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College professors don’t make allowances for sh–ty laptops. If your wheezing old dirtbag of a computer locks up when you’re halfway through an essay or can’t handle the video editing software you need to do a project, tough. It’ll slow you down, at best. If the situation is bad enough, it could even wreck your grade.
Laptop prices have soared across the board, due in thanks to a combination of tariffs and AI data centers’ insatiable appetite for computer components. But there are deals this year, if you look hard enough. I’ve highlighted three that aren’t just good deals, but good deals on good laptops.
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the everyperson’s laptop
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Lenovo
$419.99 (reg. $529.99) at Amazon
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Check out this Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3i for $420, down $110 from its usual street price. Other sites are highlighting an even cheaper IdeaPad Slim 3i for $300-something, but I’ve skipped over that one to point out this one. Why? Because it has 8GB of RAM, which is enough for most day-to-day tasks, and the slightly cheaper deal is for a model with a paltry 4GB of RAM. Seriously, that’s almost nothing. Like markedly less RAM than a typical smartphone has.
RAM is the horsepower that lets you tackle demanding programs or multi-task even not-very demanding programs. You’d see a slowdown and aggravating lag from a mere 4GB RAM even just from keeping lots of browser tabs open. Stepping up to the 8GB is a much, much better call.
a free size upgrade
$849.99 (reg. $1,099.99) at Amazon
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$779.00 (reg. $1,099.99) at Walmart
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You may as well step it up even further to the HP OmniBook 5 16-inch. Not only is it on a $250-off sale and its cheaper 14-inch version isn’t, but at $850 it’s actually $100 less than its little sibling. You pick up an extra two diagonal inches of screen real estate, which comes in handy when working with many window tabs. Coders, in particular, will love the larger screen. For under $1,000, this is a strong deal for a do-almost-everything PC laptop.
A decent macbook pro deal
$2,299.00 (reg. 2,499.00) at Amazon
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If you or your kiddo will be pursuing a degree that demands a heavy-duty machine, such as coding or video editing, they’re going to need something much more powerful than the $1,000 laptops out there. And if it’s photo or video work they’ll probably be roped into the Apple ecosystem whether they like it or not; Apple has long had a chokehold on those fields.
The Apple MacBook Pro M5 Pro isn’t cheap, but it is $200 cheaper than usual at $2,299. This is the mid-level chip, the M5 Pro. Although the base-level chip, the MacBook Pro M5, is $150 off at $2,049, I think it’s worth stepping up to the M5 Pro chip. It’s better able to sustain demanding work by managing its heat buildup. How do I know? I’m writing this right now on a MacBook Pro M4 Pro, it’s direct predecessor, and the thing is a beast. I love it.
