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12 Best Black Friday Laptop Deals

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Lenovo Flex 5i Chromebook Plus

This is the best time of year to buy a new laptop. Rarely will you have a better chance of getting a computer, so we’ve rounded up the best Black Friday laptop deals we’ve seen on all the models our reviewers recommend. Whether you want a portable productivity powerhouse, a great gaming PC, or just something to curl up with in bed with Netflix, these machines from companies like Apple, Dell, Asus, and Lenovo will get the job done. You’ll also find other laptop accessories and peripherals below, including mechanical keyboards.

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Laptop Deals

Photography: Lenovo

Do you think of a laptop as a metal frame around a web browser? Consider a Chromebook. Google launched a big update called Chromebook Plus in 2023. The “Plus” means better performance: faster processors, more memory, more storage and better video cameras. Our favorite of the models we’ve tested is the Lenovo Flex 5i Chromebook Plus (8/10, WIRED recommended). It’s among the fastest Chromebooks we’ve tested for its price. It features a 3.75 GHz Intel Core i3-1315U CPU, 8 GB of RAM, and 128 GB of flash storage.

Dell’s two largest XPS laptops (7/10, WIRED recommended) are aimed at Windows users with Macbook jealousy. The design, specifications, and sizes align perfectly with Apple’s offerings. The Unfortunately, heavy tasks like video editing, well, MacBook benchmarks circle around the XPS 14. Still, with this deal, this is a serious piece of hardware for not a lot of money.

Dell recently updated its XPS 13 line with Qualcomm Snapdragon chips to make it that sweet Copilot+ PC. This offer includes the Snapdragon X Elite, which is the faster of the two options. I’ve been testing this for a couple of months and was very impressed with how smoothly Windows runs on a new architecture. It’s been pretty fast and the battery life is exceptional (around 14 hours in my tests), although not as impressive as other Snapdragon-equipped machines we’ve tested. If you want an Intel XPS 13, they are also on sale. you can get a Core Ultra 7 chip, 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD for $1,499 ($500 off).

Photography: Christopher Null

The first Intel-based Copilot+ PC is a winner on all fronts (7/10, WIRED review), boasting excellent graphics and AI performance and one of the best battery life we’ve ever seen on Intel hardware. With its slightly awkward 15.3-inch screen, it hits its high points and is hard to argue with at this price, although the fan is noisy and the system can overwhelm you more than you’d like.

There’s a lot to love about Samsung’s Galaxy Book4 Ultra (7/10, WIRED review), but let’s be honest, that sticker price is crazy. This deal reduces it a bit, although it is still expensive. You get impressive hardware: the new Intel Core Ultra 9 185H processor, the current top-of-the-line processor in Intel’s Core Ultra CPU lineup, along with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card. The 2880 AMOLED touchscreen is gorgeous to work with. x 1800 pixel 16-inch and the performance surpassed anything we’ve tested at this price.

Swift Go offers exceptional performance for the price (7/10, wired review). It also boasts an impressive 15-hour battery life. The downside is the speakers, which aren’t very good and overall the body feels a little plasticky. But this is the cheapest Intel Core Ultra laptop we’ve tested for just a few dollars, so if you’re on a tight budget, the Swift Go is worth considering.

Asus Chromebook Plus CX34

Photography: Daniel Thorp-Lancaster

The Asus Chromebook Plus CX34 (7/10, WIRED recommended) is the best-looking Chromebook you can buy. The beautiful white design stands out in a sea of ​​gray tiles. The Core i5 CPU offers great performance and can easily handle multiple tabs and juggle applications. The webcam is nice too, much sharper than you’d expect from a sub-$500 laptop. The downside is that it doesn’t have a backlit keyboard.

The 13-inch Surface Laptop (7th Edition) (7/10, WIRED Recommended) is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processor. Performance was good in our tests. It didn’t get stuck no matter how many windows, tabs, and apps we threw at it. That said, this isn’t a machine for graphics-intensive tasks like video editing or gaming (which is a shame because the vivid, sharp display with a 120Hz refresh rate would be great for gaming).

