With Amazon Prime Day 2024 right around the corner, we’re seeing loads of laptop deals popping up all over the place like wild daisies. That means you don’t have to wait until the official event arrives on July 16th. Prime Day sales are exclusive to Prime members, so make sure you’ve nailed down a subscription. If you’ve never been a Prime member before, you can sign up for a 30-day trial for free.
Whether you need a portable notebook for work or a powerful rig for those long gaming sessions, these discounted laptops can certainly meet just about anyone’s needs.
Why should you listen to my recommendations? I oversee PCWorld’s laptop review program, from assignment to publication, and I also carefully maintain our daily laptop deals roundup, as well as our best laptops roundup. Every day, I spend a good amount of time hunting down the juiciest laptop deals.
To assemble the list below, I looked at everything from graphics and storage space to design and form factor. I also checked out Amazon pricing history with Camel Camel Camel. Since I’m so plugged into the laptop scene, I’ve also included deals from Dell, Acer, Best Buy and Newegg—though the focus for Prime Day deals is clearly on Amazon.
Read on to check out the best laptop deals. And don’t forget to tune into our Prime Day 2024 deals hub for delicious discounts in other tech categories.
The above laptop deals are all fantastic, no doubt, but there are a couple that really stand out from the pack. First is the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Pro, which boasts a beautiful OLED touchscreen and a zippy Intel Core 7 Ultra 155H processor. In our review of this model, we awarded It 4.5 stars out of 5 and an Editor’s Choice badge. We were especially impressed with the OLED display, saying “the color reproduction is outstanding.” We also liked how it stayed cool and virtually silent under heavier loads.
The other standout is the Dell XPS 14, an ultra-luxurious laptop with a stunning OLED touch display. The 14.5-inch 3200×2000 OLED display is capable of producing rich colors and inky blacks–so it’s a phenomenal screen for both entertainment and graphic design purposes. It should also deliver snappy performance thanks to the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H CPU CPU, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 GPU, and the 32GB of RAM. Other cool features include a backlight keyboard and a 1080p webcam.
While I stand behind every deal in the list above, the Dell G15 snags my attention every time because of its high refresh rate display. The 15.6-inch 1920×1080 display has a 165Hz refresh rate and a 3ms response time, so visuals should be as smooth as your mother’s freshly churned butter. Also, thanks to the AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS CPU and the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060, it should chew right through most games on High or Ultra graphics, especially if you flip on Nvidia’s speed-boosting DLSS technology in supported games.
Well, it depends on your needs and lifestyle. A 2-in-1, for example, is a good fit for someone who travels often. You can swing the screen back 360 degrees and use it in tablet mode for taking notes or you can prop it up like a tent for watching movies with others. If gaming is a top priority, then you’ll want to look into a laptop with powerful internal hardware and a display with a high refresh rate. For those of us who need a basic laptop for general web browsing, a low-powered Windows laptop should do you just fine.
I always use Camel Camel Camel, which is a pricing history platform. You can make a free account and the interface is pretty easy to navigate. Let’s use the Asus VivoBook 16 as an example. Plug the ASIN, which is the part of the URL that starts with the letter B (B0BT6NKLQR in this case), into the search bar and hit search. Once the result generates, scroll down and you’ll see a graph of its price history. You’ll see a big dip in the price this month, the lowest price it has ever been in fact. That’s a big drop from the end of March when it was as high as $741.16.
Not particularly when you’re hunting for deals, as long as you stick to household names. All of the big manufacturers like HP and Acer make perfectly capable machines and they all offer pretty steep discounts on their online retail storefronts. You may have a personal preference, though. Dell, for example, has great customer service and their website is easy to navigate. As for HP, their back-to-school guide is laid out in a really straightforward way.
I always tell my friends and family to shoot for at least 8GB of RAM. Anything less than that and you may very well notice a slowdown. If you can go higher than 8GB, that’s great! The more RAM you have, the zipper your laptop will be, especially when it comes to general browsing or making spreadsheets. 16GB of RAM is better for productivity tasks and gaming, and 32GB of RAM is perfect for photo editors.
