Tariffs. Inflation. Historic corporate shake-ups and mergers. With all the factors the tech industry is facing, you might think the price of a common product like a laptop would have risen this year. But just the opposite has been happening.
I’ve been watching laptop prices slowly drop throughout 2025, a trend that peaked during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Regardless of the state of the economy, I feel like I can say that laptop prices have never been lower. Some of my favorite laptops have recently offered significant price cuts across Macs, Windows, and Chromebooks. In a time when money is tight for so many of us, that’s welcome news. But with a RAM shortage brewing behind the scenes, there’s good reason to think it won’t last for much longer.
Just Look at the MacBook
There’s one perfect example to demonstrate my point: the MacBook Air. For years now, the latest MacBook has been sold at $999. In 2022, Apple briefly bumped the price of the M2 version to $1,199 but kept the previous-gen M1 MacBook Air for $999. The last MacBook to be sold for less than $999 was in 2015, when Apple had an 11-inch model for $899. That’s a long time to stay static, considering how much more nearly everything in your life costs today than it did in 2015.
Don’t forget the discounts. The M4 MacBook Air is the latest model, and it dropped to $749 in November at retailers like Best Buy, Amazon, and Walmart. Before that, it was selling for $800 for many months. That’s an incredible price for this laptop, especially since the starting configuration comes with 16 GB of RAM.
Apple has offered a supply of older models through third-party retailers. Walmart briefly dropped the price of the M1 MacBook Air to $499. These aren’t refurbished or used; they’re new. That alone is unusual for Apple. There was a time when Apple was seen as the overpriced alternative. But for modern, entry-level Macs, that’s just not true anymore. Even the brand-new M5 MacBook Pro got an unprecedented $150 discount on Black Friday, just a month after it was announced, and that discount is still in place today.
The landscape has changed beyond just MacBooks. For the first time, we’re seeing laptops sell for budget-tier prices (meaning under $700) that aren’t terrible. Some, like the Dell 14 Plus, have been discounted to such a degree that it’s now under $700 (and was as low as $500 during Black Friday). This is a laptop with a 2560 x 1600 resolution display, 16 GB of RAM, 1 TB of storage, and fantastic all-day battery life. It’s powered by Intel’s Core Ultra 256V, the most efficient chip Intel has in its lineup. It’s also reasonably portable, well-built, and attractive. You could never get a laptop of this caliber this cheap—even just a year or two ago.
The Asus Vivobook 14 is another good example. It has been sold all year at $700 but frequently dips down to $650. While it’s not as strong as the Dell 14 Plus, it’s an example of cutting-edge chip technology disrupting the laptop space, powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon X. This chip delivers great battery life, something budget laptops have struggled with. More competition has led to lower prices and better products.
These are just the tip of the iceberg. We’re seeing affordable prices across the board, regardless of the operating system or chip. It’s a great time to buy a laptop. But you may want to act fast, as stormy clouds are on the horizon.
A RAM Apocalypse
It’s no secret that RAM (random-access memory) prices have been escalating in recent months. AI processing is incredibly memory-sensitive, and it’ll gobble up as much as you can give it. As more and more resources are being allocated toward manufacturing HBM (high-bandwidth memory) RAM for data centers, a massive shortage is building on the consumer front.
Micron recently announced that it would discontinue its Crucial RAM brand, one of the most popular options in PC gaming. The company is pivoting to—yep, you guessed it—manufacturing memory for AI. Micron is one of the three largest RAM manufacturers, the others being Samsung and SK Hynix.
This has affected desktop users first, as DDR5 memory sticks have skyrocketed in price, making it pricey for PC gamers to upgrade their own systems. Some reports have indicated that prices have risen by more than 100 percent in recent months. Just check out this pair of 32 GB Corsair sticks, which is currently selling for a cool $907 at Best Buy. We’re already seeing increased prices roll out to prebuilt desktop systems ahead of the looming situation on laptops. Popular PC builder CyberPowerPC has already announced it would be raising prices on all its systems as of December 7, and so has compact PC brand Minisforum. Even Raspberry Pi has been forced to increase prices.
This hasn’t hit laptops and other electronics yet, but some of the biggest laptop manufacturers in the world have started issuing warnings. In late November, HP stated that DDR5 RAM had jumped by over 200 percent in just the weeks leading up to its earnings call. HP explicitly said it will reduce memory configurations and raise prices to make ends meet in the future, though we won’t see those higher prices until May 2026, as it has hoarded RAM to weather the storm. Lenovo says it has been doing the same. The panic-buying of RAM, however, is contributing to rising DRAM prices behind the scenes. While this is keeping laptop prices down right now, none of that protection is guaranteed in 2026 and beyond.
It’s not just RAM. Storage is facing a similar tightening supply and increase in demand for AI data centers. The CEO of Phison, the company that makes the flash memory controllers for solid-state drives, recently characterized next year’s flash storage shortages as “severe” and said supply will be “tight for the next 10 years” in Phison’s recent earnings call, as reported by Toms Hardware. Importantly, this is the type of storage Apple uses across its products in iPhones and Macs.
Apple has had the industry sway to weather shortages better than others in the past. The upcoming MacBook refreshes due in early 2026 likely aren’t affected. But beyond that, we’ll have to see. Perhaps laptop price increases won’t be so dramatic that people will notice. Maybe the industry will be forced to eat the cost. One thing is for sure: Right now remains a very good time to buy a new laptop if you need one. Come next year, it’s anyone’s guess.
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