The best time to buy a laptop is a tricky thing, and it's easy to miss out on hundreds of dollars in savings by shopping at the wrong time.
Nothing causes buyer's remorse quite like seeing the laptop you bought last month for $1,000 go on sale for $750. It's equally unpleasant to buy a pricey new Dell XPS 13 in November and then watch as Dell unveils a much faster and more technically advanced model in January.
The best time to buy a laptop
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The price of most laptops drops eventually, and newer models are always coming around the corner.
So when is the best time to buy a laptop? The answer depends a great deal on your circumstances.
Pro tip: Don't forget to check out some of the best laptop deals to stay up to date on what's currently on sale.
Do You Need It Now?
The best time to buy a new laptop is when you really need one. If your current notebook is broken, you need stronger performance for work or play, or this is a child's first computer, there's no good reason to delay your purchase.
However, if you have a competent but aging laptop that you plan to replace in the near future, you might save money or benefit from newer technology if you wait strategically.
MacBooks
Apple typically refreshes its laptops once per year, though the company doesn't always release all the new models at once or follow a consistent schedule. This means that the list of the best MacBooks changes every year, but you'll see different models releasing throughout the year, although a lot of them hit the shelves in the fall.
Meanwhile, Intel often announces new processors either in the fall or in January during CES, and those laptops then appear on the market over time. The same goes for AMD.
PC laptops sale and refresh schedule
The major PC manufacturers release new laptops at three times of year: back-to-school season (June to September), holiday season (September to December) and spring (February to April).
New models usually ship at the beginning or middle of these windows. However, the best deals tend to appear in July/August and November/December, which are the heart of the school and holiday shopping seasons.
"There is a best time to buy notebooks, and it is exactly when you think it is, between the last week in July and the first three weeks in August, when the back-to-school merchandising frenzy is in full force," said analyst Stephen Baker, who studies laptop pricing and sales for the NPD Group, a market intelligence firm. He noted that this time frame applies to both Macs and PCs.
MORE: The best ultrabooks
Not surprisingly, we've found that prices can be just as low, if not lowe,r at the end of the year, when consumers are busy buying gifts for family members or for themselves.
Checking our various deals pages is a sure-fire way to never miss a good sale. For example, take a peek at our best gaming laptop deals.
Unfortunately, there's no guarantee the product you want will be any cheaper in August or December than it was in April. You may find a newer model at the same price, though.
Bottom Line: You'll find more deals in the July/August and November/December time frames and will see new model releases in early spring, midsummer and fall.
CPU and GPU refreshes lead the laptop industry
Though PC vendors tend to release new products at three times of the year, they usually don't refresh each model more than once a year. Business notebooks in particular can stay on the market unchanged for as long as 18 months.
Most updates are timed to coincide closely with release schedules from brands like AMD, Nvidia, and Intel, as manufacturers want their laptops to carry the latest generation of processors and graphics cards nearly as soon as it's available.
How to Know if You're Getting a Good Deal
Whenever you find a laptop sale — in December, August or April — it can be hard to tell whether you're actually getting a great price or just a slight discount off the MSRP, unless you know what the product normally sells for. There are a couple of ways to tell:
- Use a price-history tool: A couple of sites track price changes over time so you can see if today's price is really the lowest it has ever been at one particular retailer. Camelcamelcamel.com (and its Chrome extension) will show a price-history graph for most products on Amazon.
However, we haven't found a service that tracks the price history from other key services, such as Dell.com, Lenovo.com or Microsoft Store, all of which offer great prices. We're also yet to find a tracker that shows the price of the same product across multiple retailers. So Amazon's lowest price ever may still be higher than someone else's.
- Visit deal aggregators: Deal news sites keep an eye on pricing and call attention to the best deals in their posts. We maintain an up-to-date list of deals at Laptopmag.com, and you can also check out sites such as techbargains.com.
- Weed out fake reviews: User reviews can be very helpful when making a big purchase. However, there are plenty of junk reviews out there. Amazon shoppers can use the tool Fakespot to weed out fake reviews from honest ones. The site uses AI to spot questionable reviews and rates every product's user reviews based on its findings.
To wait or not to wait?
When deciding whether to buy now or wait, you have to consider both price and obsolescence. No matter what type of laptop you want, you are likely -- but not certain -- to get the best prices in either the back-to-school (June - August) or holiday (Mid-October - December) time frames.
If you're worried about your new laptop becoming obsolete soon after you buy it, you need to make sure that the model has the latest hardware available. However, shopping older gens means you can often score a good deal, so weigh in the pros and cons carefully.
