5 Student Laptop Deals You Can Claim In 2024

As the summer winds down, the scholastic world starts planning for the fall. In 2024, that means laptop shopping season, as students begin to search for the computers that will store their notes, coursework, and connect them with each other. 

As is tradition, major laptop brands are lining up to offer steep discounts to young people. These price drops aren't motivated purely by kindness on the part of laptop manufacturers. University students are highly valued customers since the brands they choose at those highly developmental ages are more likely to be the ones they stick with for life. That brand loyalty is a part of the reason why so many college students who pick up a steeply discounted MacBook are likely to keep buying Macs into adulthood.

Of course, you probably care more about the deals themselves than the corporate logic that spawned them, so lets dive into all the best laptop discounts students can avail themselves of for the fall 2024 school season. From taking a bite out of Apple's notoriously high Mac and iPad prices to making budget laptops for college students even more appealing, this fall is shaping up to be a great time for you to grab that shiny new laptop you've been eying from one of the top laptop brands on the market.

If you haven't purchased a laptop during back to school season, you may be wondering how to actually claim these deals. First, there's a difference between a student discount and a back to school sale. In many cases, there's nothing you need to do to claim back to school deals on laptops. Online retailers often offer these sales as regular sales available to anyone. For instance, taking advantage of Lenovo's current deals is as easy as heading to the company's website and putting discounted items in your cart. However, when it comes to Samsung, there's a different story, and you'll need to confirm your student status to take advantage of its Education Offer.

Some student discounts do require verification of your student status before you can claim them. In these cases, you'll usually be asked to verify by using your student email. This usually involves giving the company your student email, then clicking a verification link sent to that email. In rare cases, you'll be asked to submit a picture of your student ID card. This process can look a bit different from retailer to retailer. If you're having a hard time figuring out how to redeem a company's student discount or education offer, look for any buttons or clickable links on the website with those terms or related phrases.

As it does each year, Apple is gearing up for fall with a laundry list of student discounts meant to entice parents and cash-strapped scholars alike. The best deals are on Macs and iPads, two of the most popular devices for students. 

The pure discounts offered on the devices aren't too generous. For example, a 15" M3 MacBook Air is $1,599 with education savings, only a $100 discount. However, Apple adds some honey to the deal by offering its own gift cards when you purchase. That same MacBook Air will come with a $150 gift card, so you can at least grab some gratis accessories to go with it. That gift card offer also applies to MacBook Pro, iMac, Mac Mini, Mac Studio, Mac Pro, and both the Pro Display XDR and Studio Display.

When it comes to iPads, another popular choice for students who want something that can handle schoolwork but is more portable than a laptop, the gift card offer drops to $100, which won't even cover a 2nd generation Apple Pencil. The discounts, too, scale back to $50 off, with the 11" iPad Air starting at $549 compared to its usual MSRP of $599.

According to the fine print on the MacBook Air purchase point, customers will get their gift cards "when they purchase an eligible product at a qualifying location through September 30, 2024." In other words, your best bet to claim the deal is to head down to your local Apple Store.

For students who want a Windows laptop but also crave the benefits of an ecosystem like Apple's, Samsung is there to offer its Galaxy products at a steep discount. 

For the 2024 back to school season, the Korean giant is offering a whopping $600 off the Galaxy Book4 Ultra with a free 1 terabyte T9 SSD thrown in. That's a fantastic deal, not least because the T9 is often considered one of the most reliable storage drives on the market. The Galaxy Book4 Ultra isn't shabby, either. It's Samsung's top-end Galaxy laptop and can be specced out with an Intel Core Ultra 7 or 9 processor, an Nvidia GeForce RTX video card, and a touchscreen. That $600 discount applies as well to the Galaxy Book4 Pro 360 for those who desire a midrange option, and other Book4 models have various discounts as well.

For those enticed by the recent hype around Windows on ARM and Copilot+ PCs, Samsung is offering a deal on the Galaxy Book4 Edge. This Snapdragon X Elite powered notebook comes with 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage for one penny shy of $1,000, which represents a $350 discount.

