If you’re keen on getting a laptop that looks fantastic, feels great to use, and doesn’t cost too much, well, pickings are slim right due to RAMageddon. However, there’s a good deal happening at Best Buy through Thursday, July 30th, on Microsoft’s Arm-based, 13.8-inch Surface Laptop that has the 10-core Snapdragon X2 Plus chipset. Originally $1,599.99 (and selling for $1,300 on competing sites), you can get the 16GB RAM/512GB SSD configuration in black or dune color shades for $999.99.
Microsoft Surface Laptop (13.8-inch, 2026)
Where to Buy:
We recently reviewed the entry-level Surface Laptop that has 8GB RAM as an experiment to see if the Windows 11 experience holds up as well as Apple’s MacBook Neo does with macOS. In short? Pass on it, even for its current $750 price; We highly recommend getting the 16GB model while it’s discounted to within a couple hundred bucks of the base config. The experience is thatmuch better, and double the storage is nice, too.
As for what to expect from the laptop on sale today, Tom Warren’s 2024 review of the seventh-gen Surface Laptop covers its stellar design, long battery life, and how the Arm-based Windows 11 experience continues to improve. The 2026 model we’re discussing today has slightly improved performance thanks to its chip bump, and it comes in different colors.
Other great Verge-approved deals
- Best Buy has a couple other laptop deals I wanted to shout out that expire at the end of the day (July 30th). Two gaming laptops with Nvidia’s RTX 5060 GPU and 32GB of fast DDR5 RAM are hovering around $1,000. The most affordable, the 16-inch A16 with a 13th-gen Intel Core i7 CPU, 1TB of storage, and a 1200p screen at 165Hz refresh rate is $1,099.99 (was $1,299.99). The more impressive option of the two, its Aero X16, costs just $100 more, but jumps up to AMD’s slightly faster Ryzen AI 7 350 CPU, with a 1600p 165Hz screen.
- It may be a while until we see prices for 512GB microSD Express cards for the Nintendo Switch 2 to be around $75 — a common price throughout 2025. Most retailers have them for about $130, but Amazon has PNY’s model for $99.99. (Walmart’s onn brand makes a cheaper version that’s $85 or so, but is only available for pickup or local delivery, not shipping.) The Switch 2 includes 256GB of storage, and while you can double that with PNY’s 256GB card for $54.99, you save a little money just by getting the card that offers more capacity.
- The Lego Game Boy set is discounted at Macy’s, of all retailers. Originally $59.99, it’s down to $47.99. The 421-piece kit that gamers (especially ones old enough to remember using Nintendo’s original Game Boy) will love. The set includes all the pieces to build a Game Boy replica, plus lenticular panels that show screenshots of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening and Super Mario Land that appear to animate when you move the console. Read our review.
