MacBook Air M3 for $899 is the best Cyber ​​Monday Mac deal I’ve seen in over a decade of covering Apple

I’ve been using Macs for over a decade, and my favorite Mac is the MacBook Air M3. So I was happy to see that this year Amazon is running the best Cyber ​​Monday deal I can remember on the MacBook Air.

For Cyber ​​Monday, Amazon is selling 2024 MacBook Air M3 for $89918% off retail price of $1,099. Basically, Apple never sells its laptops. Best of all, you can get a 10% educational discount and buy this model for $999. If you’re lucky, you might be able to get an older model for 10-20% off from third-party sellers like Amazon or Best Buy.

Therefore, this price is almost unprecedented for a MacBook Air model today. With that in mind, I recommend grabbing this deal if you’re seriously considering one MacBook Air M3.

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There’s also an underlying factor that makes this deal even better than it appears on paper. That $1,099 price tag is a bit deceiving. When Apple launched the first M4 Mac in Octoberit also quietly upgrades the base models of both MacBook Air M3 and MacBook Air M2 from 8GB of RAM to 16GB — without a price increase. So that means the configuration of the MacBook Air M3 that you can currently buy for $899 would have actually cost you $1,299 just a few months ago.

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Overall, this MacBook Air M3 is a great machine. In fact, I’m writing this article from there. It weighs 2.7 pounds and is less than half an inch thick — and measures just a little larger than an 8.5-by-11-inch sheet of paper. So you don’t even notice it when you tuck it into your bag or backpack.

And for all its svelteness, it also packs a lot of power. Since the Apple Silicon M1 chip appeared, these MacBook Air models feel more compact and powerful like the old Intel-powered MacBook Pros. In fact, a lot of people used to need a MacBook Pro for things like basic photo editing and other types of multimedia and work tasks that can now be easily done using a MacBook Air. That’s especially true since the MacBook Air M2 arrived in 2022, and it’s even truer with the M3 version. Thanks to these machines, the number of people needing a MacBook Pro has decreased significantly over the past few years.

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The only drawback to this configuration $899 is that it only has 256GB of storage and you’ll have to pay $200 to upgrade to 512GB. However, I have the 512GB version and I’m using it MacBook Air M3 for over six months and I still have 366GB of unused space. If you’re worried about having more storage, you can always bring along a fast external drive like this one The Seagate 2TB drive sells for $65 (19% Off for Cyber ​​Monday.

Amazon also has it MacBook Air M2 is sold for $729This is great for those with slightly lighter computing needs. Either way, there’s never been a better Cyber ​​Monday to buy a MacBook Air.