Laptops have a rhythm. New chips arrive, last year's models get cleared, retailers fight over back-to-school shoppers, then over holiday shoppers. Knowing the calendar is worth more than any coupon.
The four windows that matter
1. Black Friday and Cyber Monday (late November). The floor for most consumer laptops. Best Buy, Walmart and Amazon all discount current-generation machines, and doorbusters on last-generation models can hit 40% off. If you want a mainstream Windows laptop or a Chromebook and can wait, wait for this.
2. Back-to-school (mid-July to August). The second-best window, and the best for students: Apple's education pricing plus a free accessory typically runs from June to September, and Best Buy runs student discounts in the same period. Prime Day (July) overlaps and adds Amazon to the fight.
3. New-chip season (spring and fall). Intel, AMD and Apple refresh their chips roughly once a year. When a new generation ships, the previous generation is still fast enough for almost everyone and drops in price within weeks. Watch for "last-gen" models, not "old" ones: one generation back is a bargain, three generations back is e-waste.
4. Prime Big Deal Days (October). Good for Amazon-sold machines and for Chromebooks, rarely the year's low on premium laptops.
Worst times to buy
- September, right after back-to-school ends and before the October sale.
- January to February. Post-holiday, stock is thin and prices reset to list.
- The day a new model launches. Launch price is full price. Wait eight to twelve weeks.
Apple is a special case
Apple almost never discounts its own laptops on apple.com. Discounts come from three places: authorized retailers (Amazon, Best Buy, B&H) that regularly take $100 to $300 off a MacBook Air; Apple's education store; and Apple's refurbished store, which sells one-year-warranty units at 15% to 25% off. The biggest saving is usually a refurbished previous-generation MacBook Pro bought right after the new one launches.
What "a good deal" looks like right now
We list laptop offers from more than 70 sources across Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, Newegg, Dell, HP and Lenovo, and we keep the accessories out. Backpacks, sleeves, hubs and stands are filtered out of the laptop category so the list is only machines. Every offer shows the store, the discount from the source, and, once we have it, the price history so you can see whether today's price is a real drop.
Quick reference for a "buy now" price on a new machine:
- Chromebook for browsing and school: under $250.
- Windows laptop with 16 GB RAM and a 512 GB SSD: under $600.
- MacBook Air (current generation, base model): $150 or more below Apple's list price.
- Gaming laptop with a current mid-range GPU: under $1,000.
If an offer beats those numbers outside a sale window, it is worth taking. Inside a sale window, aim lower.