This year’s Black Friday MacBook deals and advice to help you shop for the right MacBook for you
Black Friday MacBook deals are rolling out now with some of the best savings of the year on MacBook Air (M1), MacBook Pro 13-inch (M1), and more, so there’s never been a better time to buy then now. While Black Friday is still two days away, for all intents and purposes many of the best Black Friday deals are already popping up online, like this MacBook Air (M1) for $1,099 over at Amazon – a $149 savings – or UK shoppers can save £50 on the starting MacBook Air (M1) model and pay just £899 over at Currys. If you’re perfectly fine saving a bundle on Intel-based MacBooks, this MacBook Pro 16-inch (2020) with Intel Core i9 processor is $599 off right now at Amazon. We haven’t seen any deals yet on the latest MacBook Pro 14-inch (2021) and MacBook Pro 16-inch (2021) models with the new M1 Pro and M1 Max chips yet, but if last year was any guide, we might see some great Black Friday MacBook deals on those too before long. Black Friday MacBook deals are already rolling out, so there are plenty of savings up for grabs right now. We were regularly seeing both MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models on sale for between $100-$200 (£100-£150) off over the past couple of weeks, so major deals are starting to show up in earnest now. We’re scouring the web right now for all the latest savings, which we’ve listed down below. There are some great early Black Friday MacBook deals in the UK as well on all the latest MacBook models, including the new MacBook Pro 14-inch and MacBook Pro 16-inch models released last month. Even though Black Friday and Cyber Monday are more than a month away, last year’s trend of pushing earlier sales and deals ahead of Black Friday is only intensifying thanks to the supply chain challenges retailers and manufacturers are currently struggling with. Warehouse space is at a premium right now, so any old product models still hanging around really need to be moved, so we’re expecting very steep discounts on older, Intel-based MacBooks to make room for a new 16-inch MacBook Pro that we expect to be announced at Apple’s October 18 event. We’re already seeing some good discounts across the entire line of MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models even now, including the most recent models powered by the Apple M1 chip. We’re looking to the first wave of M1 devices (released in 2020) for some of the best Black Friday MacBook deals in 2021. The M1 MacBook Air has been returning to an $899 / £889 price point over the last few months, though prices have dipped to $849 / £869 once or twice as well. If discounts are going to offer bigger savings than this come November, it will likely only be by an additional $50 / £50. A sales price of $849 is already strong considering the power on offer here, plus Apple rarely drops its current generation lineup too far down the scale. It’s likely the 2020 Apple MacBook Air M1 will remain in rotation for a little longer as well since it’s heavily rumored that only new MacBook Pro models will be released in 2021. That means the cheaper Air model will likely see some smaller additional discounts in this year’s Black Friday MacBook deals. However, the headlines will most likely sit with the Pro models. The new MacBook Pro devices won’t exactly replace the 2020 M1 model. With Apple reportedly launching 14-inch and 16-inch models, it’s likely that all three devices will sit on the shelves together until at least September 2022. However, Apple could also use the 14-inch laptop to replace the original 13-inch at a similar MSRP. That said, the new releases are rumored to bring about a long-awaited redesign of the Pro system, which will in itself date the original M1 version. That’s why we’re expecting to see larger discounts on 2020’s ultrabook, though we don’t expect them to supplant the Air as the ‘cheaper’ Macbook for those on a budget. That means we may well see an additional $100 / £100 off the entry level M1 MacBook Pro in 2021’s sales, leaving us with a price point of $999 / £999 during particularly speedy flash sales. If this is the case, it’s well worth considering the more premium cooling and speaker systems of the Pro model over the cheaper Air. Plus, we’ll likely see bigger savings on heavier configurations as well.
