Black Friday falls on November 27 this year, with Cyber Monday on November 30, and anyone planning to buy a laptop in that window should start from an uncomfortable fact: most laptops cost more today than they did at last year’s sales. Memory chips have become so expensive that Apple raised the MacBook Air by $200 in June, Dell warned of increases of at least 15% to 20% at the end of 2025, and Gartner expects PC prices to rise 17% across 2026, which means a “20% off” label this November may do little more than bring a laptop back to what it cost a year ago.
This guide is for shoppers who want to know which Black Friday laptop deals will actually be good, rather than which ones will merely look good. It sets a price to beat for nine popular models, based on the lowest prices seen during October’s Prime Day sale and in late September, compares them with Black Friday 2025 where a like-for-like model exists, and flags the doorbusters that the memory shortage has made riskier than usual.
How Memeburn Chose These Black Friday Laptops
Memeburn has not tested these laptops in-house, so the picks are based on manufacturer specifications, retailer and deal-tracker listings, and the price history set out below. Every pick has at least 16GB of RAM except the MacBook Neo, which is included because it is the cheapest new Mac and its 8GB limit is flagged, and every price is a US price checked on October 8, 2026. The guide will be updated as retailers publish their Black Friday prices.
Why Black Friday 2026 Laptop Discounts Look Bigger Than They Are
Black Friday 2026 is the first holiday sale since memory makers redirected supply toward AI data centers, and the effect on laptop prices is easiest to see at Apple. On June 25, Apple raised the 512GB MacBook Air from $1,099 to $1,299, the 1TB MacBook Pro from $1,699 to $1,999 and the entry MacBook Neo from $599 to $699, citing memory and storage costs that it said had risen faster than any component it had seen, according toFox Business. So when Amazon cut the 13-inch MacBook Air M5 by $200 to $1,099 during October’s Prime Day, according toMacworld, the “deal” simply returned the laptop to its pre-June list price.
Windows laptop makers moved earlier, since Dell said in December 2025 that prices would rise by at least 15% to 20% because memory makes up about 15% of a PC’s cost, with Lenovo expected to follow in early 2026, according toTweakTown, and Gartner forecast in March that average PC prices would rise 17% in 2026 while shipments fall 10.4%, according toComputing.
Memeburn compared two like-for-like models to measure what that means at the checkout. The cheapest new MacBook Air at Black Friday 2025 was the 13-inch M4 with 16GB and 256GB for $749, according toTom’s Hardware, while the cheapest MacBook Air in October 2026 was the M5 model at $1,099, which is $350 or 47% more, although the M5 model starts with 512GB of storage. A Lenovo LOQ 15 with a Ryzen 7 250, 16GB, 512GB and an RTX 5060 sold for $899.99 in December 2025, according to aSlickdeals listing, and the same configuration was listed at $1,249 in late September, a 39% increase. Shoppers should therefore judge Black Friday 2026 deals against this autumn’s lowest prices rather than against last year’s.
Black Friday 2026 Laptop Prices to Beat
The table below sets out the price to beat for each pick, meaning the lowest price seen in late September or during October’s Prime Day. A Black Friday price at or below that figure is a real deal, while a price above it means the laptop was cheaper a few weeks earlier.
| Laptop (configuration) | List price now | Price to beat (Sept to Oct 2026) | Closest Black Friday 2025 price |
| MacBook Air 13 M5 (16GB, 512GB) | $1,299 | $1,099 | $749 (M4, 16GB, 256GB) |
| MacBook Air 15 M5 (16GB, 512GB) | $1,499 | $1,299 | $949 (M4, 15-inch) |
| MacBook Neo (A18 Pro, 8GB, 256GB) | $699 | $689 | Not sold in 2025 |
| Microsoft Surface Laptop 8 (Snapdragon X2 Plus, 16GB, 512GB) | $1,599 | $1,099 | Not sold in 2025 |
| Acer Aspire 14 AI (Core Ultra 7 256V, 16GB, 1TB) | $799 | $630 | Not tracked |
| HP OmniBook X Flip 14 (Ryzen AI 5 430, 16GB, 512GB) | $1,299 | $699 | Not sold in 2025 |
| Acer Swift 16 AI (Core Ultra X7 358H, 16GB, 1TB) | $1,549 | $1,099 | Not sold in 2025 |
| Lenovo LOQ 15 (Ryzen 7 250, RTX 5060, 16GB, 512GB) | Not listed | $1,249 | $899.99 (December 2025) |
| HP HyperX OMEN 15 (Ryzen 7 8745HX, RTX 5060, 16GB, 1TB) | $1,899 | $1,199 | Not sold in 2025 |
Apple prices come from Macworld’s Prime Day tracker and the Windows prices from deal trackerBestLaptop.Dealsin late September, so availability may have changed, and the percentage changes are Memeburn’s calculations.
