Black Friday usually brings a ton of sales on every knick-knack and doodad you probably don’t need, but good laptop deals are one of the gems of this season. You’ll rarely get a better chance to nab a new computer, so we’ve rounded up the best deals we’ve seen this week.
WIRED Top Deals
WIRED tests products year-round and handpicked these deals based on the actual discounts, not just the discounts retailers claim to offer. Products that are sold out or no longer discounted as of publishing will be crossed out. We’ll update this guide through Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Be sure to check out our best Black Friday Deals.
Apple Laptop Deals
Read our Best MacBooks guide for more buying advice.
Like its smaller cousin, this 15-inch MacBook Air comes with the second-generation M2 processor that improves on Apple’s initial custom-built silicon. It has a retina display, a MagSafe power connector, and 256 gigabytes of internal storage. It’s super light and easy to toss into a backpack or laptop bag.
This is the successor to the original M1 MacBook Air. It’s faster, and being newer, it will be supported for longer into the future. We’ve seen this laptop drop to this price before—and occasionally a little lower. But this is still a solid choice for a powerful, super portable machine.
The first Apple laptop to use the company’s own silicon might be a few years old, but it’s still plenty powerful and holds up really well. In fact, it’s the laptop I used to write this very article. This model often drops to this price, but it’s the lowest price we’ve tracked.
The latest MacBook Pro packs the blazingly fast M3 processor, making it capable of editing 4K video on the go without breaking a sweat. It gets up to 22 hours of battery life and has a vibrant 14-inch retina display. If that’s somehow not enough power for your needs, the M3 Pro version is also on sale for $1,799.
The wide variety of M-series processors gives you a lot of options to get exactly the amount of power you need without spending a fortune. This 14-inch model of MacBook Pro comes with the M2 Pro processor for a couple of hundred dollars less than the M3 Pro. Beyond that, they’re largely the same laptop, so if you don’t need maximum horsepower, you can save a bit of cash.
Windows Laptop Deals
The HP Envy x360 (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is one of our favorite 2-in-1 laptops. It has plenty of power for most everyday tasks, plenty of USB ports (both USB-C and USB-A), and a full-size HDMI-out port. Most notably, it also has a 360-degree hinge, allowing you to prop it up, kickstand-style, or fold it flat like a tablet.
It can be difficult to walk the line between cheap and good, but this laptop from Acer is one of the best we’ve tested. It packs an Intel Core i5 (or AMD 5000 series chip), 8 gigabytes of RAM, and a 15.6-inch Full HD IPS display. It’s not the most beautiful screen, and the speakers can be a little quiet, but it’s powerful enough for most people.
This has been one of our favorite budget laptops for a while. It packs an AMD Ryzen 7 7730U processor, 16 gigabytes of RAM, and 512 gigabytes of internal storage. It’s solid for everyday use, just don’t expect to do heavy-duty video editing on it. It also comes with a built-in fingerprint reader and its hinge allows it to fold completely around to carry around like a tablet.
Chromebook Plus Deals
This is the fastest Chromebook we’ve tested (8/10, WIRED Recommends). It features a 3.75-GHz Intel Core i3-1315U CPU, 8 GB of RAM, and 128 GB of flash storage. The Flex 5i has two USB-C ports (one is used for charging) plus one USB-A port. You also get a microSD card slot for expanding the storage capability, making this a good choice for those who don’t want to keep everything in the cloud. The 14-inch touchscreen uses a 2-in-1 design, making it ideal for media streaming. As on most Chromebooks, the screen isn’t the best, with mid-level brightness and a standard 1,920 x 1,080-pixel screen resolution.
The Acer 15-inch Chromebook Plus (8/10, WIRED Recommends) comes with a 12th-generation 3.85-GHz Intel Core i3-1215U processor with 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB of flash storage. One of the nice things about these new Plus models is that the groan-inducing slowness that once afflicted cheap Chromebooks is nowhere to be found. Even this base model is plenty fast, and battery life is a solid 8.5 hours of full-screen video playback time. This Acer offers two USB-C ports (with DisplayPort supported), one USB-A port, and an HDMI 1.4 output jack. The latter takes the place of the microSD card found in the Lenovo above, making this one a better choice if you frequently need to give presentations or otherwise use the HDMI port. It doesn’t have a touchscreen.
We haven’t tested Asus’ Chromebook Plus yet, but some of the best benchmarks we’ve ever recorded in a Chromebook came from models using AMD Ryzen 3 chips. Given that the Ryzen 3 is the centerpiece here, I have no problem recommending it. You also get the standard 8 GB of RAM and a 128 GB SSD. Like the Lenovo, this is a 2-in-1 flip (convertible) Chromebook, with a touchscreen. The screen is on the brighter side for a Chromebook at 300 nits (compared to 250 for most of the others). This is the lowest price we’ve tracked.
HP’s Chromebook Plus entry comes in several configurations, but whichever you get, this is the priciest of the Chromebook Plus range we’ve seen so far, but this is now the lowest price we’ve tracked. We haven’t tested this one yet, but you get double the hard drive space at 256 GB, though the processor and RAM are the same as you find in the rest above. Like the Lenovo, HP offers two USB-C ports, one USB-A, and a microSD card slot. If you like HP’s design better, this might be one to consider.
Tablet and Accessory Deals
The Surface Pro 9 is our pick for the best 2-in-1 Surface. It uses a built-in kickstand and (optional) keyboard cover to bridge the gap between laptop and tablet. This version comes with a powerful Qualcomm SQ3 processor, 8 gigabytes of RAM, and 256 gigabytes of internal storage. Its battery can last up to 19 hours, though if you go for the optional 5G version, we found it got closer to 7.5 hours.
This version of the Surface Pro 9 uses an Intel Core i5 instead of the Qualcomm SQ3 processor, which is still solidly powerful for most everyday tasks. More importantly, this bundle comes with the Surface Pro Keyboard, turning it into an ideal tablet/laptop hybrid.
While it’s not strictly speaking a laptop, the Google Pixel Tablet (7/10, WIRED Recommends) is a fantastic Android tablet that can attach to a charging dock turning it into a smart display. The performance and screen are both great for the price, but the battery life doesn’t last quite as long as we’d like. It’s hit this low price twice now in November but hasn’t dropped this low before.
Charging your laptop quickly takes more power than a phone, which is why we like Anker’s charging blocks. This 67-watt charger has fold-out prongs and two USB-C ports, plus one USB-A port that can supply enough power to charge most laptops, and quickly charge most phones.
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