Brenda Stolyar
if you’re in the market for a laptop but want to spend money wisely, you’re in luck. Amazon’s Prime Day deals run on October 8 and 9, and you’ll find a number of our favorite laptops on sale. Not sure how to pick out which one is best for you? We have a complete guide to buying one, as well as guides to the Best Laptops, Best Cheap Laptops, Best MacBooks, and Best Chromebooks.
We test year-round and cross-checked 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 deal price, but you can sign up for a free trial and Prime offers plenty of perks.
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Best Laptop Deals
The M3-powered MacBook Air (7/10, WIRED Recommends) isn’t all that different than the M2 model, but it’s a great choice, specifically if you want a reliable laptop for everyday tasks and slightly 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 boost in performance 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 the older chips.
According to rumors, M4-powered MacBooks could be coming as soon as this month. But the MacBook Pro with M3 launched just a year ago—so it’s still a great option. It packs a brighter display with mini LED and a 120-Hz refresh rate, along with a 1080p webcam. It comes with plenty of ports too, 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.
If you want a MacBook with a large screen, the 15-inch Air (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is a great option. It has all the same features as the smaller version, including a modern design and 1080p webcam, along with an M3 chip under the hood. With an 8-core CPU and 10-core GPU on the base model, it can easily handle various tasks. We do, however, recommend upgrading to at least 16 GB of memory to make sure it can handle a bunch of apps and tabs simultaneously and smoothly.
The Razer Blade 18 (8/10, WIRED Recommends) delivers raw power in a gorgeous build—complete with a huge 18-inch Mini LED display with a 300-Hz screen refresh rate and G-Sync compatibility. It also packs Nvidia’s RTX 4070 graphics card and a Thunderbolt 5 port for faster data transfer speeds.
This is a solid 2-in-1 Chromebook that’s great for traveling. The 14-inch IPS LCD panel (with 1,920 X 1,200-pixel resolution) is sharp, the speakers sound decent and get surprisingly loud, and the Intel Core i3 delivers snappy performance. It doesn’t have the best battery life, but you’ll still get through a full workday on one charge.
This Chromebook (7/10, WIRED Recommends) holds the title of “Best Battery Life” in our Best Chromebooks guide. We got 10 to 11 hours of juice consistently. It does come with a few trade-offs. For example, it has a low-end MediaTek 520 processor and only 4 GB of RAM, so it struggles to keep up with certain tasks (including keeping more than a couple of tabs open at once). The display isn’t great either, and the 64 GB of storage is stifling. But if all you care about is not having to constantly plug it into a charger or breaking the bank, it’s a solid choice—especially at this price. It’s best for simple web-based tasks and word processing.
This is our favorite 15-inch budget laptop. It packs an Intel Core i5 (or AMD 5000 series chip), 8 GB of RAM, a 15.6-inch IPS display (1,920 x 1,080 pixels), and plenty of ports including an Ethernet, USB, USB-C, HDMI, and headphone jack. It also has a decent keyboard and, at 4 pounds, it’s super lightweight. It’s certainly great for most everyday tasks too.
The Surface Pro (6/10, WIRED Review) is our favorite 2-in-1 Surface, but it is expensive. It performs well as a tablet, but we do recommend opting for the Flex Keyboard to make for an even more comfortable experience overall. We don’t suggest buying it for full price, though, so if you’ve been eyeing it for a while, then you should certainly snag it while it’s on sale.
The Acer Nitro V (8/10, WIRED Recommends) 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 packs more than enough power to handle most games you can play on it. This version is more upgraded than the model we tested, with an Nvidia RTX 4050 GPU and a 144-Hz 1080p display.
Tablet Deals
Do you need a laptop? Really? Really, really? There are some great tablets out there that might be good enough for most of us.
This is the best Android tablet you can buy. OnePlus Pad 2 has nice spec updates across the board compared to the first-gen model, like a slightly larger 12.1-inch LCD screen that’s a touch brighter and sharper. It’s 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 below); 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. The original OnePlus Pad (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is still a great buy. For $350 you get an 11.61-inch LCD screen with a 144-Hz refresh rate, a powerful MediaTek Dimensity 9000 chipset for smooth performance, and best of all, OnePlus’ excellent software.
Want an Apple slate? Those are on sale too, including the latest 10th-gen iPad (7/10, WIRED Review), which is our top pick 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’re likely to do with a basic tablet like this. It would be remiss of us not to mention that there are rumors of more iPads coming later this year, but even if there are, this will remain a capable tablet that’s a good deal at this price.
If you’re looking for a cheap tablet, the 2021 entry-level iPad (8/10, WIRED Recommends) remains a good option. It is three years old and uses the older, A13 Bionic chip, but it’s affordable and is enough for casual tablet use. There’s 64 GB of storage on the base model, a 12-megapixel rear camera (with support for Center Stage), a physical Touch ID-enabled home button, and a True Tone display. It’s also compatible with various accessories including the first-generation Apple Pencil and Apple’s Smart Keyboard.
The latest iPad Pro tablet (6/10, WIRED Review) comes with a ton of upgrades, including a bigger and brighter display, a front-facing camera that’s now in landscape mode, and an updated OLED screen. Powering it is the latest M4 chip, which delivers snappy and smooth performance. If you don’t need the Pro but still want a larger display, the 13-inch iPad Air (8/10, WIRED Recommends) with M2 is also on sale for $749 ($50 off).
Photograph: Nena Farrell
The Tab S9+ (7/10, WIRED Recommends) has a 12.4-inch screen, 120-Hz OLED refresh rate, snappy performance, and an IP68 rating for water resistance. It’s a great option if you’re looking for a tablet that’s powerful enough to get work done during the day and stream content at night. The smaller Tab S9, which packs the same features (aside from a smaller screen) is also on sale for $684 ($116 off).