There are no revolutionary life hacks. There is a calendar of presentations, the conditional frequency of the release of new models. There is also a calendar of holidays and the ebb-and-flow season of students from places of study, to which manufacturers often link presentations of new products, and stores – price changes.

When can you buy the newest or not quite new, but cheaper than usual? Follow the market and news. And if there is an urgent need, you can buy any laptops even today – there are enough competitive models with similar characteristics and price tags on the market.

Calendar plan

All laptop presentations are conventionally held in three approaches:

• season “back to school” – from June to August present “school” models that do not differ in performance, but are not worth all the money;
• pre-holiday season – from September to December show more expensive and more impressive models;
• spring presentations are held from February to April.

Almost no model hits the market immediately after the announcement. New laptops can be bought, as a rule, a month and a half after the presentation. Most often we are talking about July-August and November-December when preparations for the new school year or New Year / Christmas are in full swing. At the same time, most large retail chains drop their prices. That is, laptops can be bought at full price in March and September and at a discount in August and November. This was the case, for example, with the prices of the Mac Book 12, which at the beginning of the year cost about $ 1300, and by August it had fallen in price to 1150. There is no guarantee that it will be the same next year and with any other model.

To see how much it costs to build a gaming laptop, go here.

At the helm of Intel and NVIDIA

In addition to the release of new laptops, manufacturers also update the current lines. As a rule, not more often than once a year (for business laptops – once a year and a half). These updates are also not accidental and are tied to the updates of Intel processors. The latter, for example, happened in September – Intel introduced the 7th generation Kaby Lake processors. But it will only release them in 2017, which means that new laptops running on Kaby Lake can also be bought no earlier than next year (tentatively – in the spring). Intel’s next solid architecture update, Cannon lake, isn’t expected until the second half of 2017.

For gaming laptops, it’s not so much the processor that matters as the graphics. It’s up to NVIDIA: the company introduced new Pascal GPUs in August. Updated laptops can be bought today – Pascal GPUs are in the latest Alien ware, MSI, and Asus (new GPUs are labeled “ten” – GTX 1060, GTX 1070).

Myth: old laptops will definitely fall in price after a line update

No, the release of a new model in the lineup does not necessarily mean that the previous laptops will be cheaper to buy. But this practice exists. Microsoft , for example, cut the price of the Surface Pro 3 by $ 100 after the Surface Pro 4 was announced.

Are we buying at a good price?

Compare prices, use the price change calendar on price aggregators, or follow the prices for the model you are interested in yourself. It is unlikely that there will be a discount greater than $ 100-150, but this is already a great deal.

Visit A Best Laptop if you’re looking for the best laptop under $400.

If you are thinking about waiting for the release of new laptops or not:

• Apple updated the Mac Book Pro line in September, there will be no other major innovations in the near future;
• The CPU for Windows laptops will not be updated until next fall, but new Windows laptops rarely stay in the top-performing for more than six months.

If during the season of sales you didn’t have time for discounts or you didn’t like anything, wait for February – then the new items shown in the fall will reach our market. Well, new announcements will begin.