12 Best Black Friday Laptop Deals (2024): Acer, Apple, Anker

This is the best time of the year to buy a new laptop. You’ll rarely get a better chance to nab a computer, so we’ve rounded up the best Black Friday laptop deals we’ve seen on all the models our reviewers recommend. Whether you want a portable productivity powerhouse, a glorious gaming PC, or just something to curl up in bed with Netflix, these machines from companies like Apple, Dell, Asus, and Lenovo will do the job. You’ll also find some other laptop accessories and peripherals below, including mechanical keyboards.

WIRED Featured Deals

Laptop Deals

Do you think of a laptop as metal framing around a web browser? Consider a Chromebook. Google rolled out a big upgrade called Chromebook Plus in 2023. The “Plus” stands for better performance—faster processors, more memory, more storage, and better video cameras. Our favorite of the models we’ve tried is Lenovo’s Flex 5i Chromebook Plus (8/10, WIRED Recommends). It’s among the fastest Chromebooks we’ve tested for the money. It features a 3.75-GHz Intel Core i3-1315U CPU, 8 GB of RAM, and 128 GB of flash storage.

Dell’s two larger XPS laptops (7/10, WIRED Recommends) are aimed at Windows users with Macbook jealousy. The design, specs, and sizes align perfectly with Apple’s offerings. The XPS 14 has a gorgeous, sleek design (though it’s thicker than a MacBook), a wonderfully bright and sharp OLED screen (with 120-Hz screen refresh rates), and is plenty speedy for everyday tasks. Unfortunately, heavy-duty tasks like video editing, well, the MacBook’s benchmarks run circles around the XPS 14. Still, with this deal, this is a serious piece of hardware for not a lot of money.

Dell recently updated its XPS 13 line with Qualcomm Snapdragon chips to make it that sweet, sweet Copilot+ PC. This deal features the Snapdragon X Elite, which is the fastest of the two options. I’ve been testing this one for a couple of months and have been very impressed with how smoothly Windows works on a new architecture. It’s been plenty speedy, and the battery life is outstanding—about 14 hours in my testing—though not quite as impressive as some other Snapdragon-equipped machines we’ve tested. If you want an Intel XPS 13, those are on sale as well. You can get a Core Ultra 7 chip, 32 GB RAM, and a 1 TB SSD for $1,499 ($500 off).

Photograph: Christopher Null

The first Intel-based Copilot+ PC is a winner on all fronts (7/10, WIRED Review), boasting outstanding AI and graphics performance and some of the best battery life we’ve ever seen on Intel hardware. With its slightly oddball 15.3-inch screen, it hits its high points and is hard to argue with at this price, though the fan is loud and the system may weigh you down more than you’d like.

There’s much to love about Samsung’s Galaxy Book4 Ultra (7/10, WIRED Review), but let’s be honest, that sticker price is insane. This deal brings it down somewhat, though it’s still pricey. You get impressive hardware—the new Intel Core Ultra 9 185H processor, the current top-of-the-line processor in Intel’s Core Ultra CPU lineup, along with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card. The 16-inch AMOLED 2,880 X 1,800-pixel touchscreen is magnificent to work on and performance blew everything else we’ve tested out of the water at this price.

The Swift Go offers outstanding performance for the price (7/10, WIRED Review). It also boasts an impressive 15-hour battery life. The downside is the speakers, which aren’t great, and overall the body feels a little plasticky. But this is the least expensive Intel Core Ultra laptop we’ve tested by a few dollars, so if your budget is tight, the Swift Go is worth considering.

Asus Chromebook Plus CX34

Photograph: Daniel Thorp-Lancaster

The Asus Chromebook Plus CX34 (7/10, WIRED Recommends) is the best-looking Chromebook you can buy. The beautiful white design stands out in a sea of gray slabs. The Core i5 CPU offers plenty of performance and can easily handle multiple tabs and app juggling. The webcam is nice too, much crisper than you’d expect for a sub-$500 laptop. The downside is there’s no backlit keyboard.

