Shopping around for a great Black Friday deal on a laptop? Go to Wal-Mart if you want a basic, inexpensive computer for Web browsing, e-mailing, video streaming, and simple productivity work. If you’re looking for a laptop that can handle photo editing and other more-challenging tasks, you'll find a wider variety of choices at Best Buy.
One of Best Buy’s better upcoming deals is on a 15.6-inch HP ENVY TouchSmart. On Black Friday it will be on sale for $500, down from its current price of $700. This laptop's Core i5 processor and 8GB of memory should be powerful enough for just about anything, and the 750GB hard drive provides plenty of space for saving photos and videos. It also has a touchscreen, making it an even better buy for the money.
If you’re an Apple fan, you’ll be able to grab an 11.6-inch MacBook Air for $780, well below Apple's price of $900. Equipped with a Core i5 processor and a 128GB solid-state drive, it earned a very good score for performance in our Ratings and has 13 hours of battery life. Apple’s 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display will also be on sale, for $900, which is $200 less than Apple’s price. A similar model had excellent performance in our Ratings, with 12.5 hours of battery life.
Those on the lookout for a laptop that costs $200 (or less) will have better luck at Wal-Mart. The bargain-priced computers you'll find there won't offer blazing performance, but they should be fine for simple computing tasks.
Before you hit the stores on Black Friday, be sure to check out our computer Buying Guide. Also don't miss our holiday shopping guide.
One HP laptop, a 15.6-inch model with 4GB of memory, a 500GB hard drive, and a Celeron processor will sell for $160. Laptops using this processor have generally received fair performance scores in our Ratings, which is good enough for routine tasks like word processing, e-mailing, Web browsing, and even video streaming.
Looking for something other than a run-of-the-mill laptop? Wal-Mart will also offer a two-in-one computer that converts from a laptop to a tablet. It’s a Toshiba model with an 11.6-inch display and a Pentium processor. It will cost $300, not bad for a tablet/laptop combo.
Make sure you look carefully at the fliers for these sales. Some items will be available on Thanksgiving Day, while others won’t go on sale until Friday.
--Donna Tapellini
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