I love MacBooks, but there's no doubt that they can be pretty pricey. If you're on a tight budget, you might think a Mac is out of reach.
Not for Black Friday! I've been tracking MacBook Black Friday deals all week and one has stood out. Walmart is offering an unbelievable discount that brings the M1 MacBook Air down to just $599, making it the cheapest new MacBook you can buy right now.
See also: 45 best Black Friday laptop deals and sales of 2024
Of course, this model is a few years old and has the base specs including an M1 chip, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. That won't be enough storage or RAM for many people, but that doesn't mean this laptop might not be a good buy for others. The M1 chip is still plenty powerful enough for everyday tasks like studying or web browsing and this model will still get updates for at least a few more years, possibly longer.
At this price, the M1 MacBook Air could be a good pick for users on a tight, sub-$700 budget who need a basic, reliable laptop.
That said, if you need a laptop for anything beyond the most basic tasks, you should pay a little more and go for an M2 or M3 MacBook Air instead. These newer MacBooks have significantly more power and a newer design. Plus, they'll get software updates longer.
You don't have to break the bank to get a newer MacBook, either. There are some great deals on M2 and M3 MacBooks under $1,000 going on for Black Friday, all of which you can check out on our live MacBooks Black Friday hub.
