Back-to-school bargain: the best MacBook students can buy is $150 off at Best Buy

(Image credit: Future / Apple)

Apple's MacBook Air M4 has been crowned TechRadar's best laptop of the year, and just in time for the new school season, the 13-inch model is on sale for only $849 (originally $999) at Best Buy. That's a $150 discount and the best price you can find for the powerful MacBook.

• Shop more back-to-school deals at Best Buy

Released in March of this year, the MacBook Air M4 features a 13.6-inch Liquid Retina display and a super-lightweight design, which is perfect for students on the go. The MacBook packs Apple's powerful M4 chip, which combines a 10-core CPU and 10-core GPU, resulting in exceptional speed in everything you do. The latest MacBook Air also features Apple Intelligence, a 12MP Center Stage camera, a seven-speaker sound system, and up to 18 hours of battery life.

The 13-inch MacBook Air M4 is the perfect laptop for students, thanks to its compact size and its ability to handle any task you throw at it. While we've seen the MacBook drop to $799 once before, today's discount from Best Buy is the best deal available and an excellent price for an Apple laptop with an M4 chip.

Today's best back-to-school MacBook deal

Display - 13.6 inches
Processor - Apple M4
RAM - 16GB
Storage - 256GB

The MacBook Air 13-inch (M4) is the newest version of Apple's popular laptop and it's now down to a great price at Best Buy. You get a great-looking 13.6-inch Liquid Retina display, while the boost to 16GB of RAM keeps all your programs running smoothly. It's just a shame Apple still insists on only 256GB of storage as standard, which feels a little miserly in 2025. Nevertheless, this is still one of the best laptops you can buy if you need a performance powerhouse for productivity and creative tasks – especially after this $150 discount.

More of today's best MacBook deals

Display - 13.6 inches
Processor - Apple M2
RAM - 16GB
Storage - 256GB

Newer M3 and M4 models are now available, but this is an unbelievable price for the MacBook Air 13-inch with an M2 chip. Sure, that's an older version, but this is still an incredibly powerful laptop for those needing a premium powerhouse for school and productivity, coding, or creative work. You also get double the amount of RAM at 16GB, although the 256GB of storage feels a little paltry in 2025. Still, we rated it highly in our MacBook Air M2 review, thanks to the stylish design, clear display, impressive performance, and long 18-hour battery life.

Display - 15 inches
Processor - Apple M3
RAM - 16GB
Storage - 256GB

It may essentially be just a larger version of the MacBook Air 13-inch, but if that's what you want, then that's what you get – and it's now reduced to its lowest-ever price at Best Buy. Our MacBook Air 15-inch review praised the display, performance, design and speaker array, although we did think the jump in size hurt one of the MacBook Air's key selling points – its portability. Nevertheless, this is still an impressive laptop that was awarded a full five stars.

You can see more of the best laptop deals and see our guide to the best laptops for students.

Mackenzie Frazier is the deals editor in the US for TechRadar at Future plc. She's been sharing deal advice for Future for the past six years and loves finding products that consumers want at the best possible price. She's had 11 years of experience working in e-commerce and loves being a mom to her two little boys.

You must confirm your public display name before commenting

Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.