Laptop prices
Posted by ProgrammedVictory@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 53 comments
Interested in everyone's thoughts on what I see as skyrocking computer prices. Everyone is seeing this right? Four months ago my favorite laptop was $1500. 2 weeks ago I pischased a handful of them for $2k each. Today they are $2200 with a "hot deal" saving me $600. For smaller clients are we thinking hold off for non urgent replacements in hopes it goes down? Or do we think it's gonna keep rising for quite awhile?
ifpfi@reddit
I bought a new laptop in January but it turned out to have overheating issues out of the box. Now when I went to buy a replacement the laptops are double the price. Thanks Lenovo...
Simuzorrr@reddit
Notebook prices will likely remain high through 2028, and possibly even into 2029. This is based on information I’ve received directly from Lenovo.
You might wonder why manufacturers don’t simply build new factories for RAM or CPUs. The reason is that these facilities take a long time to develop—around five years for a RAM factory and up to ten years for a CPU fabrication plant.
VernapatorCur@reddit
The base model our org buys was $400 last June. They're way too old and I was pushing for us to move to a newer model even then, but it's not my call. Last week when I had to order more the exact same model started at $900. There was only one of those. The bulk are north of $1200. Models with similar stats are all at the same price. We're looking at moving to thin clients as our solution, but I'm expecting to find those prices have also gone up.
statikuz@reddit
VernapatorCur@reddit
Not much better. Lenovo T14S.
likwidtek@reddit
there's no way you're getting new T14s laptops that cheap even a year ago. These must be refurbs or something, right? T14s is a solid laptop for most office use.
VernapatorCur@reddit
Yeah, they're refurbs. They mostly work but we're finding more and more users who can't have zoom and our website running at the same time. I'm half tempted to say that's a problem with the way our website is designed though.
likwidtek@reddit
I mean... these must be REALLY, REALLY refurbed. heh. good luck?
VernapatorCur@reddit
I would say "check Amazon", but even their prices have gone up. Some of them were as low as $380, the price varied, but the average was $400. And most of them were fine a year ago, but as the availability has decreased so has the quality.
iB83gbRo@reddit
Are you buying refurbs or something? I've never seen a new T14s for $400.
VernapatorCur@reddit
They're refurbs.
ProgrammedVictory@reddit (OP)
How are refurbs doing for you? I always said no way, but it's an option for the clients that won't listen..
VernapatorCur@reddit
9 moths ago they were decent quality. These days about half of them arrive with something wrong, often jeys on the keyboard that don't work. That said by the time they're refurbs the batteries don't battery anymore. Maybe 2 hours of battery life after a full charge. In our situation that's fine, but I can imagine use cases where it wouldn't be.
Academic_Taste663@reddit
Wut. The lowest spec we buy is a dell pro 14 plus.
Horsemeatburger@reddit
Thankfully, we have more than enough laptops to cover the next two years at least. In the past we'd just resell older machines but when the price hikes caused by the AI bubble started we decided to hold off on selling older machines, which in hindsight was the right decision.
Also, because we're not on Windows but for most clients on ChromeOS we can give out older laptops to standard users without getting any complaints regarding their performance.
Twuggy@reddit
Our windows supplier has our base windows being more expensive than an macbook air m5 with 32gb ram. The windows devices get a hefty discount, where as we don't buy enough macs to get a discount.
Best part is that our CTO still says macs are too expensive to buy so they only get given to a small number of users. About 10% of our total fleet.
likwidtek@reddit
TL;DR: Seeing the same thing. Our historically best value Lenovo E14 fleet laptop is now quoting around $1,676 each, which is roughly 74% to 134% higher than our 2023 to 2025 purchase history. Weirdly, the higher tier T14 is currently cheaper at about $1,471 each, but even that is still 53% to 105% higher than what we were paying.
For those with attention span:
We’re seeing the same thing and we're hearing from multiple vendors that there's another Lenovo price increase coming at the end of May across the board. Our info if this helps anyone.
Historically our best value fleet laptop has been the Lenovo ThinkPad E14. From 2023 through 2025, our average purchase pricing was roughly $963.88 in one period and $716.77 in another. Current E14 quotes are coming in around $1,676 per laptop out the door at 50 units, which is about $712 more per laptop than the $963.88 average and about $960 more than the $716.77 average.
That works out to roughly a 74% to 134% increase compared to our 2023 to 2025 purchase history, depending on which prior purchase window we use.
The weird part is that the newer T14 quote we’re looking at is actually cheaper than the current E14 quote, even though the T14 is the higher tier line. The current T14 quote is about $1,471 per laptop out the door at 50 units, which is still about 53% to 105% higher than our 2023 to 2025 historical laptop pricing.
These increases are hot garbage dude.
MathmoKiwi@reddit
Why do you think the T14 is being priced cheaper??
ProgrammedVictory@reddit (OP)
Thanks. Ugh.
dm117@reddit
We’re a Mac shop. Spending 1k or less per device
drphred@reddit
We switched to MacBook Neos. $699 each. At that price, they don’t need to last 5 years. Office 365 and web based apps are what 90% of users do, so they work great for that.
kagato87@reddit
Infra is bad too. We were supposed to refresh our clusters last November. We're still.getting hammered with delays.
LRS_David@reddit
Been in hiding for the last year?
Anyway, prices are going up and will not head down anytime soon unless there is a huge AI crash. And that will create other issues. Apple is publicly stating this is going to cause them problems when their long term contracts for memory (system and storage) run out in the near future. Plus just getting fab time for TSMC and others to make their high end chips is getting hard.
