Early Prime Day laptop deals worth a look, even with prices rising

Amazon's October Prime Day runs on October 6 and 7, but useful laptop deals have already started. That matters this year, because rising memory costs have pushed laptop prices up across the board.

At the budget end, the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 is the biggest discount, at $459, and it comes with a 500GB portable drive and a year of Microsoft 365. The 16-inch HP OmniBook 3 touchscreen sells for $629, and the Acer Aspire Go 15 covers the basics with an Intel Core 3 N355 and 8GB of RAM.

Need more memory? The HP 15 with a Ryzen 5 7530U packs 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD, while the LG gram 14 combines a Core Ultra 5 with 32GB in a light 14-inch body. The Acer Aspire 16 AI steps up to a Core Ultra 9, 32GB of RAM, Wi-Fi 7 and a 2K touchscreen.

MacBooks are trickier. Apple raised prices this summer, so the old $799 MacBook Air deal is gone. There are still small discounts on the MacBook Air M5 (16GB/512GB) and the 14-inch MacBook Pro M5, where $150 is off the new, higher price.

Better deals may appear closer to the event, but if you need a laptop now, these are sensible picks.