We've said it before and it bears repeating—there are certain items you should never pay the full asking price (MSRP) for, because you can often find them at a discount. This mostly applies to audio products (especially speakers), but you can add some of Apple's gear to the list as well. Especially today, with Amazon serving up a bunch of Presidents' Day deals on Apple devices.
One of them is the
M1 MacBook Air (2020) laptop, which you can snag for
$749.99 (25% off). Looking at its price history via CamelCamelCamel (an excellent resource for researching potential deals), the price on this laptop has been up and down like a volatile roller coaster for the past year-plus. It's currently near its all-time low (just off by a $0.99), so now is the time to strike.
While a few years old now, the M1 chip that powers this MacBook is still a capable and highly power-efficient SoC (check out our
M1 Mac Mini review for a bunch of benchmarks). Other foundational features include 8GB of RAM and 256GB of solid state storage. Neither amount will knock anyone's socks off, but they help keep this config's price as low as it is.
For those who need more firepower from their laptop, several
M3 MacBook Pro systems are on sale, including this config that's marked down to
$1,449 at Amazon (9% off). The M3 chip inside this model sports an 8-core CPU and 10-Core GPU, to go along with 8GB of unified memory and 512GB of SSD storage.
It's somewhat apples and oranges to compare a MacBook Air to a MacBook Pro, though the overall design language is similar enough. The latter is a much burlier lineup. In this case, the M3 is a substantial upgrade over the M1 that is faster in every way, including higher clocks (4.05GHz CPU versus 3.2GHz CPU). It also features a new GPU architecture with hardware-accelerated ray tracing, a much faster Neural engine, and several other upgrades.
Pivoting over to audio, you can grab
Apple's AirPods Pro (2nd Gen) for
$189.99 (24% off) right now. This effectively matches its lowest price (only off by $0.99 once again), which means now is the time to buy if you've been considering these earbuds.
I can vouch for the first-generation AirPods Pro, which I've used extensively on daily walks around town and in the home. They're comfortable, the sound is great, and the active noise cancelling technology works really well. Too well, sometimes—there have been instances on residential roads where I didn't hear a car approaching, which can be sketchy on country roads that lack a sidewalk. Of course, you can disable ANC (and should, in those situations).
The 2nd Gen earbuds are supposed to be even better, with Apple claiming 2X better ANC and improved audio. They also feature swipe controls and superior battery life.
Here are some more Apple device deals...
- Apple iPad (9th Generation, 10.2-inch) w/ A13 Bionic: $249 (24% off)
- Apple iPad (10th Generation, 10.9-inch) w/ A14 Bionic: $349 (22% off)
- Apple iPad mini (6th Generation, 8.3-inch) w/ A15 Bionic: $399 (20% off)
- M3 MacBook Pro (18-Core GPU, 18GB Unified memory, 512GB SSD): $2,299 (8% off)
- M3 MacBook Pro (14-Core CPU, 30-Core GPU, 36GB memory, 1TB SSD): $2,999 (6% off)
- Apple AirPods (3rd Generation): $139.99 (17% off)
- Apple AirPods (2nd Generation): $89.99 (30% off)