Personally some Samsung EVO 4TB drives I bought in November of 2024 at just under $300 each are currently selling at over $900 each.
mro21@reddit
Everything is good as an excuse. Corona, AI, wars, whatever. They sell it at a price people are willing to pay
braytag@reddit
Leave my favorite beer out of this!
Ikarus3426@reddit
We purchase a bunch of laptops back in December and were told that the price was going to go up like 200-400 in January. We're going to have to purchase more again since we have so many old PCs in our company that are old and we're really not looking forward to the price. Pretty sure it'll be more than a 400 increase.
We'll probably have to get some more inexpensive models for a while and just deal with it until things get better.
thegoatcarlwheezer@reddit
AI: The gift that keeps on giving.
ddmf@reddit
You missed the letter r out of grift...
nefarious_bumpps@reddit
fify
ProgrammedVictory@reddit (OP)
I asked AI to analyze the situation and now the deal is $2300 for the laptop.
hamburgler26@reddit
I'm altering the pricing. Pray I don't alter it further.
Nonaveragemonkey@reddit
Everytime someone says AI it goes up a quarter.
tobias3@reddit
Hormuz closure is likely to make this MUCH worse. Something or other will have a shortage, Helium etc. for chips production, plastics, etc.
I've advised people to upgrade now.
BlockBannington@reddit
Dell Sales also on here I see
Capable-Ad-5344@reddit
Who needs a laptop, when we ai
ranhalt@reddit
Thin clients and cloud hosted OS might actually take off if industry hoards the hardware.
nefarious_bumpps@reddit
Hosting providers are crying about the shortages too.
DegaussedMixtape@reddit
Get everyone a Chromebook and have it boot into full screen Gemini and be done with it. Ai companies bought all the ram, so why not use it?
/s
Tounage@reddit
RAM shortage x CPU shortage x rising gas prices
We need to replace a lot of devices, so I got a quote from our vendor for $1k laptops during Black Friday sales. The C suite kicked it down the road. Now we are paying $2k for the same laptops.
Triairius@reddit
Prices don’t go down anymore.
plump-lamp@reddit
We got quoted only $1100 for core i5 Dell pro laptops 16" with 32gb ram ddr-5 and 512tb SSD direct from Dell. I don't think that's that bad actually
Secret_Account07@reddit
Wait really? 14”?
Where do you live?
plump-lamp@reddit
16". Full size keypad. Midwest. It's through dell premiere
MiniOozy5231@reddit
AVD and thin client laptops go brrrrrrrr
theMightBoop@reddit
The price of RAM went nuts a few months ago. The price of everything is going nuts right now on top of that. So good luck
Temporary-Library597@reddit
We used to buy 5 year warranties and flip machines out once the warranty expired. Now we're cutting our numbers of machines purchased proportionately with the price increases, and moving with a "keep old machines around as spares" model.
We're kinda lucky though. Our shop's employees don't push machines' capability anyway. We might have moved in this direction without the price increases...but this was certainly impetus for us to change.
likwidtek@reddit
We keep 3 year premium NBD onsite on all laptops and then just roll the dice after. But as we get more laptops returned to us we still use them and keep them in stock for job roles that don't require as much compute and are prone to getting roughed up (in the design and construction industry).
I'd love to keep everything on a 5 year fixed cycle but we have plenty of viable laptops that are older than that and work great for field construction dudes and training laptops.
variableindex@reddit
I’m advising clients to buy now. I don’t think we’re returning to 2025 prices. Market speculation says no relief until 2028.
Compounded by Windows having historically shitty app performance, times are tough for small business hardware needs.
Nuronus@reddit
Tariffs are hitting hardware hard right now — especially anything assembled or sourced from China and Taiwan. I don't see it dropping anytime soon, given the current trade situation. For clients, I'm framing it as a planning conversation: "Your refresh is going to cost 30-40% more than it would have 6 months ago. Let's budget for it now rather than get surprised." For smaller clients where the refresh isn't urgent, extending the life of current hardware with RAM/SSD upgrades buys time at a fraction of the replacement cost. The bigger risk is waiting until something fails and paying emergency pricing on top of the tariff markup.
mapbits@reddit
We're anticipating at least a year and likely more before this improves based on current capital bookings by the large players. Even once / if the AI bubble deflates none of them can afford to risk backing away from the business threat of being left behind.
I suspect that we'll eventually see some relief as many of the direct providers are highly focused on reducing costs (as we can see with decreased response depth / quality) though optimization is currently being outstripped by model iterations... with rapidly diminishing returns.
For servers, the cost escalation is actually tipping the balance towards IaaS for us in some cases.
mattjh@reddit
Let’s pretend you’re a human. Did you just say you, yourself, have been noticing skyrocketing computer prices? And then you asked us if we noticed?
ncc74656m@reddit
I recently bought a Clockwork Pi handheld cyberdeck device figuring I would pick up a Pi 5 soon thereafter and get all built out. They were $90 then, but I figured probably worth it. Then they went to $120. They're now $170. I think I might be selling off that Clockwork Pi. 🙄
Same thing about a new computer - I was almost set to buy a Framework 16. Even contemplated picking up a 96GB kit when I heard about the prices being set to jump, but I guess I just thought it was a bit of hype. Welp.
I'm currently advising the same thing at my gig. Just put a hold on purchases entirely except for urgent orders. Order based on need alone, and then if prices ever become reasonable again, do a refresh cycle then.
reserved_seating@reddit
Yes