full-HD 15.6-inch display has a 120Hz refresh rate. Normally $1,200, the Prime Day price is $999.
While most people know LG for their home entertainment products and appliances, the company also has an excellent laptop line called Gram. I’ve tested many over the years, and they never fail to impress, especially when it comes to weight and battery life. This 15.6-inch model from 2022 has a fast Core i7 processor, 16GB of LPDDR5 memory and a 512GB SSD for storage. It also has, as you might expect, a beautiful display. And despite its size, it weighs only 2.5 pounds.
Best Prime Day laptop deals at other stores
Lenovo doesn’t always make it easy to know exactly how much money you’ll save on a laptop on sale. I’ve been doing comparison shopping like this for nearly two decades, though, so I can spot a good deal and, well, this is a good one. It’s loaded with higher-end components — 13th-gen Core i9 CPU, Nvidia RTX 4080, 32GB of memory and 1TB SSD, and it’s topped off with a 2.5K-resolution display with a 240Hz refresh rate. We tested this combo, and it hit 190 frames per second on Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Guardians of the Galaxy set to their highest image quality at 1080p.
By comparison, Alienware’s m16 with a near-identical configuration is $2,550 (and that’s its sale price with $200 off).
Ahead of Prime Day, Acer is having a Black Friday in July sale, and one of its best deals is on this gaming laptop. The Nitro laptops are the company’s budget-friendly gaming models, so the prices are already good for what you’re getting. But this particular configuration is loaded with upper-midrange components including an AMD Ryzen 7 6800H processor, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, 8GB of memory and 32GB of DDR5 SDRAM. This configuration (AN515-46-R0EQ) was priced at $2,200, which was reasonable when it was initially released last year. The current sale price of $1,250 is the lowest I’ve seen it. Read our Nitro 5 review.
If you want a small gaming laptop with a small price, this is it. This Zephyrus 14 has an older AMD Ryzen 7 5000-series CPU and an Nvidia midrange 3060 discrete GPU, but it will still hold its own with demanding games at reduced settings. But it’s that you’re getting that performance in a slim laptop that weighs a hair over 3.5 pounds that’s the impressive part. Well, that and it’s more than 40% off its original price of $1,400.
Other Prime Day or Black Friday in July laptop deals:
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