Prime Day laptop deals: One of our favorite MacBooks has a new record-low price, but that's about it

adminJuly 11, 2024

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prime-day-laptop-deals:-one-of-our-favorite-macbooks-has-a-new-record-low-price,-but-that's-about-it — Prime Day laptop deals: One of our favorite MacBooks has a new record-low price, but that's about it

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Amazon’s discount on the M2 Apple MacBook Air is one of its only legitimately good laptop deals ahead of Prime Day. Credit: Apple

UPDATE: Jul. 9, 2024, 1:50 p.m. EDT This story has been updated to reflect current pricing and availability.

On any given day, Amazon’s best laptop deals include some markdowns on Apple MacBooks… and not much else. The retail giant lists a lot of older and/or discontinued PCs that aren’t super worth it. Amazon also has a penchant for inflating sticker prices, making discounts look steeper than they really are.

Those factors, combined with the heavy presence of sketchy third-party sellers among Amazon’s laptop listings, make it one of the worst places to buy a laptop on the internet (again, unless you’re shopping for MacBooks). We usually recommend shopping at Best Buy or going directly to the manufacturer’s online store instead.

The fine print here is that Amazon usually gets its act together for major savings events, including its flagship Prime Day sale. When such sales are live, it’s way easier to find heftier discounts on new laptops shipped and sold by Amazon itself. (That said, it still behooves savvy shoppers to cross-check prices elsewhere, just in case.)

As we inch closer to Prime Day — it’s confirmed for July 16 and 17 — I’ll be keeping track of the very best Prime Day laptop deals here. So far, I’m not finding much outside of the usual M2 and M3 MacBooks we see on sale on Amazon, though one of them did just hit a new record-low price (the base M2 MacBook Air). That particular model probably won’t get any cheaper once Prime Day begins, so I think it’s worth buying pronto if its specs are workable for your needs. But otherwise, anyone who isn’t desperately in need of an immediate upgrade can wait until Prime Day proper to shop.

Note: All newly added deals are marked with a ✨, while deals with a 🔥 have dropped to an all-time low price. I’ve cross-checked all pricing with manufacturers’ sites to make sure the deals are legit. (If Amazon had the wrong MSRP, I corrected it and adjusted the discount accordingly.) I’ve also weeded out laptops sold by third-party sellers — if they have “Ships from/Sold by Amazon.com” underneath their “Buy Now” button, we’re cool.

Finally, it bears mentioning that these offers aren’t officially marked as “Early Prime Day Deals,” but they were all live and ready to shop on Amazon ahead of its sale at the time of writing.

Why we like it

Read Mashable’s full review of the 13-inch Apple MacBook Air (M2).

Mashable Deals

The Mashable Choice Award-winning M2 MacBook Air has an all-day battery life and “a keyboard that’s to die for,” wrote tech and games reporter Alex Perry. It’s also not very different from its successor, which added WiFi 6E support, closed-lid support for two monitors, and a 20% faster CPU. (That’s not an insignificant power discrepancy, but it’s hardly a dealbreaker for casual users.)

It’s our favorite “cheap” MacBook (relatively speaking) at its usual price of $999, so this new all-time low of $799 pushes it into the territory of a no-brainer buy. Note that Best Buy was matching it at the time of writing.

Haley Henschel is a Chicago-based Senior Shopping Reporter at Mashable who reviews and finds deals on popular tech, from laptops to gaming consoles and VPNs. She has years of experience covering shopping holidays and can tell you what’s actually worth buying on Black Friday and Amazon Prime Day. Her work has also explored the driving forces behind digital trends within the shopping sphere, from dupes to 12-foot skeletons.

Haley received a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and honed her sifting and winnowing skills at The Daily Cardinal. She previously covered politics for The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, investigated exotic pet ownership for Wisconsin Watch, and blogged for some of your favorite reality stars.

In her free time, Haley enjoys playing video games, drawing, taking walks on Lake Michigan, and spending time with her parrot (Melon) and dog (Pierogi). She really, really wants to get back into horseback riding. You can follow her on X at @haleyhenschel or reach her via email at [email protected].

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