Prime Day Laptops: Top 5 Deals on Laptops and Gaming Laptops, from Windows to Macbooks, to Roku and Fire TV Sticks
It is best to get discounts on tech during the big sale events like Amazon Prime Day. Well, there’s good news. Many of our favorite laptops—and gaming laptops—are on sale. We’ve curated our selection to the absolute top five Prime Day laptop deals so you don’t have to waste time sifting through pages and pages of discounts. There is something for everyone in our selection of machines, from Windows to Macbooks. Be sure to check out our Prime Day Live Blog, where we’ll be highlighting some of the most noteworthy discounts on our favorite products.
I was Team Paperback until I tried my first Kindle, and now you can’t pry it from my fingers. The Paperwhite is the best e-reader in the lineup. If you don’t want to spending more, you need to pay more to get rid of lockscreen ads. There are two main versions—this base Paperwhite and a Signature Edition (8/10, WIRED Recommends), which comes with 32 gigs of storage over 16, wireless charging, and an auto-adjusting backlight. There’s also a kids’ version with a case, a year’s subscription to Amazon Kids+, and a two-year, no-questions-asked replacement guarantee. The Paperwhite hasn’t been updated since 2021 and we aren’t sure when a new one might be coming, but mine is still performing as it did on day one. We think it’s still safe to buy one.
The paperwhite is the best for reading to absorb information. The Scribe (8/10, WIRED Recommends), with its 10.2-inch screen, is made for writing and drawing too. While writing, there’s no lag because it’s the Kindle at heart, it’s seamless. Professional artists will want something better, but it felt natural to use. The Scribe is very pricey, and the premium pen version costs another $30. It isn’t waterproof, and you can’t write directly on the book pages because they opt for sticky notes.
Generally, we prefer Roku streaming devices, but if you tend to watch a ton of Amazon Prime content, get the Fire TV Stick 4K Max. It is possible for anyone to use it, but Prime content is heavily promoted. It has enough storage to hold all your streaming apps and games. You can pull up your security camera feed and ask Alexa to do things, like order you pizza.
Unless you want to buy one in time for Prime Day, we recommend against buying a tablets from Amazon. Fire tablets are not good, but if you plan on doing basic work tasks and watch Amazon, they are reasonably capable and frighteningly affordable. The Fire HD 10 is our favorite of the bunch, with a 1080p screen and 3 gigabytes of RAM so it can handle watching videos and browsing a bunch of tabs. You need to pay an additional$15 to get rid of lockscreen ads. There are two models to choose from.
If you prefer a more stealthy PC that can double as a work laptop this 16-inch machine is not for you. The m16 R2IPS can display content at a fast refresh rate and make it appear smooth. It has the graphics card from Nvidey’s 4070 series so it can handle almost any game at medium or high settings, and it has a good battery life while you’re on the clock.
This is the lowest price we have seen on a gaming laptop. The Razer Blade 18 (8/10, WIRED Recommends) packs Nvidia’s RTX 4070 graphics card, though you can choose a more powerful card for more cash. A gorgeous build with a 18-inch MiniLED display and G-Sync compatibility, as well as a 300-hertz screen refresh rate, gives you a lot of raw power. This is one of the first laptops to have a Thunderbolt 5 port for faster data transfer speeds. Would you like a more compact machine? The blade14 is on sale for more than $1,000. —Julian Chokkattu
Acer’s laptop names get confusing. The model number here is confusing, but can be used to compare other models. This is an upgrade to our budget laptop. It offers the best value of the 15-inch laptops we’ve tested, with an AMD Ryzen 5 7520U processor, 16 GB of RAM, and a 512-GB NVMe SSD. The display isn’t the prettiest but it won’t strain your eyes. One of the listings says 8 gigabytes of RAM, but another says 16 ounces, so who is aware of what you’re going to get? If you end up with 8 GB, return it.
Acer’s Chromebook Plus 514 (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is one of our favorites out of the recent crop of new, more powerful Chromebooks. It’s everything you need for everyday tasks like browsing the web, editing documents, and chatting with friends. The keyboard and trackpad are excellent, which is unusual for a Chromebook, and the touch display feels great. It’s not going to win any design awards, and there’s no backlit keyboard, but this is a lot of laptop for the price. It has been on sale for a few months, but now it’s cheaper than before, which is the lowest we’ve seen. If you want a bigger screen, the Acer Chromebook Plus 515 is also on sale for $319 ($80 off).
You can get a discount of $1,049 when you clip the $50 coupon. The Air lineup has the first large-screen option, the 15-inch MacBook Air. It can be great if you want a bigger screen, but you do not want to splash out on a MacBook Pro. The same features as the 13-inch MacBook Air include a modern design and a 1,080p webcam, not to mention the latest M3 chip. In my testing, I found that the base model was able to handle 41 browser tabs, multiple apps, and three separate windows with ease. I do, however, recommend upgrading to at least 16 GB of unified memory, to ensure that it can handle dozens of apps and tabs running simultaneously. There was a woman namedBrenda Stolyar.