Amazon’s early Prime Day laptop deals suck. Here’s what to snag at one of its rivals instead.

SAVE UP TO $500: We’ve gathered a list of the laptop deals at Amazon and beyond (mostly beyond) as the retail giant gears up for Prime Big Deal Days, its holiday kickoff event from Oct. 10 to 11.

Amazon is good at a lot of things — fast deliveries, making cheap smart home devices, creating neighborhood surveillance networks — but it’s never been great at putting laptops on sale. The retail giant’s listings tend to be rife with sketchy third-party sellers, inflated prices, and discontinued models, making it tough to distinguish the “must-buys” from the “too-good-to-be-trues.” And historically, competitors have offered better, less misleading deals on top brands like Apple, HP, Acer, Microsoft, Lenovo, Dell, and ASUS.

You see: Amazon’s early Prime Day laptop deals suck. Here’s what to snag at one of its rivals instead.

With that in mind, there are only a couple laptop deals we recommend adding to your Amazon cart ahead of its Prime Big Deal Days sale (aka Prime Day 2). Much better ones can be found at Best Buy, which is currently hosting a weekend Samsung Savings Event on top of a monthlong holiday kickoff event. Things will probably liven up even more during its 48-Hour Flash Sale, which will directly compete with Prime Big Deal Day on Oct. 10 and 11.

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Read on for a highly selective list of the very best laptop deals available at different retailers in the lead-up to Prime Big Deal Days, all of which we’ve verified by cross-checking pricing and model numbers with their manufacturer. (FYI: This list does not include early Prime Day deals on gaming laptops, which we’ve rounded up separately.)

Early Prime Day laptop deals under $500

Our pick: Acer Aspire 3

Why we like it

It’s relatively rare to find a 15.6-inch laptop with last year’s AMD Ryzen 5 7520U processor, 8GB of RAM for everyday multitasking, and a healthy 512GB of SSD storage sitting below the $400 mark. (We usually encounter machines with older CPUs, 4GB of RAM, and slower eMMC storage that maxes out at 128GB in this range.) Ignore Best Buy’s inflated list price, by the way: This exact Acer Aspire 3 configuration typically retails for $449.99 on its manufacturer’s website, not $599.99. A $70 discount is still welcome, though, and Best Buy throws in a free one-month trial of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate (worth $16.99) to sweeten the deal.

More laptop deals under $500

• Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 3i Chromebook (Intel Pentium Silver N6000, 8GB RAM, 64GB eMMC) — $299 $479 (save 180)
• Acer Chromebook 317 (Intel Pentium Silver N6000, 8GB RAM, 64GB eMMC) — $299 $499 (save $200)
• Acer Chromebook Vero 514 (Intel Core i3-1215U, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD) — $349.99 $499.99 (save $150)

Early Prime Day laptop deals under $1,000

Why we like it

It’s nothing new, but here’s one great laptop deal you will find on Amazon ahead of Prime Big Deal Days: The Mashable’s Choice Award-winning M1 MacBook Air from late 2020 has been clinging to a record-low price of $749.99 there ever since its flagship Prime Day sale in July. (That’s 25% off its $999 MSRP, which is a big discount for a MacBook.) If it happens to sell out there or get more expensive, Best Buy was matching this price at the time of writing.

More laptop deals under $1,000

• Acer Chromebook Spin 514 (AMD Ryzen 5 5625C, 8GB RAM, 128GB eMMC) — $549.99 $699.99 (save $150)
• Lenovo Yoga 7 (AMD Ryzen 5 7535U, 8GB RAM, 512GB SSD) — $549.99 $749.99 (save $200) + free 1-month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription
• Microsoft Surface Laptop 4, 13.5-inch (AMD Ryzen 5 4680U, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD) — $699.99 $999.99 (save $300) + free 1-month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription
• Samsung Galaxy Book3 360, 13.3-inch (Intel Core i5-1340P, 8GB RAM, 512GB SSD) — $699.99 $999.99 (save $300) + free 1-month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription
• Dell Inspiron 14 7435 2-in-1 (AMD Ryzen 7 7730U, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD) — $749.99 $899.99 (save $150) + free 1-month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription
• Lenovo Yoga 7i (Intel Core i7-1355U, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD) — $749.99 $1,049.99 (save $300) + free 1-month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription
• Acer Aspire 5 (Intel i7-1355U, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2050, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD) — $899.99 $999.99 (save $100)
• Apple MacBook Air, 13.6-inch (Apple M2, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD) — $949 $1,099 (save $150)
• Microsoft Surface Laptop 5 (Intel Core i5-1235U, 8GB RAM, 512GB SSD) — $999.99 $1,299.99 (save $300) + free 1-month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription

Early Prime Day laptop deals under $1,500

Our pick: Samsung Galaxy Book3 360, 15.6-inch

Why we like it

This year’s 15.6-inch Galaxy Book 3 360 is a lightweight 2-in-1 laptop with a pretty AMOLED touchscreen display, a 13th-generation Intel Core i7 processor, and a virtually unrivaled 22-hour battery life. (For an even longer-lasting laptop, you’d have to go with something like the 16-inch, M2 Max-powered MacBook Pro, which starts at $3,499.) The 1TB configuration with 16GB of RAM usually sells for $1,549.99, but you can snag it on sale at Best Buy for only $1,049.99 during a Samsung Savings Event it’s running through Oct. 8 — that’s an impressive 30% discount. Note that members of the store’s paid My Best Buy tiers can get an additional $100 off; those plans start at $49.99 per year.

More laptop deals under $1,500

• Apple MacBook Pro, 13.3-inch (Apple M2, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD) — $1,049 $1,299 (save $250)
• Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio (Intel Core i5-11300H, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD) — $1,099.99 $1,599.99 (save $500) + free 1-month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription
• Dell XPS 15 9530 (Intel Core i7-13700H, Intel Arc A370M, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD) — $1,299.99 $1,499.99 (save $200) + free 1-month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription
• LG gram 16 (Intel Core i7-1360P, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD) — $1,299.99 $1,699.99 (save $400) + free 1-month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription
• LG gram 17 (Intel Core i7-1360P, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD) — $1,399.99 $1,799.99 (save $400) + free 1-month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription