MacBooks tend to go on sale at their deepest discounts during back-to-school season and around Black Friday, and mainly at third-party retailers like Amazon and Best Buy — not the Apple Store itself. Apple does run sales during the same time periods, but they usual entail gift card promotions or free accessories with a purchase, not straight-up savings.

Some of the best Windows laptops our team has tested rival Apple notebooks' premium build quality, power, and all-day battery lives. My current favorite MacBook alternatives include:

• The 13.8-inch Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 (powered by the Snapdragon Elite chip) performs on par with the 15-inch M4 MacBook Air and lasts nearly 23 hours on a single charge. It's not quite as thin or light as a MacBook Air, but it's still a sleek, sophisticated machine — and for what it's worth, its Sapphire colorway puts Apple's "Sky Blue" hue to shame.

• The 14-inch Asus Zenbook A14 (with a Snapdragon X Plus chip) is 0.3 pounds lighter than a 13-inch M4 MacBook Air, and it offers almost 22 hours of battery life. Its performance is slightly below that of the 14-inch M3 Macbook Pro from last 2023.

• The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is the MacBook-iest gaming laptop we've tried. Lightweight and aesthetically subdued, it can easily fit in a backpack and wouldn't look out of place in an office or classroom.

If you like the 2-in-1 form factor or want an even more affordable option, iPads also make good MacBook alternatives thanks to iPadOS' new "windowing" system.