Black Friday is the absolute best time to buy a laptop if you want a great deal. Retailers typically reserve their year-round lows for October through December to entice holiday shoppers, and to clear their shelves ahead of next-gen hardware launches in January. It’s the perfect storm for PC bargain-hunting.

For its part, Amazon unofficially kicks off its Black Friday festivities well ahead of time with a Prime Big Deal Days sale in early fall. This “October Prime Day” event is scheduled for Oct. 7 and 8 this year, so I’m expecting a bunch of deep markdowns to pop up there in the very near future.

You may have noticed that several Apple MacBooks and Microsoft Surface Copilot+ PCs are already discounted in the lead-up to Prime Big Deal Days, but I think the bulk of them are passable for now. Once the event begins, Amazon will probably put way more options on sale and lower the prices of the already-on-sale models even further. I saw this happen around the retailer’s flagship Prime Day shindig in July — early birds had slim pickings compared to day-of shoppers.

My advice for most people is to keep your cart empty until Oct. 7 to make sure you lock in the best deal possible. That said, there are two early October Prime Day laptop deals that I think are worth considering because they’re already at or very close to their all-time lows.

Best MacBook deal

Why we like it

Apple’s M4 MacBook Air is a sleek speed demon: In our CPU benchmark, it outperformed 89% of the models in our laptop testing database. (Compared to the last-gen M3 model, it’s 24% faster.) It doesn’t look all that different from older MacBooks with M-something chips, but its upgraded 12MP Center Stage camera was a welcome upgrade to our reviewer. We think the 13-inch model is the best MacBook for students and other users who value portability, and right now, Amazon has an upgraded configuration with 512GB of storage on sale for $999 — its lowest price on record. (Doubling its 256GB base capacity means you’ll probably never need an external hard drive.) No other MacBook was on sale for an all-time low at the time of writing.

Read Mashable’s full review of the 15-inch Apple MacBook Air (M4).

More MacBook Air deals

• Apple MacBook Air, 13-inch (M4, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD) — $897 $999 (save $102)

• Apple MacBook Air, 15-inch (M4, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD) — $1,049 $1,199 (save $150)

MacBook Pro deals

• Apple MacBook Pro, 14-inch (M4, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD) — $1,399 $1,599 (save $200)

• Apple MacBook Pro, 16-inch (M4 Pro, 24GB RAM, 512GB SSD) — $2,249 $2,499 (save $250)

• Apple MacBook Pro, 14-inch (M4 Max, 36GB RAM, 1TB SSD) — $2,869 $3,199 (save $330)

• Apple MacBook Pro, 16-inch (M4 Max, 36GB RAM, 1TB SSD) — $3,099 $3,499 (save $400)

Best Windows laptop deal

Why we like it

The 13.8-inch Surface Laptop 7 with a Snapdragon X Elite chip is our favorite Windows laptop for most people. It’s beautiful, it’s about as fast as an M4 MacBook Air, and it lasts for nearly 23 hours on a single charge — that’s two longer than the M4 Pro-powered MacBook Pro, the longest-lasting MacBook we’ve tried. (Before you buy it, just double check that its powerful ARM-based CPU is compatible with your go-to apps.) The black variant with 16GB of memory and 512GB of storage is marked down to $999.99 ahead of Prime Big Deal Days, which is a 29% discount on its $1,399.99 MSRP. It very briefly fell to $918.47 in late September, but this current offer beats its Prime Day deal in July.

Read Mashable’s full review of the 13.8-inch Microsoft Surface Laptop 7.

More Windows laptop deals

• Asus Vivobook 16 (AMD Ryzen AI 5 340, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD) — $679.99 $799.99 (save $120)

• Microsoft Surface Laptop, 13-inch (Snapdragon X Plus, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD) — $729.99 $899.99 (save $170)

• Microsoft Surface Laptop 7, 13.8-inch (Snapdragon X Plus, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD) — $999 $1,199.99 (save $200.99)

• Microsoft Surface Laptop 7, 15-inch (Snapdragon X Elite, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD) — $1,619.99 $2,099.99 (save $480)

2-in-1 laptop deals

Gaming laptop deals