Back-to-School Laptop Sales Are Winding Down. Here's What's Still Worth Grabbing.

Back-to-school laptop sales are entering their final stretch. According to retail sale trackers, 2026's back-to-school laptop discounts peaked across two windows, late July into early August and again in mid-August, with Best Buy running dedicated Student Deals in early August and Apple's education pricing continuing through October. Now that students are back in classrooms, most retailers are beginning to wind those laptop promotions down.

That doesn't mean the deals are gone entirely. As of this week, Amazon's back-to-college storefront still has active discounts on laptops and accessories, and budget picks like the Acer Aspire Go 15 remain discounted from their original list price at several retailers. Shoppers who missed the peak sale windows in late July and mid-August can still find meaningful markdowns, just not necessarily the deepest ones of the season.

If you're still shopping, the general pattern from past years holds: the very deepest discounts on premium laptops tend to reappear around Black Friday and Cyber Monday in late November, often 5 to 15 percentage points lower than what's currently available. For anyone who can wait, that's typically the better window for a higher-end machine. For anyone who needs a laptop now, this final week of back-to-school markdowns is still a reasonable time to buy before prices drift back toward full retail.

One added wrinkle this year: with component costs climbing industry-wide due to the ongoing memory chip shortage, some of the return-to-full-price bump after back-to-school season could be sharper than in past years. Retailers haven't confirmed pricing changes publicly, but it's a reasonable factor to weigh if you're deciding whether to buy this week or wait.

“The very deepest discounts on premium laptops tend to reappear around Black Friday and Cyber Monday.”