Best Black Friday MacBook Deal: MacBook Air 13 M5
M5 Chip with 10CPU & 8GPU. 13-inch, 16GB RAM
- M5 Chip with 10CPU & 8GPU
- 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD Storage
- 13 inches
The MacBook Air 13 with the M5 chip is the safest Black Friday laptop for most people, because it pairs 16GB of memory with 512GB of storage as standard, has no fan to fail and runs all day on a charge, and its October low of $1,099 gives a clear benchmark. Anything below $1,099 on Black Friday would be cheaper than the laptop has been since Apple’s June price rise, which is the signal to buy rather than wait.
The trade-off is that Black Friday 2025’s $749 entry price will not return, since the M5 Air no longer comes with 256GB and Apple has raised the list price. The 15-inch model follows the same logic with a $1,299 price to beat and suits anyone who wants a bigger screen without paying MacBook Pro prices. Buyers who game, need Windows-only software or edit long 4K timelines should skip the Air and look at the gaming picks or ourvideo editing laptop guide.
Best Cheap Mac for Black Friday: MacBook Neo
- A18 Pro Chip with 6CPU & 5GPU
- 13-inch, 8GB RAM, 512GB SSD Storage
- macOS Tahoe
The MacBook Neo is Apple’s cheapest laptop, built around the iPhone’s A18 Pro chip, and it now lists at $699 after Apple added $100 in June, with Prime Day discounts reaching only $689. That makes a return to its original $599 launch price the outcome to watch for on Black Friday, and any price at that level would be the best Apple laptop deal of the season for students and light users.
The catch is its 8GB of memory, which cannot be upgraded later, so the Neo suits web browsing, documents and school work rather than heavy multitasking, and anyone who keeps dozens of browser tabs and creative apps open should spend the extra on a MacBook Air.
Best Windows Laptop Deal: Microsoft Surface Laptop 8
13.8-inch, Intel Core Ultra 7 Series 3, 32 GB Memory
- Surface Laptop for Business is a Copilot+ PC
- 13.8″ PixelSense Flow HDR[2] touchscreen
- Intel Core Ultra Series 3 processor powers
The Surface Laptop 8 with a Snapdragon X2 Plus, 16GB and 512GB was listed at $1,099 against a $1,599 list price in late September, which makes it the strongest premium Windows deal on this list on paper, and it qualifies as a Copilot+ PC with the long battery life Arm-based Windows laptops are known for. Buyers who rely on older Windows software, niche peripherals or anti-cheat games should check compatibility first, because Arm chips still run some x86 apps through emulation.
Microsoft also sells cheaper 8GB Surface models starting at $849 for the Surface Pro and $949 for the Surface Laptop, as covered inMemeburn’s report on Microsoft’s 8GB Surface PCs, and those are the versions to avoid on Black Friday, since they use the older Snapdragon X Plus and miss the 16GB requirement for Copilot+ features.
Best Budget Windows Laptop Deal: Acer Aspire 14 AI
Intel Core Ultra 5 226V & 14” WUXGA Touch
- Transform your daily workflow with brilliant AI assistance that feels natural and intuitive
- Equipped with an Intel Core Ultra 5 processor
- 14″ WUXGA 1920 x 1200 ultra-high resolution
The Acer Aspire 14 AI is the value pick, because a configuration with Intel’s Core Ultra 7 256V, 16GB of memory and a 1TB SSD was listed at $630 in late September, which is unusually generous storage for the price in 2026. It is a 2025 model, so newer chips are available, but the specifications matter more than the model year at this budget, and its price to beat sits well below the point where most $700 laptops drop to 8GB, asMemeburn’s under-$1,000 guidefound.
Best 2-in-1 Laptop Deal: HP OmniBook X Flip 14
Laptop Touchscreen 14″ WUXGA IPS, Intel 8-core Ultra 5
- AI-Powered Intel Ultra 5 226V:
- Full HD+ display, touch, IPS, 89.5% screen-to-body ratio
- Up to 22 hours 45 minutes of battery life
The HP OmniBook X Flip 14 with a Ryzen AI 5 430, 16GB and 512GB was listed at $699 against a $1,299 list price, which shows how little HP’s list prices say about what the laptop really sells for. The useful number is $699, not the 46% discount, and a convertible with a touchscreen and 16GB at that price is a fair deal for note-taking and media, as long as buyers accept the integrated Radeon graphics.Memeburn’s 2-in-1 guidecompares it with the alternatives.
