If you’re in the market for a new laptop, you might be impressed at the deals you’re able to find. This is especially true if it’s been several years since you’ve last shopped for a laptop, or if you’ve been out of the loop on the latest developments in laptop technology.
Inflation may be pushing prices higher nominally, but when it comes to value per dollar spent, laptop deals keep getting better and better. This has been the trajectory for decades and will likely continue for decades to come.
But why is this the case? How do laptop deals keep getting better?
Finding Great Laptop Deals
If you search for laptop deals, you’ll see a wide variety of powerful products for exceptional prices. You can look on manufacturer websites, consumer electronics websites, and even in the ads of local newspapers to see what’s out there. You can get simple Chromebooks and similarly minimalistic laptops for just a couple hundred dollars, and if you’re willing to spend a few thousand dollars, you can get a state-of-the-art gaming laptop that can do almost anything you imagine.
In between, you’ll find laptops of almost any conceivable size or scope, for any conceivable budget. And all these laptops have one thing in common: they offer practically infinite possibilities for prices that are relatively low, especially considering their older counterparts.
Why is this the case?
Advancing Tech
One explanation is constantly advancing technology in the laptop world.
For example:
- New standards for power/capabilities. With each passing year, engineers and innovators push the limits of what laptops are capable of. We pack more transistors into individual circuits. We find shortcuts for making hardware slimmer and lighter. We make innovations in the worlds of battery longevity and reliability. And as a result, our standards increase. Companies are able to make strictly better, more powerful components at similar or even lower prices, making the latest wave of laptops much more sophisticated without pushing prices much higher.
- Cheaper manufacturing and distribution. Innovation isn’t just about making products that are better; it’s also about making existing products in ways that are cheaper, more efficient, and more reliable. As manufacturing and distribution become more advanced, we get access to less expensive components and less expensive machines.
- Convergent effects. Individual areas of innovation converge to make laptops more valuable in several areas simultaneously. Prices are pushed lower, technologies evolve, and consumers eventually get access to laptops that are better in every conceivable way for a price that’s at or lower than the previous benchmark.
Competition
Competition is one of the most important elements of any free market, in part because it creates downward pressure for prices. And in the laptop world, there’s plenty of competition. There are dozens of major laptop manufacturers and thousands of consumer electronics and general retail websites. Every single one of these is competing with the others to attract more customers – and arguably the easiest way to attract new customers is to offer them a similar product for a lower price.
Collectively, this forces manufacturers, distributors, and retailers to offer the lowest conceivable prices for even the latest products on the market. The democratization of information offered by the internet also increases transparency, allowing consumer demand and market pressure to push prices even lower, and even faster.
Loss Leaders
A loss leader strategy is one in which a company deliberately sells a product at a loss, with the expectation that new customers chasing the deal will buy more from the company now or in the future. Because laptops are so hotly demanded, they tend to be common loss leaders; many establishments are willing to sell laptops at a loss, at least temporarily, to win more business in the end.
This effect is easiest to see around the holidays; Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales typically advertise consumer electronics as their biggest ticket and most deeply discounted items. While this move is only temporary, the prices set during holiday sales seasons set new standards for price expectations in the future.
Consumer Expectations
It also helps that consumers are becoming more demanding and pickier. With the sheer number of laptop options on the market, most consumers are only going to move forward with purchasing a new one if the laptop offers exceptional features for a very low price.
All these factors and more combine to create downward pressure on laptop prices and upward pressure on laptop specs. As a result, laptop computers keep getting more advanced and more capable, while simultaneously being sold for lower prices (when adjusted for inflation).
As a consumer and a technology enthusiast, this is great news – especially since this momentum is likely to continue indefinitely.
Founder Dinis Guarda
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