The greatest Prime Day deals on laptops
The Razer Blade 18 and the Acer Nitro V: a 15-inch budget laptop with a 120-Hz refresh rate and 720p webcam
According to rumors, M4-powered MacBooks could be coming as soon as this month. But the MacBook Pro with M3 launched just a year ago—so it’s still a great option. It has a miniLED and a 120Hz refresh rate, as well as a 720p webcam. It comes with a lot of ports, like twoUSB-C ports, a MagSafe charging port, and a high-impedance headphone jack. It is recommended if you are looking for a MacBook Pro that will cost no more than $2,000.
The Razer Blade 18 comes with raw power in a gorgeous build, and a huge 18-inch mini display with a 300-Hz screen refresh rate and G-sync compatibility. It also packs Nvidia’s RTX 4070 graphics card and a Thunderbolt 5 port for faster data transfer speeds.
This is our favorite 15-inch budget laptop. It packs an Intel Core i5 (or AMD 5000 series chip), 8 GB of RAM, a 15.6-inch IPS display (1,920 x 1,080 pixels), and plenty of ports including an Ethernet, USB, USB-C, HDMI, and headphone jack. It also has a decent keyboard and, at 4 pounds, it’s super lightweight. It’s certainly great for most everyday tasks too.
The latest Microsoft Surface Pro with a Snapdragon Elite X processor, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB SSD in sapphire blue is $1,199.99 ($300 off) at Best Buy. The 2-in-1 offers great performance as long as you don’t need certain apps that are lacking full support for Windows on Arm. Its detachable keyboard now has Bluetooth so you can use it separately from the tablet, and the 13-inch, 2880 x 1920 OLED you get in this configuration looks great and sports a speedy 120Hz refresh. If you are looking for a 2-in-1 with great battery life it is a great all-around package. Read our review.
The Acer Nitro V (8/10, WIRED Recommends) has been replaced in our guides by newer, fresher picks, but we still think it’s a great laptop. It’s not the highest-end gaming laptop out there, but it packs more than enough power to handle most games you can play on it. This version is more upgraded than the model we tested, with an Nvidia RTX 4050 GPU and a 144-Hz 1080p display.
Power up with WIRED: An Amazon Deal Day Offer for the Low-Performance 15-inch MacBook, Windows Productivity Machine, and Gaming Laptop
Power up with unlimited access to WIRED. It’s too important to ignore best-in-class reporting for just $2.50 per month for a year. Includes unlimited digital access and exclusive subscriber-only content. You can subscribe today.
Amazon isn’t known for its laptops, but it is participating in the Prime Big Deal Days sales event with some solid discounts, as well as a lot more if you consider the Best Buy counter-programming. If you are in the market for a brand new MacBook, Windows productivity machine or even a gaming laptop, we have a number of worthwhile options that are sure to make you happy.
The bigger the screen, the better the choice of 13-inch vs. 15-inch. If you are the type to always wear headphones, the 15-inch is less of an advantage.
The 14-inch M3 MacBook Pro with 8GB of RAM, and 512GB SSD is on sale for $1,299 ($300 off) at both Best Buy and Amazon. You can get more storage with 16 gigabyte or 1 gigabyte at Amazon for $1,699. That may be a steeper cost, but the extra RAM is especially worth it in the long haul.
A 16-inch gaming laptop sporting a 1920 x 1200 display with 165Hz refresh, AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS processor, Radeon RX7700S GPU, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB SSD.
We haven’t tested the 2024 Asus TUF A16, but at $699.99 ($400 off) at Best Buy, it seems like a solid value for some midrange gaming needs. The TUF has a speedy 165Hz display with 1200p resolution that, while not the highest resolution for a 16-inch panel, shouldn’t be as demanding as running a QHD or 4K display. Those graphics are powered by an all-AMD setup with a Ryzen 7 chip. It’s the same video card we tested in the Framework Laptop 16, which offered some fair benchmarking scores in various games. (That modular laptop’s issues were owed more to glitches and cooling issues than poor GPU performance.)
The cheap laptop is on sale for $1,201.74 at Amazon. Spec-wise, it’s got an Intel Core Ultra 7 processor, 16GB of RAM, and 1TB SSD. However, its most unique qualities are by far its dual 14-inch OLED touchscreens (with included stylus), one of which is revealed by removing its wireless keyboard deck to allow a multi-screen desktop-like setup you can bring anywhere.
It may look a bit bonkers, but the Zenbook Duo allows for 19.8 inches of screen real estate in a package you can throw in your everyday bag and bring with you to the coffee shop. Talk about a power move. Read our review.
The 14-inch screens on the two-screen laptop are 2880 x 1800 resolution. If a single-monitor laptop is used, the keyboard can be removed to cover one of the screens or alternatively used as a kickstand to put the laptop in dual-screen mode.
The 14-inch and 16-inch screens of the Galaxy Book4 Edge are on sale for as low as $799.99 and $1,2499.99, respectively, at both Best Buy and Best Buy. The models include an Arm based processor, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage. The thin-and-light frame and excellent screen make it one of the prettiest to view, even if it doesn’t have the best performance of the recent Windows Copilot Plus PCs running Arm chips. It lasts all day like a modern MacBook, with its power-sipping processor. Read our review.
