Laptops are expensive, there’s no getting away from it, but you can appreciate the financial implications of choosing the best laptop at the right time. While there are always new laptops coming out, a few times throughout the year, buying a laptop becomes a little more affordable, even if you want the latest and greatest.

To choose the best time to buy a laptop, keep in mind:

• Big Sale: Black Friday, Cyber ​​Monday, Prime Day
• back to school
• New hardware versions

Black Friday / Cyber ​​Monday

Black Friday is obviously a good time to shop for a laptop, but it’s more than just door chores. New laptop hardware is usually released either at the beginning of the year or around October, depending on the manufacturer. This means that all laptops that are one generation old or about to be one generation obsolete after CES or the Consumer Electronics Show will be heavily discounted.

This is because retailers like Amazon and Best Buy want to clear their shelves to make room for new products when they arrive. So, yes, that might mean you’re not getting the fanciest laptop, but when you can save a solid 20-30% off the sticker price, does it even matter?

Couple that with the fact that these retailers are using huge Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday discounts to get your attention, and you could end up with an extremely affordable laptop. I’ve seen Black Friday stock drop the price of the MacBook Air a couple of weeks after it came out, and Apple laptops tend to be the most expensive. load to see any discounts especially when they are new.

Black Friday this year falls on November 23rd., but the season of deals continues to stretch. If you’re looking to buy a laptop during Black Friday, you can expect discounts to start around October.

Amazon Prime Day

Amazon Prime Day

As with Black Friday, Amazon has its own promotions every year. In my experience, Prime Day laptop deals are never bigbut that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. If you’re not too picky, you can find a solid laptop at an affordable price, but it probably won’t be a luxury top-of-the-line device.

Instead, Amazon Prime Day is one of the best times of the year to get one of the best Chromebooks out there. These are already ultra-affordable laptops, and Amazon is cutting prices even further on Prime Day. The best part about this is that you don’t have to worry too much about what kind of hardware you get with a Chromebook since pretty much everything you’ll be doing on the device is tied to the web browser anyway.

We don’t know when Amazon Prime Day will be this year, but it usually happens right in the middle of summer, making it a great time to buy a laptop if you’re a student or parent of one.

If you want new hotness

If you’re not necessarily interested in bargain laptop purchases, but instead want to have the best laptop possible at any given moment, you should wait for Nvidia, Intel, or AMD to announce new laptop hardware. This year it happened at CES: Nvidia, AMD and Intel released brand new laptop hardware, marking a whole new generation of laptops. Although the launch of Intel and Nvidia really only affected gaming laptops.

Intel Announces 13th Generation Raptor Lake Mobile Processors at CES 2023

If you’re looking for a powerful ultrabook, it’s a bit more difficult to pinpoint the exact time to get one. Typically, Intel releases its less powerful U-series processors at seemingly random times. For example, 13th gen Intel processors are currently available for both gaming laptops and desktops, but 13th gen U-series processors are currently out of stock. These laptops are likely to arrive soon, but we may have to wait a bit.

This is where you should keep an eye on technical news and rumors. Laptop hardware tends to pop out of the blue, so if you want to jump on the news when they do, you’ll have to keep an eye on them.

New equipment can bring prices down, sort of

One of the other benefits of waiting for new laptop hardware is that it will immediately lower the price of the latest generation of hardware. It might be a bit of a shame to spend a thousand dollars on a one year old laptop, but let me assure you that generations of laptops very much gradually.

You don’t have to worry too much about the 12th gen Intel laptop when the 13th gen Intel laptops come out, because the 12th gen chips will only be a few percentage points behind the 13th gen chips. And even in this case, the difference will not be noticeable in everyday computing tasks. Trust me, one generation of processors won’t speed up Photoshop. so many.

Keeping an eye on new laptop hardware and then getting a good deal on the latest generation laptop is one of the best ways to buy a laptop, and that goes for the best MacBooks as well. When a new MacBook comes out, you can open any used market and see hundreds of old MacBooks at a deep discount because their owners want to buy a new one. If you want to be savvy when buying a new laptop, no matter the time of year, this is the way to do it.

The best affordable laptops to choose from right now

If you don’t want to wait for a sale or any new models to be released, here are some of the best budget laptops to browse through our laptop buying guides:

Dell

Dell XPS 13

If you don’t want to spend money on a MacBook, the best MacBook alternative is the Dell XPS 13 laptop.

lake on Dell

ASUS

Asus TUF Dash 15

If you’re after a good gaming laptop under $2,000, this is a great choice on a budget.

lake on Amazon

Microsoft

Surface Pro 9

One of the best removable laptops. We recommend a model with an ARM-based Microsoft processor, SQ 3.

lake at Best Buy

Apple

Apple MacBook Air M2

The Apple MacBook Air (2022) is one of the best laptops for everyday use.

lake on Amazon

Jackie Thomas is an IGN technical editor and buying guide editor specializing in hardware overviews and features.

Apple has published the App Store Transparency Report for the first time. you can read on the company’s website. It reveals some interesting facts about the App Store, including the fact that there were 1,783,232 apps in the store as of 2022.

In a document first seen (by using ), Apple also says it reviewed 6,101,913 applications last year (applications may include updates to existing apps, not just new releases). Of these, 1,679,694 were rejected. Surprisingly, the majority of applications, over 1 million, did not make it to the App Store due to non-compliance with Apple’s performance guidelines. The company also rejected 441,972 applications legally.

Apple also removed 186,195 apps removed from the App Store in 2022. The company submitted 1,474 takedown requests last year, with the vast majority (1,435 to be exact) coming from mainland China. In the distant second was India with 14 requests. During the same time period, Apple said there were 5,484 appeals involving apps removed from the App Store in China. After successful appeals, it also reinstated 169 apps in the Chinese App Store. Last year, iPhone, iPad and Mac users downloaded an average of 747,873,877 apps each week, which would be an even more impressive number if they didn’t average 1,539,274,266 redownloads each week.

Apple has agreed to start publishing App Store transparency reports as part of an agreement the company made with App Store developers in 2021. for various reasons, the number of customer and developer accounts deactivated, objective data about searches and results, and the number of apps removed from the App Store.”

All products recommended by Engadget are selected by our editorial team independently of our parent company. Some of our stories contain affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. All prices are current at the time of publication.

Jonathan Ferguson, weapons expert and custodian of firearms and artillery at the Royal Armories, takes apart weapons from the Left 4 Dead franchise, including the automatic shotgun, Uzi, and sniper rifle from the original Left 4 Dead, as well as the M60, SCAR. and MP5 from Left 4 Dead 2.

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Dave Jewitt
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Adam Mason
on May 20, 2023 7:00 AM PT