You’ve gotta be careful buying random laptops on Amazon. There’s a lot of junk that masquerades as good deals, especially when you get under $500. Don’t fall for it though. Below, you’ll find the best Prime Day laptop deals on devices we’ve personally reviewed this year. More than ever, it’s possible to get an affordable computer you won’t instantly regret buying or a great discount on one you’ve had your eye on. Read our Best Prime Day Deals roundup or Prime Day Liveblog for more.
WIRED Featured Deals
Laptop Deals
The Best MacBook Deal
Yes, the MacBook Air M4 (9/10, WIRED Recommends) is the top pick in our Best Laptops and Best MacBooks guides. But it’s also the laptop I find myself recommending to my friends and family most. There’s no other laptop under $1,000 that combines this balance of super-fast performance and a day’s worth of battery life, all in a chassis that is still the thinnest in the game. It even comes with 16 GB of RAM, though you may want to jump up to 512 GB of storage. Even with how much Apple charges to increase storage, it’s well worth it given how cheap it is right now.
A Reliable Surface Laptop
When I first reviewed the Surface Laptop 13.8-inch, also known as the Surface Laptop 7th Edition, (7/10, WIRED Recommends), it automatically became my daily driver. My favorite feature of the laptop is the display. It’s sharp and fast (with its 120-Hz refresh rate), but it’s the 3:2 aspect ratio display that really sets it apart. It’s a taller screen, and I love being able to see more of my work vertically. More than that, in its latest version, it finally gets great performance and battery life thanks to the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Pro (or even better, Elite) chips. There’s also a newer, more affordable model (confusingly, called the Surface Laptop 13), but it doesn’t have a lot of the features I like most about the 13.8-inch model.
A Surprisingly Affordable Windows Laptop