Table of Contents
if you are inside If you’re in the market for a laptop but want to spend your money wisely, you’re in luck. Amazon’s Prime Day deals are happening on October 8 and 9, and you’ll find several of our favorite laptops on sale. Not sure how to choose which one is best for you? We have a complete guide to buying one, as well as guides to the best laptops, the best budget laptops, the best MacBooks, and the best Chromebooks.
We test throughout the year and verify all of these prices with third-party software. These are the best discounted machines available, from Windows models and Chromebooks to MacBooks. As always, you need an Amazon Prime membership to get the sale price, but you can sign up for a free trial and Prime offers plenty of perks.
WIRED Featured Offers
Turn it on with unlimited access to CABLING. Get the best reports that are too important to ignore just for $2.50 $1 per month for 1 year. Includes unlimited digital access and exclusive content only for subscribers. Subscribe today.
The best laptop deals
The M3-powered MacBook Air (7/10, WIRED recommended) isn’t all that different from the M2 model, but it’s a great option, specifically if you want a reliable laptop for everyday tasks and a little more. It has an attractive 13.6-inch LCD screen and a notch with a 1080p webcam. Meanwhile, the M3 will give you a nice performance boost compared to the original M1. You can also use it with two external displays, which is an upgrade from the single external display support with older chips.
According to rumors, M4-powered MacBooks could arrive this month. But the MacBook Pro with M3 was released just a year ago, so it’s still a great option. It includes a brighter display with mini LEDs and a 120Hz refresh rate, along with a 1080p webcam. It also comes with plenty of ports, including two USB-C ports with Thunderbolt 4, an HDMI, a MagSafe charging port, a high-impedance headphone jack, and an SD card slot. We recommend it if you’re looking for a MacBook Pro without spending $2,000 or more.
The Razer Blade 18 (8/10, WIRED Recommended) packs raw power in a gorgeous build, complete with a massive 18-inch Mini LED display with a 300Hz screen refresh rate and G-Sync support. It also includes Nvidia’s RTX 4070 graphics card and a Thunderbolt 5 port for faster data transfer speeds.
This is a solid 2-in-1 Chromebook ideal for traveling. The 14-inch IPS LCD panel (with 1,920 x 1,200 pixel resolution) is sharp, the speakers sound decent and are surprisingly loud, and the Intel Core i3 offers snappy performance. It doesn’t have the best battery life, but you’ll still get through a full work day on a single charge.
This Chromebook (7/10, WIRED recommended) holds the title of “Best Battery Life” in our guide to the best Chromebooks. We got 10 to 11 hours of juice consistently. It comes with some trade-offs. For example, it has a low-end MediaTek 520 processor and only 4GB of RAM, so it struggles to keep up with certain tasks (including keeping more than a couple of tabs open at a time). The screen is not very good either and the 64 GB of storage is suffocating. But if all you care about is not having to constantly plug it into a charger or spend a lot of money, it’s a solid option, especially at this price. It is best for simple web-based tasks and word processing.
This is our favorite 15-inch budget laptop. It includes an Intel Core i5 (or AMD 5000 series chip), 8GB of RAM, a 15.6-inch IPS display (1,920 x 1,080 pixels), and plenty of ports, including Ethernet, USB, USB-C, HDMI, and headphones. . Jacob. It also has a decent keyboard and, at 4 pounds, it’s super light. Without a doubt, it is also excellent for most everyday tasks.
Surface Pro (6/10, WIRED review) is our favorite Surface 2-in-1, but it’s expensive. It works well as a tablet, but we recommend opting for the flexible keyboard to make the overall experience even more comfortable. However, we don’t suggest buying it for full price, so if you’ve been eyeing it for a while, you should buy it while it’s on sale.
The Acer Nitro V (8/10, recommended by WIRED) 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 has more than enough power to handle most of the games you can play on it. This version is more updated than the model we tested, with an Nvidia RTX 4050 GPU and a 144Hz, 1080p display.
Tablet deals
Do you need a laptop? Actually? Really, really? There are some excellent tablets out there that might be good enough for most of us.
This is the best Android tablet you can buy. The OnePlus Pad 2 has good spec upgrades across the board compared to the first-generation model, such as a slightly larger 12.1-inch LCD screen that’s a bit brighter and sharper. It is now powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, the flagship processor in most 2024 Android phones, with double the RAM and internal storage. It no longer comes in green, which is disappointing, and there’s no biometric authentication, but otherwise this is a great Android tablet. Its Open Canvas feature lets you multitask with three apps side by side (or two side by side and the third underneath); It’s a much more intuitive interface than many split-screen experiences on competing devices.
For the money, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better Android tablet than this one. The original OnePlus Pad (8/10, WIRED recommended) is still a great buy. For $350 you get an 11.61-inch LCD display with a 144Hz refresh rate, a powerful MediaTek Dimensity 9000 chipset for smooth performance, and best of all, OnePlus’ excellent software.
Do you want an Apple slate? These are also on sale, including the latest 10th generation iPad (7/10, WIRED Review), which is our preferred iPad for most people. It comes with a 10.9-inch Liquid Retina (IPS LCD) display, a Touch-ID sensor integrated into the power button, a USB-C port (welcome to the future Apple), and a 12-megapixel rear camera. It’s powered by an A14 Bionic chip, which can handle pretty much anything you can do with a basic tablet like this. It would be remiss of us not to mention that there are rumors of more iPads arriving later this year, but even if there are, it will still be a capable tablet that is a good deal at this price.
If you’re looking for a budget tablet, the 2021 entry-level iPad (8/10, WIRED recommended) is still a good choice. It’s three years old and uses the older A13 Bionic chip, but it’s affordable and sufficient for occasional tablet use. There’s 64GB of storage on the base model, a 12-megapixel rear camera (Center Stage compatible), a Touch ID-enabled physical home button, and a True Tone display. It’s also compatible with several accessories, including the first-generation Apple Pencil and Apple’s Smart Keyboard.