The 13-inch Surface Laptop (7th Edition) (7/10, WIRED Recommends) is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processor. Performance was good in our testing. It did not bog down no matter how many windows, tabs, and apps we threw at it. That said, this is not a machine for graphics-intensive tasks, like video editing or gaming (which is a shame because the vivid sharp screen with a 120-Hz screen refresh rate would be great for gaming).

MacBook Deals

Be sure to read through all our Black Friday Apple deals, and for more background on which Macs we love, see our Best Macbooks guide.

Photograph: Brenda Stolyar

The new 13-inch MacBook Air (7/10, WIRED Recommends) is the best MacBook for most people. It pairs a powerful M3 chip with a nice, bright, sharp 13.6-inch LCD screen, a 1080p webcam, two USB 4/Thunderbolt ports, and a 3.5-mm headphone jack. The M3 chip gives the Air quite the performance boost over the older M1 version. In our testing, it was able to handle everyday tasks, like web browsing, checking email, and watching videos with ease, and even handles slightly more intensive tasks like photo or video editing without breaking a sweat. If you’re looking for a mobile video editing workstation, you’re better off with the MacBook Pro below.

If you want a MacBook that can handle even more workloads, this is the deal for you. This model also has more ports. There are three USB-C ports with Thunderbolt 4, an HDMI port, an SD card slot (bless you Apple, may every PC copy this move), a fancy high-impedance headphone jack, and a MagSafe charging port. The base model has 16 gigabytes of memory and the base M4 chip can handle most general tasks but video editors and anyone using more CPU- and GPU-demanding apps will want to look at the M4 Pro for $2,099 ($300 off) or the M4 Max for $2,899 ($300 off).

Tablet Deals

Photograph: Apple

The iPad (10th-gen) (7/10, WIRED Review) is our favorite iPad to recommend to most people. It has an A14 Bionic chip (which you’ll also find in the iPhone 12) that never felt sluggish while testing it. It also has a modern design, with slim bezels around a large 10.9-inch Liquid Retina display (IPS LCD), Touch ID integrated into the power button, a USB-C port for charging, and a 12-megapixel front-facing camera that’s located in the center of the iPad.

The OnePlus Pad 2 is a mouthful of a name, but it’s our favorite Android tablet. It’s a good value, especially at this price. The screen is quite nice if a somewhat unusual, 12.1-inch size. It’s great for watching videos or getting work done. The highlight here is the OnePlus customization of Android, which makes it possible to multi-task three apps side by side simultaneously, or two apps side by side and a third at the bottom. To be more productive, we suggest picking up the keyboard case.

Chargers and Accessories

Photograph: Satechi

This handy charger has enough power to juice up two MacBook Pro models simultaneously. But it’s also great if you have a lot of devices around your desk that constantly need to be charged. It has a little stand to prop it up, a short cord that goes out to an outlet, and four USB-C ports that output 100 watts each. This is the lowest price we’ve tracked.

A 25,000-mAh battery pack that’s surprisingly compact is a rarity, and this one also packs two USB-C ports, one USB-A, and the ability to draw 145 watts while charging. That means one USB-C port can dish out 100 watts, enough to fast charge a laptop, while the other puts out 45 watts.

This 67-watt charger has fold-out prongs and two USB-C ports, plus one USB-A port that can supply enough power to charge most laptops, and quickly charge most phones. It’s also small and light, making it easy to toss in a bag and bring with you to the coffee shop.

This charger packs two USB-C ports, one of which can output 65 watts when used alone. If you plug two devices in, the top will deliver 45 watts and the bottom can do 20 watts. It also folds up and looks super sleek.

Keychron Q1 Pro

Photograph: Amazon

This was WIRED reviews editor Julian Chokkattu’s daily keyboard for almost a year. You can use it wired or wirelessly via Bluetooth and it comes in several colors and switches to pick from (it’s also RGB-backlit). The red switches aren’t very loud but are still clicky, and there’s a great knob for volume control. It’s hot-swappable too, so you can change the switches whenever you’d like.

The Das Keyboard MacTigr (9/10, WIRED Recommends) is expensive, but it’s great for those in the Apple ecosystem with a dedicated Mac layout. It also has cherry MX Red switches (that don’t get too loud), a two-port USB-C hub, and a high-quality all-metal build.