Best Buy has a refurbished M1 MacBook Air with 512GB of storage on sale for just $500 — an absolute steal
SAVE $750: As of Feb. 17, a refurbished Apple MacBook Air (M1, 8GB RAM, 512GB SSD) is on sale at Best Buy for just $499.99, normally $1,249.99.
$1,249.99 Save $750
Rumor has it that Apple is launching a new low-cost MacBook this year — potentially as soon as March 4, when it's hosting a "special experience" in select cities. The new MacBook will reportedly run on an iPhone chipset, come in several fun colors, and retail for around $600 to $700, a price point usually reserved for nice Chromebooks. But if that's even pushing your budget, I found an Apple laptop on sale for even cheaper right now.
Best Buy has a preowned 13-inch M1 MacBook Air marked down to $499.99 as of mid-February. That's a whopping 60% off its suggested retail price of $1,249.99. It comes in a silver finish and features 512GB of storage, which is double the capacity of the base model. (Walmart usually sells that one for $649, though it's currently sold out there.)
As a "Geek Squad Certified Refurbished" unit, this MacBook is used but fixed up to work good as new. It's covered by a 90-day parts and labor warranty.
Until the new cheap MacBook (probably) launches, I'm still recommending the M1 Air as the best budget MacBook for most people. It's a late 2020 model that lacks the nice webcam, long battery life, and powerful performance of its successors, but its overall build quality is stellar, and it's plenty fast for basic tasks like web browsing. In our CPU benchmark that tests for multitasking prowess, it outperformed almost every other laptop we've tried in the $450 to $800 range.
If this M1 MacBook Air ticks the right boxes on your laptop specs wishlist, I wouldn't wait too long to add it to your cart. A refurbished 256GB base model that Best Buy was selling for only $410 (or $290 off) sold out there while I was writing this story.