MacBook Deals

Be sure to read all of our Black Friday Apple deals, and for more information on the Macs we love, check out our Best Macbooks guide.

Photography: Brenda Stolyar

The new 13-inch MacBook Air (7/10, WIRED recommended) is the best MacBook for most people. It combines a powerful M3 chip with a nice, bright and sharp 13.6-inch LCD screen, a 1080p webcam, two USB 4/Thunderbolt ports and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The M3 chip gives the Air a big performance boost over the previous M1 version. In our testing, it was able to handle everyday tasks like browsing the web, checking email, and watching videos with ease, and even handle slightly more intensive tasks like editing photos or videos without breaking a sweat. If you are looking for a mobile video editing workstation, you’d better choose the MacBook Pro below.

If you want a MacBook that can handle even more workloads, this is the deal for you. This model also has more ports. There are three USB-C ports with Thunderbolt 4, an HDMI port, an SD card slot (bless Apple for all PCs to copy this move), a fancy high-impedance headphone jack, and a MagSafe charging port. The base model has 16 gigabytes of memory and the base M4 chip can handle most general tasks, but video editors and anyone using more CPU- and GPU-intensive applications will want to see the M4 Pro for $2099 ($300 off) or the M4 Max for $2,899 ($300 off).

Tablet deals

Photography: apple

The iPad (10th generation) (7/10, WIRED review) is our favorite iPad to recommend to most people. It has an A14 Bionic chip (which you’ll also find in the iPhone 12) which never felt slow while I tested it. It also has a modern design, with slim bezels around a large 10.9-inch Liquid Retina (IPS LCD) display, Touch ID integrated into the power button, a USB-C port for charging, and a 12-megapixel front camera that en Located in the center of the iPad.

The OnePlus Pad 2 is a tough name, but it’s our favorite Android tablet. It’s good value for money, especially at this price. The screen is quite nice, if somewhat unusual, at 12.1 inches in size. It’s great for watching videos or working. The highlight here is OnePlus’ Android customization, which allows you to multitask simultaneously with three apps side by side, or two apps side by side and a third at the bottom. To be more productive, we suggest collecting keyboard case.

Chargers and Accessories

Photography: Satechi

This handy charger has enough power to charge two MacBook Pro models simultaneously. But it’s also great if you have a lot of devices around your desk that need to be charged constantly. It has a small stand to hold it, a short cable that goes to a power outlet, and four USB-C ports rated at 100 watts each. This is the lowest price we’ve tracked.

A 25,000 mAh battery that’s surprisingly compact is a rarity, and this one also includes two USB-C ports, one USB-A, and the ability to draw 145 watts while charging. That means one USB-C port can output 100 watts, enough to quickly charge a laptop, while the other outputs 45 watts.

This 67-watt charger has foldable prongs and two USB-C ports, plus a USB-A port that can supply enough power to charge most laptops and fast charge most phones. It’s also small and lightweight, so it’s easy to throw it in a bag and take it to the coffee shop.

This charger includes two USB-C ports, one of which can output 65 watts when used alone. If you connect two devices, the upper one will deliver 45 watts and the lower one will be able to output 20 watts. It also folds up and looks super stylish.

Keychron Q1 Pro

Photography: Amazonas

This was WIRED reviews editor Julian Chokkattu’s daily keyboard for almost a year. You can use it wired or wirelessly via Bluetooth and it comes in several colors and switches to choose from (it also has RGB backlighting). The red switches aren’t very loud, but they still click, and there’s a great knob to control the volume. It’s also hot-swappable, so you can change switches whenever you want.

The Das Keyboard MacTigr (9/10, WIRED recommended) is pricey, but it’s great for those in the Apple ecosystem with a dedicated Mac design. It also has Cherry MX Red switches (which don’t make too much noise), a two-port USB-C hub, and a high-quality all-metal build.

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