Laptop deals come throughout the year, but the best discounts are reserved for big shopping holidays like Labor Day sales events. That’s important, because laptops aren’t cheap, especially if you want one of the best laptops. And who doesn’t? The biggest brands and manufacturers often hold their extra stock to clear out for these, and most of those deals are live now, but now for long as most Labor Day weekend sales end tonight, Monday, September 2.
So, whether you’re interested in a new Dell XPS 13 for school or a robust ThinkPad X1 Carbon for work, we’ve rounded up all the best laptop deals.
What are the best laptop deals for Labor Day?
As we’ve seen in previous years, there are always a handful of excellent deals on some of the popular and highly ranked laptops. This year we’re seeing plenty of options from manufacturers like HP, Dell, and Lenovo, all selling directly from their own storefronts. Whether you’re looking for an ultra-cheap Chromebook or a powerhouse gaming laptop, you’re bound to find something above that will suit your needs.
Just make sure to click through and check out the different configurations available. The prices you see above are for a single configuration, though you can always customize your purchase from their to either reduce the price or bump up the specs.
What to look for when buying a laptop
A laptop has to do a lot of things right to be worth your money. Even in laptops under $1,000, you should expect your next laptop to have at least a bright 1080p display, all-day battery life, excellent processor performance, and a precise keyboard.
Some important specifications to look out for are RAM, storage, and processor. You want your laptop to have at least 8GB of RAM these days, and you’ll want to jump up to 16GB if you’re looking at a gaming laptop or content creation device. For storage, we recommend you buy a laptop with a solid-state drive. Though they come with less capacity, they are significantly faster than old hard disk drives.
Lastly, you’ll want a current-generation Intel processor inside, which means an eighth-generation processor for ultrabooks or ninth-gen for gaming laptops. Intel’s new 10th-gen processors are just now launching (with many laptop models not yet announced), so we don’t expect to see any on sale as soon as Labor Day. The difference between a Core i5 and a Core i7 isn’t quite as drastic as you might think, both offering quad-core productivity performance. Core i3 and Core i5, though, typically will move you up from two cores to four cores, which will get you better multitasking and creative performance in applications like Photoshop.
