Take a gander at Amazon’s web page of best-selling renewed laptops on the Amazon Renewed storefront. See anything surprising? Number one is an Apple MacBook, which surprises no one.
But it’s an Intel-powered MacBook, the last Intel-powered MacBook Air from early 2020. That was a few months before Apple introduced the MacBook Air M1, using the first of its own Apple-designed chips (the M1 chip).
Amazon’s early 2020 MacBook Air for $339 (in a condition rated excellent) is a damn good deal for a cheap laptop. But it’s not Amazon’s best deal on a renewed MacBook. That’d be the late 2020 MacBook Air M1 for $398, also rated as being in excellent condition.
That’s the breakout deal for a budget laptop, and it should be Amazon’s best-selling renewed laptop. It’s a measly extra $59 for a noticeable performance boost.
a like-new laptop with a like-new price
Renewed means refurbished. It’s been pre-owned and cleaned up to a standard more vetted and guaranteed than the random laptop you’d buy off John Doe from eBay.
My early 2020, Intel i5-powered MacBook Air was my main laptop from March 2020 to November 2024. Even using vanilla WordPress on the Intel-powered MacBook Air was frustratingly slow and a bit laggy, though usable. Apple’s M1-powered MacBook Air saw a significant performance boost over the Intel.
One of the key advantages the Intel-powered Macs held over the M-series Macs was that they could run Windows easily. There’s no easy way to load Windows onto a more modern Mac that packs one of Apple’s in-house-designed chips. Even on the Intel-powered ones, though, you can only put Windows 10 on them.
Well, if you know your shit and get really creative, you may be able to fit Windows 11 on one, but that’s beyond the capabilities or bother of most people because it’s not officially supported.
Microsoft is ending support for Windows 10 after October 14, 2025, anyway, so the value proposition for the Intel Macs just lost its main rationale, in my book. Now there’s not much reason at all to go with an Intel Mac over a comparably priced Apple-chip Mac.
For normal uses, the MacBook Air M1 is plenty quick. Just don’t load down the disk to near full or task it with performance-intensive jobs, such as editing video.
Everything else, though, such as browsing and watching 4K movie streams functions perfectly well on the old MacBook. If you need a laptop for well under $500, the late 2020 MacBook Air M1 for $398 is the best deal out there.
And are you sold on the MacBook Air M1, but wish for a new one that hasn’t been refurbished? Wish granted. You can buy one of those, leftover from a very limited stock, for $649.
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