Apple is not renowned for value-for-money. 

You don’t have to look at their $4,999 Pro Display XDR monitor for this, or their $3,500 Vision Pro VR headset, for the $700 wheels for their Mac Pro tower computer. Just recently they announced their new MacBook Air, powered by their M3 chip. It has slightly more graphics power than its M2 predecessor, but is otherwise identical. So, if you want a laptop that can play games slightly better than the last MacBook Air, but gaming isn’t that important to you, so you wouldn’t buy a PC gaming laptop or spend the extra on a MacBook Pro, and otherwise you don’t need it to be different to its M2 predecessor, then it’s worth the $100 extra. If that doesn’t apply to you, it isn’t.

But today, Walmart and Apple announced the best deal in all of computing: Apple’s now two-generation old M1 MacBook Air is on sale for $699. It was initially released in 2020 but these units will have been manufactured this year. and they’re fantastic.

Compared to the M2 MacBook Air — which costs $300, or almost 50 percent more — you get a slightly older screen, with bigger bezels and slightly less power. However, you do get the classic wedge-shape, recalling the original MacBook Air; and if you don’t perform any graphically intense tasks on your computer, this is the best notebook laptop you can buy on the market. The M1 chip only sips power, meaning you never have to bring a charger from home, regardless of how long you stay at the office, and it does not lose power when it’s closed. Forget to charge it after a day at work, or left it in your briefcase? That’s fine; it’ll still have more than eight hours left of emails and browsing, and it will do so without having to kill the screen brightness or without warming your lap. Also, though the screen has a thicker bezel than the newest Macs, it also lacks their ugly ‘forehead’ notch cutout, which is a tradeoff some would make.

It is worth noting that this specification is solely the based storage and RAM specification — a measly 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. That means that my phone has the same storage and more RAM than this laptop; but then again, my phone also costs more, and if you’re doing browser-based work, and have a cloud storage plan — iCloud, OneDrive, or Google Drive — you don’t need that much on-device storage these days anyway.

Don’t buy one if you need more power than that, or want a bigger screen, or want more on device storage, or simply have a laptop that is doing its job well for you. But if browsing and emails is what you — or a family member — primarily uses a laptop for and are thinking about buying a new laptop this year, now is your time; and though Walmart should have a good amount of stock, it won’t last forever.