This Prime Day MacBook Air deal is already great, but if you spend more, it’s even better value

In addition to Black Friday, Prime Day is a great time to buy hardware from Amazon and Apple. At the latter brand, we’re seeing some of the best prices yet on the latest models of iPads, AirPods, and AirTags, to name a few. And if you’re in the market for a new laptop, it’s also a great time to buy a MacBook, with prices starting at a record low of $849 for the latest MacBook Air. It’s currently Engadget’s top pick on our best laptops list.

But I’m going to argue here that you should spend $1,249 on this MacBook Air instead.

Apple

Save on the latest MacBook Air (but double the RAM and storage).

$1,249 at Amazon

Here’s why: You can get one in the store for under $1,000, a tempting $250 less than you’d spend at the Apple Store. But Apple is known for skimping on memory and storage in its machines: The base model has just 8GB of RAM and a 256GB hard drive. That’s fine if you only use your laptop for the bare necessities—like social media, video streaming, and basic document creation. But even with cloud storage, that SSD will fill up very quickly with photos, audio, and video files if you’re doing creative work. (Yes, you can buy external USB drives, but they’re slower and ruin the lines of Apple’s sleek laptop.) And while Apple does a great job of managing software resources on the Mac, the 8GB of memory seems like a low ceiling.

So here’s what I did when Amazon offered a version of this deal a few months ago: I paid for twice the specs. For $1,249 (after you clip the same $50 coupon from the screen), you get 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. Yes, a terabyte or more would be even better, but you have to pick and choose. And with this configuration, you’re still saving a whopping $250 over the Apple Store price for the same configuration, while also being much more future-proof. If you’re buying a laptop for a high school or college student, for example, this upgraded model will get through a 4-year academic stint more comfortably than the $849 version.

If that’s still too much for you, you can splurge on the 512GB MacBook Air M2. While it doesn’t have the extra RAM, the otherwise identical, slightly older model still gets you a very capable, modern Apple laptop with decent storage for just $999. But don’t wait: These laptop deals end today, and we don’t know if we’ll see them again before Black Friday.

Your Prime Day shopping guide: See all our Prime Day coverage. Shop the best Prime Day deals on Yahoo Life. Follow Engadget for Prime Day tech dealsHear from Autoblog’s experts about the best Amazon Prime Day Deals for your car, garage and home and find Prime Day Deals to shop at AOL, handpicked just for you.