Amazon's best Black Friday laptop deals (so far) include a bunch of MacBooks and Samsung Galaxy Books

three laptops featured in amazon's early black friday sale against a blue and pink geometric background

UPDATE: Nov. 16, 2022, 11:40 a.m. EST This story has been updated with Amazon’s latest and greatest laptop deals ahead of Black Friday 2022. Here’s a quick overview:

OUR TOP PICK: The ASUS Chromebook Flip C434 (Intel Core M3-8100Y, 4GB RAM, 64GB eMMC) is Mashable’s favorite budget-friendly laptop. It just hit a new all-time-low price — $271 ~~$519.99~~ (save 48%)
BEST MACBOOK DEAL: Apple’s 2020 MacBook Air (M1 Chip, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD) has returned to its record-low price from October’s Prime Early Access Sale — $799.99 ~~$999~~ (save 20%) 🔥
BEST GALAXY BOOK DEAL: The Samsung Galaxy Book Odyssey (Intel Core i7, 8GB RAM, 512GB SSD) is a workhorse with an RTX 3050Ti GPU that makes it suitable for gaming. It’s never been this cheap before, either — $929.99 ~~$1,399.99~~ (save 34%)

Amazon can’t compete with Walmart on the extremely cheap (sub-$100) Chromebook front, but it’s still one of the absolute best places to find a laptop deal this holiday season.

Despite the fact that its 48-hour Black Friday sale doesn’t technically begin until next week, the retail giant is already rolling out all-time-high discounts on higher-end Samsung Galaxy Books and Apple MacBooks (including Pro and Air configurations from earlier this year). Shoppers in search of a basic Chromebook for kids or school can find plenty of options in the $100 to $300 range, including a couple of ASUS machines that come with free Office 265 or Microsoft 365 subscriptions.

Gaming laptop deals from brands like MSI and Razer haven’t hit their stride on Amazon just yet, but we’ll be keeping a close eye out for their inevitable appearances.

A press release hinted that select laptops from HP and Dell will see discounts of up to 40% over the course of Amazon’s main event from Thursday, Nov. 24 through Friday, Nov. 25, so if you’re after those two brands in particular, chill ’til then. Otherwise, we’d recommend taking advantage of the offers we’re seeing already.

One important thing to keep in mind as you peruse Amazon’s listings is that it loves to mess with laptops’ MSRPs (by either inflating or deflating them), often obscuring whether deals are actually good or not. Take this Samsung Galaxy Chromebook 2, for example: It looks like a good deal at $699, which Amazon says is 13% off a $799.99 MSRP. Cross-check that price on Samsung’s website, however, and you’ll see an original retail of $699 — it’s not actually on sale on Amazon after all.

If that all sounds like a lot of work, fret not: We’re going through all of Amazon’s early Black Friday laptop deals and picking out everything that’s actually worth buying based on true MSRPs and historical data from camelcamelcamel, a price-tracking site we rely on for fact checking these kinds of things. Check out the running list of contenders below. (Note: Laptops that have hit a record-low price have been marked with a 🔥.)