Why You Can Trust CNET The Best Prime Day Laptop Deals Still Available Aren't From Amazon
Amazingly, there are still a lot of laptop bargains available even now that Amazon's Prime Day is over. You just have to know where to look.
- More than two decades experience writing about PCs and accessories, and 15 years writing about cameras of all kinds.
Amazon's July Prime Day event has ended, but the laptop deals continue. Amazon still has a few models worth considering, but the best deals are actually at other retailers with Black Friday in July sales. Those competing sales from Best Buy, Walmart and other stores are still going strong. In fact, though many of Amazon's deals evaporated overnight, I recommend going directly to the online store of the PC maker you're interested in. HP, Dell, Asus, Acer, Lenovo, Samsung, LG and others are continuing their discounts, which can rival those of the retailers.
As one of CNET's PC experts, I've scanned the current sales. Below you'll find some of the best remaining deals I've discovered. We'll keep updating this list as older deals expire and new ones drop, so check back for the latest offers.
Best Prime Day deals on laptops
HP knows how to make a good low-cost laptop (as does Acer). This HP laptop is from the PC maker's entry-level line and is designed for simple home office or school use. In other words, if you want something to web browse, write emails, work with basic documents or spreadsheets, track your finances and video chat with friends and family. And it's all wrapped up in an attractive body. The 15.6-inch full-HD display will give you some room to spread out, too. (Although, if you need more, there's a deal available on the 17.3-inch model below.)
Lenovo doesn't always make it easy to know exactly how much money you'll save on a laptop on sale. I've been doing comparison shopping like this for nearly two decades, though, so I can spot a good deal and, well, this is a good one. It's loaded with higher-end components -- 13th-gen Core i9 CPU, Nvidia RTX 4080, 32GB of memory and 1TB SSD, and it's topped off with a 2.5K-resolution display with a 240Hz refresh rate. We tested this combo, and it hit 190 frames per second on Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Guardians of the Galaxy set to their highest image quality at 1080p.
By comparison, Alienware's m16 with a near-identical configuration is $2,550 (and that's its sale price with $200 off).
The 2020 M1 MacBook Air is Apple's least expensive laptop... and it's still $1,000. For Prime Day, though, Amazon has it for only $750. That's as low as it goes for this excellent little laptop. This configuration has 256GB of storage and 8GB of memory, so if your computing needs stretch beyond the everyday for school or the home office, this might feel limiting. But as an entry-level MacBook, it's pretty great.
If you want a small gaming laptop with a small price, this is it. This Zephyrus 14 has an older AMD Ryzen 7 5000-series CPU and an Nvidia midrange 3060 discrete GPU, but it will still hold its own with demanding games at reduced settings. But it's that you're getting that performance in a slim laptop that weighs a hair over 3.5 pounds that's the impressive part. Well, that and it's $600 off its original price of $1,400.
Most PC-makers have decent entry-level aka budget gaming laptop options. Dell sits at the top of the list for us with its G15 and G16 models for their mix of features, design and performance at more affordable prices, particularly when they're on sale. For Prime Day, this Dell G15 is a solid midrange gamer with an Intel Core i7-12700H, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 GPU, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB solid-state drive for storage. And to help smooth out gameplay, the full-HD, 15.6-inch display has a 120Hz refresh rate. It's normally $1,200, but the Prime Day price is $999.
The HP Laptop 17 is a super-basic laptop with a big 17-inch display. The $330 configuration will cover you for simple home office tasks, web browsing, email, and keeping up with friends and family on video chat or social networks. If you can afford to spend $70 more, I recommend upgrading to a newer version of the $650 configuration we tested that's currently on sale for $400 for more processing power to keep it from feeling slow. Read our HP Laptop 17 review.
More Prime Day laptop deals: