Amazon actually managed to beat some of Best Buys Black Friday laptop deals

UPDATE: Nov. 26, 2024, 10:40 a.m. EST This story has been updated with more Black Friday laptop deals at Amazon, including all-new top picks.

Amazon’s best Black Friday laptop deals at a glance:

Best MacBook deal

Apple MacBook Air, 13-inch (M3, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD)

$844
(save $255)

Best Windows laptop deal

Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 (Snapdragon X Elite, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD)

$1,549.99
(save $450)

Best gaming laptop deal

Acer Nitro V 15 (Intel Core i7-13620H, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD)

$749.99
(save $250)

Best Chromebook deal

Acer Chromebook Plus 514 (AMD Ryzen 3 7320C, 8GB RAM, 128GB eMMC)

$299.99
(save $100)

Amazon‘s laptop deals are unusually competitive during its Black Friday Week sale (live now through Friday, Nov 29.)

For reference, Best Buy is typically the major retailer with the best Black Friday laptop deals simply because it stocks the biggest selection. There are tons of discounts on a slew of configurations across a variety of brands there, including lots of newer models. (Best Buy is the exclusive retailer partner for a bunch of this year’s Copilot+ PCs, for example.)

Meanwhile, Amazon typically zeroes in on Apple MacBooks and a handful of options from Acer, Asus, LG, Microsoft, and Samsung during major savings events. It seems to pick and choose its Windows models pretty randomly, so those who shop there exclusively may have to settle for a configuration that doesn’t have the exact specs they want.

Amazon and Best Buy usually offer the exact same deals where their inventories overlap, but in the case of Black Friday 2024, the former has managed to crush its competitor in several notable cases. The base configuration of the 13-inch M3 MacBook Air (now with 16GB of RAM) is $5 cheaper on Amazon than at Best Buy, for instance, while the base M4 Pro-powered MacBook Pro is $50 cheaper.

Among Windows laptops, the Mashable Choice Award-winning Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 is $150 less at Amazon, and the highly rated Asus Zenbook Duo is $100 cheaper even with an extra boost from a My Best Buy discount.

Things reach more of a stalemate when it comes to gaming laptops. Best Buy has the best overall deal with its $600 discount on the Alienware m16 R2, Mashable’s top gaming laptop of 2024. And the $430 HP Victus featured in one of its doorbusters is the cheapest gaming laptop we’ve seen thus far. That said, Amazon is offering a pretty stellar deal on a variant of the Acer Nitro V 15, the best budget gaming laptop we’ve tried. It’s actually better than advertised.

Keep in mind that Amazon does not offer price matching, but most items purchased there through Dec. 31 can be returned until Jan. 31, 2025 — save for MacBooks, which can be sent back until Jan. 15. (For its part, Best Buy’s price match guarantee does not apply to competitors’ offers when they’re marked as Black Friday deals. It may eventually decide to conform to Amazon’s prices on its own, but there’s no telling if or when.)

Read on for a more detailed rundown of the best laptop deals available from Amazon’s Black Friday Week sale. We’ll continue to price-check our featured offers and look for more deals as the sale progresses, so check back often.

Note: Any deal marked with a 🔥has dropped to a record-low price.

Best MacBook deal at Amazon

Credit: Apple

Apple MacBook Air, 13-inch (M3, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD)

$844.00
at Amazon

$1,099.00
Save $255.00

Why we like it

Read Mashable’s full review of the Apple MacBook Air (M3).

The M3 Air is Mashable’s favorite MacBook for most people, combining an “exquisite keyboard” with dual external monitor support and “zippy performance,” wrote Mashable Tech Editor Kim Gedeon. (She gave it a 4.3/5 in her review.) As briefly mentioned, Apple just upgraded the base configuration from 8GB of memory to 16GB, making it an especially great value at its current sale price.

Amazon has the 13-inch model on sale for just $844 during its Black Friday Week sale, or $255 off its $1,099 MSRP — a 23% savings and a new record-low. It’s now less than $100 more than the M2 version, so it’s easy to recommend over its predecessor for future-proofing’s sake.

The 15-inch version is also on sale for $255 off at Amazon, which Best Buy has decided to match.

More MacBook deals at Amazon:

Apple MacBook Air, 13-inch (M2, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD) — $749 ~~$999~~ (save $250) 🔥
Apple MacBook Air, 15-inch (M3, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD) — $1,044 ~~$1,299~~ (save $255) 🔥
Apple MacBook Pro, 14-inch (M4, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD) — $1,399 ~~$1,599~~ (save $200) 🔥
Apple MacBook Pro, 14-inch (M4 Pro, 24GB RAM, 512GB SSD) — $1,749 ~~$1,999~~ (save $250) 🔥
Apple MacBook Pro, 16-inch (M4 Pro, 24GB RAM, 512GB SSD) — $2,199 ~~$2,499~~ (save $300) 🔥
Amazon MacBook Pro, 14-inch (M4 Max, 36GB RAM, 1TB SSD) — $2,899 ~~$3,199~~ (save $300) 🔥

Best Windows laptop deal

Credit: Microsoft

Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 (Snapdragon X Elite, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD) 🔥

$1,559.99
at Amazon

$1,999.99
Save $440.00

Why we like it

Read Mashable’s full review of the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7.

Microsoft’s slick Qualcomm-powered laptop lasted nearly 23 hours in our battery life test and one-upped the M3 MacBooks in our performance benchmark (both the Air and the Pro models). If Windows on Arm doesn’t pose any compatibility issues for your go-to apps, we think it’s the best Windows laptop for most people. It’s a Mashable Choice Award-winner that got a 4.8/5 rating from Gedeon, which makes it one of our highest-rated laptops of 2024. (The Asus Zenbook Duo got the same score.)

The 13-inch model we tested came with a Snapdragon X Elite CPU, 32GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage. It usually retails for a hefty $1,999.99, but Amazon’s Black Friday Week sale has brought it down to just $1,549.99 there. That’s 23% off and another new all-time low. It was $1,699.99 at Best Buy and $1,599 in the Microsoft Store at the time of writing, FYI.

If you don’t want to spend that much, pared-down configurations start at $899.