There are tablet deals featured on Samsung's Education Offer Program as well. The Galaxy Tab S9 FE at a $100 discount and the flagship Tab S9 starts at $799.99, a $400 markdown from its original MSRP that's probably due to the fact that the new Tab S10 series is expected to launch in the next several months. Additionally, Samsung has always been generous with trade-in offers as well, so those upgrading from a previous computer can take advantage of hundreds more dollars in savings if you mail in your old device to Samsung once the new one is in your hands.

Dell machines consistently rank high on lists of the best laptops, mostly thanks to the company's long running XPS series of premium thin and light devices. As students crowd back into classrooms, those fan favorite computers and many more are on sale when you purchase directly from Dell. 

The XPS 15 with a 13th Gen Intel Core i7 processor, 16 GB of speedy DDR5 RAM, and 1 TB of solid state storage is on sale for $1,399. That's a $300 discount from the MSRP of $1,699. The XPS 13, which is powered by the brand new Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chip, is also discounted to $1,299.99, which is a compelling price if you're interested in Windows 11 on ARM. It comes with 16 GB of RAM, 512 GB of SSD storage, and uses Qualcomm's Adreno graphics package.

If you or your child don't need that much computing power and can make do with a midrange device, Dell's Inspiron laptops are down to as low as $279.99. That's for the Inspiron 15, a 15.6" computer with a 12th Gen Intel Core i3 processor, 8 GB of last-generation DDR4 RAM, and 512 GB of SSD storage. It's certainly more than enough computer to handle homework and paper writing, and for a bargain bin price $100 cheaper than usual.

Like other major laptop brands, Hewlett Packard is currently holding its annual back to school sale featuring everything from laptops to printers. The laptop deals this year are rather enticing, with some models up to 50% off the retail price. That particular deal is for the 16" 16t-af000, which, as you can probably tell from that keyboard mash of a name, is a midrange laptop. It has decent specs, including an Intel Core i5 120U processor, 8 GB of memory, and 512 GB of M.2 storage. Clearly, this is a middle of the road laptop, but for a sale price of $498.99 compared to its MSRP of $999.99 it's a pretty great deal for anyone who doesn't need the latest or greatest laptop.

For those who need a bare bones computer to get some essay writing done, Chromebooks are on sale, too, and HP makes some of the best laptops to run Google's operating system. If you can manage your coursework with Google Drive, Docs, and the Chrome web browser, Chromebooks are both cheaper than Windows laptops and often have better battery life.

If you're after something a bit more high end, HP's back to school deals also include some pretty steep savings on some of its OMEN gaming laptops, which come with dedicated GPUs and often higher power. We're seeing $300 off some of the higher end models, including the OMEN Trancend with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop, bringing that model down to $1,799.

As one of the most trusted names in PC components and laptops, ASUS has deals that are well worth perusing if you're a student who wants a great notebook to take you through the fall semester and beyond. One of the best deals we spotted was on the Vivobook 16, where for a penny shy of $400 you'll get an AMD Ryzen 7 7530U processor, 8 GB of last-generation DDR4 memory, 512 GB of SSD storage, and an impressive 3K display. This laptop also has surprisingly extensive I/O, including a headphone jack, micro HDMI, and three USB type A ports alongside a single type C connector.

If you specifically want to pick up a gaming laptop, ASUS' are consistent hits, and they might be handy for coursework as well as leisure if you're studying anything that requires editing, design, or coding software. The TUF Gaming F16 is discounted to $1,099.99, which represents a $200 discount on a machine that sports an Intel Core i7-13650HX processor, 8 GB of fast DDR5 memory, a mobile NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card, and 512 GB of SSD storage.

ASUS also sells Chromebooks for students who are used to Google's operating system, and the Chromebook CX9 is on sale now for $529.99, a nearly $500 discount that amounts to almost 50% savings. It has an 11th Gen Intel Core i7 processor, 16 GB of memory, and 512 GB of SSD storage. That's far more than enough horsepower to run the notoriously lightweight Chrome OS.