Big sale events like Amazon Prime Day are the best time of year to snag discounts on tech, especially essential gadgets like laptops. Well, there’s good news. Many of our favorite laptops—and gaming laptops—are on sale. We’ve curated our selection to the absolute top five Prime Day laptop deals so you don’t have to waste time sifting through pages and pages of discounts. We have a varied selection, from MacBooks to Windows machines to Chromebooks—there’s something for everyone here. Be sure to check out our upcoming Prime Day Live Blog, where we’ll be highlighting some of the most noteworthy discounts on our favorite products.
Updated 2 pm EST: We’ve added the MacBook Pro (2023), the Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 (2024), and Dell XPS 14 laptops.
We test products year-round and handpicked these deals. We’ll update this guide periodically throughout the sale event.
The Best Laptop Deals
Be sure to read through our Best Laptops, Best Cheap Laptops, Best Linux Laptops, and Best Gaming Laptops guides for more buying advice.
Clip the $50 coupon on Amazon to get an even better discount of $1,049 ($200 off). The 15-inch MacBook Air (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is the first large-screen option within the Air lineup. It’s a great choice if all you want is a bigger screen, but don’t want to splurge on a MacBook Pro. It has all the same features as the 13-inch MacBook Air, including a modern design and a 1,080p webcam, not to mention the latest M3 chip. The base model comes equipped with an 8-core CPU and 10-core GPU and, in my testing, handled 41 Chrome tabs, multiple apps, and three separate windows with ease. I do, however, recommend upgrading to at least 16 GB of unified memory, to ensure that it can handle dozens of apps and tabs running simultaneously. —Brenda Stolyar
For power users, the MacBook Pro with the M3 Max processor is the way to go. This laptop comes with a vibrant Mini LED display that can reach a peak brightness of 1,000 nits, three Thunderbolt 4 ports, a full-size HDMI port, and a MagSafe charging connector. The M3 Max chip can tear through editing 4K video, heavy graphic design, or special effects work. We’ve been seeing this model go in and out of stock today—as of writing, for example, the model with 48GB of memory is available, but the 36GB model is not, though an hour earlier the reverse was true—but whichever model you choose, be sure to click the coupon to get an extra $200 off. — Eric Ravenscraft
Acer’s Chromebook Plus 514 (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is one of our favorites out of the recent crop of new, more powerful Chromebooks. It’s everything you need for everyday tasks like browsing the web, editing documents, and chatting with friends. The keyboard and trackpad are excellent, which is unusual for a Chromebook, and the touch display feels great. It’s not going to win any design awards, and there’s no backlit keyboard, but this is a lot of laptop for the price. It’s been on sale at $320 for a few months, but now with Prime Day, it’s down even further, which is the lowest we’ve seen it. If you want a bigger screen, the Acer Chromebook Plus 515 is also on sale for $319 ($80 off).
Acer’s laptop names get confusing. The model number here is the A315-24PT-R0UX, which is no less confusing but can at least be used to compare to other models. This is an upgrade to our favorite 15-inch budget laptop. It offers the best value of the 15-inch laptops we’ve tested, with an AMD Ryzen 5 7520U processor, 16 GB of RAM, and a 512-GB NVMe SSD. It’s big, and the display is not the sharpest, but it won’t strain your eyes. Interestingly, the title here says 16 GB RAM, as does one of the spec listings, but another says 8 GB of RAM, and it’s Amazon, so who knows what you’re going to get. If you end up with 8 GB, return it.
This is the lowest price we’ve ever seen on our favorite gaming laptop. The Razer Blade 18 (8/10, WIRED Recommends) packs Nvidia’s RTX 4070 graphics card, though you can choose a more powerful card for more cash. You get so much raw power in a gorgeous build with a massive 18-inch Mini LED display with a 300-Hz screen refresh rate and G-Sync compatibility. It’s also one of the first laptops ever with a Thunderbolt 5 port for faster data transfer speeds. Want a more compact machine? The Blade 14 is on sale for $1,600 ($300 off). —Julian Chokkattu
This 16-inch machine doesn’t scream gaming laptop if you prefer a more stealthy PC that can double as a work laptop. The m16 R2 IPS (8/10, WIRED Recommends) has an LCD with a 240-Hz screen refresh rate, making fast-paced content appear super smooth. It packs Nvidia’s RTX 4070 graphics card so it can handle nearly any game at medium or high graphical settings, and while the battery life is not great while gaming, it’s surprisingly long-lasting when you’re on the clock.
The Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 (8/10, WIRED Review) is an absolute beast of a laptop that can rival the power of many gaming desktops. It also consumes almost as much power as gaming desktops, so you’ll probably wanna play most of your heavy games near a wall outlet. The upgraded model that comes with an Nvidia RTX 4080 is currently on sale for a couple hundred dollars less than its usual price, so if you’ve been waiting to buy the last gaming laptop you’ll need for several years, now’s a great time. — Eric Ravenscraft
More Laptop Deals
Source link