Best Gaming Laptop Deal: Lenovo LOQ 15 or HP HyperX OMEN 15
GeForce RTX 4050, AMD Ryzen 5 7235HS Processor
- AMD Ryzen 5 7235HS Processor
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 6GB GDDR6
- Up to 64GB DDR5 RAM. Up to 8TB PCIe M.2 SSD
5060 AMD Ryzen 7 260 Gaming Laptop, 32GB DDR5 + 2TB SSD
- 8-core 16-thread CPU with 16MB L3 Cache
- High-performance discrete GPU accelerates 3D modeling
- his 15.3‑inch WQXGA IPS panel delivers a 180Hz refresh rate
Gaming laptops show the RAM crisis most clearly, since RTX 5060 machines that dipped below $900 last December were listed between $1,199 and $1,249 in late September. The HP HyperX OMEN 15 at $1,199 includes a 1TB SSD and an eight-core Ryzen 7 8745HX, while the Lenovo LOQ 15 at $1,249 has a Ryzen 7 250 and half the storage, so the OMEN is the better value at the prices tracked, unless the LOQ returns toward last year’s level.
Either way, the RTX 5060 is the sensible floor for 1080p gaming in 2026, and Black Friday doorbusters with RTX 3050 or RTX 4050 graphics and 8GB of system memory are best skipped, because both will age quickly in new games.Memeburn’s gaming laptop guidecovers higher-end options.
Black Friday Laptop Doorbusters to Avoid in 2026
The memory shortage changes what a bad deal looks like this year, because manufacturers can protect margins either by raising prices or by cutting specifications. Gartner analyst Rishi Padhi expected memory downgrades, especially in entry-level devices, and said sub-$600 laptops are hard to deliver without hurting the experience on Windows 11, according toComputerworld. Three patterns deserve caution on Black Friday:
- Windows laptops with 8GB of RAM sold as doorbusters, since 8GB rules out Copilot+ features and leaves little headroom for Windows 11 and a modern browser.
- Discounts measured from inflated list prices, such as a $1,299 list on a laptop that regularly sells near $700, where the dollar price matters more than the percentage.
- Older gaming laptops with RTX 3050 or RTX 4050 graphics priced near $700, which look cheap against 2026 prices but trail the RTX 5060 machines that are only a few hundred dollars more.
When to Buy a Laptop: Black Friday, Cyber Monday or Later
Memeburn found no published 2026 Black Friday schedule from Amazon or Best Buy as of October 8, but the October Prime Day prices give a floor to measure against, and early Black Friday sales usually start weeks before November 27. The practical rule is to buy when a laptop returns to its October low, rather than holding out for Cyber Monday on November 30.
Waiting until next year is unlikely to help, because Gartner described the memory shortage as structural rather than cyclical and expected it to last well into 2027, which suggests list prices are more likely to stay high than to fall back to 2025 levels. For anyone who needs a laptop in the next six months, Black Friday 2026 is still the best window of the year, but the prices to beat above are the honest measure of a deal, not the size of the discount badge. Thebudget laptop guideexplains how to stretch a smaller budget further.
When is Black Friday 2026?
Black Friday 2026 is on Friday, November 27, after Thanksgiving on November 26, and Cyber Monday falls on November 30. Many retailers start early Black Friday laptop sales in the weeks before.
Will laptops be cheaper on Black Friday 2026 than last year?
Most laptops will not be cheaper than at Black Friday 2025, because memory costs pushed list prices up during 2026. Memeburn found the cheapest MacBook Air was 47% more expensive in October 2026 than at Black Friday 2025, and an RTX 5060 Lenovo LOQ 15 was 39% more.
Is the MacBook Air cheaper on Black Friday than Prime Day?
The MacBook Air 13 M5 fell to $1,099 during October 2026’s Prime Day, which matches its list price before Apple’s June increase. A Black Friday price below $1,099 would be its lowest since that increase.
How much RAM should a Black Friday laptop have in 2026?
A Black Friday laptop in 2026 should have at least 16GB of RAM for Windows, which is also the requirement for Copilot+ features. An 8GB Mac such as the MacBook Neo is fine for light use, but its memory cannot be upgraded later.
