The cheapest well built Windows laptop just got cheaper, and it is not the one Amazon wants you to buy.
Best Buy's Techtober Sale knocks up to 25 percent off the Dell XPS 13 through October 11. Two configurations with an Intel Core 5 320 chip and 512GB of storage are both $200 off: the 8GB RAM version drops to $599.99, and the 16GB RAM version drops to $799.99. Both are the lowest prices the XPS 13 has hit. That is notable because Dell raised the laptop's price by $100 last month, blaming an ongoing memory shortage - the same 8GB/512GB configuration that used to cost $599.99 with a student discount on Dell's own site now runs $699.99 there.
The timing matters because Apple is barely discounting its own budget pick during the same sale window. The MacBook Neo is only $10 off for Amazon's October Prime Day event, and it starts at $689 with half the XPS 13's storage. A laptop that rarely goes on sale staying nearly full price while a rival drops $200 is the kind of gap that actually moves a buying decision, not just a sale banner.
The XPS 13 also outlasts both the MacBook Neo and the M5 MacBook Air on battery life, at roughly 19 hours per charge, and ships with an aluminum body, a 120Hz touchscreen, and a backlit keyboard - features that are easy to skip at this price and aren't here. Go with 16GB of RAM if your budget stretches that far, since Windows 11 eats memory even when idle. Either way, this is a rare case where the PC option is both cheaper and better specced than Apple's, not just cheaper.