Amazon has knocked $600 off two high-end MacBook Pro configurations days before its October Prime Day event officially starts.
The 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro, each built with Apple's M5 Max chip, 36GB of RAM, and 2TB of storage, are now $3,499 and $3,799. Both normally list for $4,099 and $4,399. Apple pitches the M5 Max as its most powerful laptop chip yet, built for people doing 3D animation, app development, or AI research rather than checking email. Amazon's Prime Big Deal Days sale runs October 6 and 7, and this markdown landed ahead of it, while most other MacBook deals right now are holding steady until the event starts.
Last year's October Prime Day topped out around $400 off MacBook Pros, and Black Friday matched it. A $600 cut on the highest-end configs, arriving before the sale even begins, suggests Amazon isn't waiting to compete on price this cycle. If that pattern holds, other MacBook models could see comparable or steeper cuts once Prime Big Deal Days actually starts.
These same M5 Max models launched $100 above today's non-sale price, so measured against the original launch price, buyers are saving closer to $700 - the discount overshoots that earlier hike rather than merely offsetting it.