I’ve seen laptop prices slowly drop through 2025, a trend that peaked during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Regardless of the state of the economy, I can say that laptop prices have never been lower. Some of my favorite laptops have recently offered significant price cuts on Macs, Windows, and Chromebooks. At a time when money is tight for many of us, that’s welcome news. But with a RAM shortage developing behind the scenes, there are good reasons to believe this won’t last much longer.
Just look at the MacBook
Photo: Brenda Stolyar
There is one perfect example to demonstrate my point: the MacBook Air. The latest MacBook has been selling for $999 for years. In 2022, Apple briefly raised the price of the M2 version to $1,199, but kept the previous-generation M1 MacBook Air at $999. The last MacBook to sell for less than $999 was in 2015, when Apple had an 11-inch model for $899. That’s a long time to remain stable, considering how much more almost everything in your life today than it would cost in 2015.
Don’t forget the discounts. The M4 MacBook Air is the latest model, dropping to $749 at retailers in November Best buy, AmazonAnd Walmart. Before that, it sold for $800 for months. That’s an incredible price for this laptop, especially since the starting configuration comes with 16GB of RAM.
Apple has offered a selection of older models through third-party retailers. Walmart briefly lowered the price of the M1 MacBook Air to $499. These have not been refurbished or used; they are new. That alone is unusual for Apple. There was a time when Apple was seen as the overpriced alternative. But for modern entry-level Macs, that’s just not true anymore. Even the brand new M5 MacBook Pro got an unprecedented $150 discount on Black Friday, just a month after it was announced, and that discount still exists today.
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