Amazon Prime Day 2024 is finally here and so is the deluge of laptop deals. Whether you need a lightweight notebook for school or a lightning-fast rig for marathon gaming sessions, these discounted laptops are primed (ha!) and ready to meet every need. You will need a Prime subscription, so if you’ve never subscribed before, sign up for a 30-day trial for free.
So, 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 of 2024 roundup. Every day, I spend a good amount of time searching the web for the best 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 tapped 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.
First published on July 12, 2024. Last updated on July 16, 2024.
The HP Envy x360 is a great laptop with a powerful Intel Core Ultra 5 125U processor and a versatile convertible form factor. It’s zippy enough for general browsing and productivity tasks, and the convertible form factor means you can fold the screen all the way back.
Being able to use a laptop in different positions is useful if you’re a frequent traveler, especially when using the device in a cramped space like an airplane seat. The 15.6-inch 1080p is also nice, as it has touch capability. This is good news if you’re a regular doodler or note taker.
The above laptop deals are all fantastic, but there’s one that really stands out from the rest. For under a grand, you can pick up the Asus VivoBook S 16 OLED, which boasts a powerful Intel Core Ultra 9 185H CPU as well as a stunning 3200×2000 OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate. The CPU has 16 cores, 22 threads, and can run up to 5.1 GHz. That means it should blitz right through day-to-day tasks and office work.
The OLED display is ideal for entertainment or graphic design work, as this type of panel is capable of producing inky blacks and rich colors. The laptop itself also weighs just 3.31 pounds, which is perfect if you travel often.
If you’re looking for a great gaming experience at a reasonable price point, the Asus TUF Gaming A15 is definitely worth looking into, as it’s a very well-rounded machine. Between the AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS CPU and the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 GPU, this laptop should fly through most games on the higher graphics settings.
The 1080p display is also quite spacious at 15.6-inches and the 144Hz refresh rate should keep things looking nice and smooth in the heat of battle. It also comes with 1TB of SSD storage, which is a good amount of space if you’ve got a massive games library.
The Gigabyte Aorus 15 deserves a call-out because of its wickedly fast 360Hz refresh rate display. That’s an incredibly high number, so this display should churn out silky smooth visuals, which is important during faster-paced games like Fornite or Doom.
It also comes with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 GPU and an Intel Core i5-12500H CPU, meaning it has enough juice to run most games on the Medium or High graphics settings, but you may want to dial those settings back on more modern titles. The display, measuring a roomy 15.6-inches, is pretty spacious with a resolution of 1920×1080. It’s not the highest resolution we’ve ever seen, but it’s perfectly fine for most games.
Our PCWorld editors have curated best deal roundups across all the major tech categories:
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.
