5 Powerful Laptops Cheaper Than MacBook Air After The Price Hike

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Due to rising memory and storage chip costs driven by the AI boom, Apple recently increased the prices of MacBooks and iPads. Owing to this, the entry-level MacBook Neo now starts at $699 (up from $599), while the 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air have jumped by $200, from $1,099 to $1,299 and $1,299 to $1,499, respectively. That makes the MacBook Air a bit pricey if you want a budget laptop that's powerful enough for everyday tasks. 

However, if you're in the market for a powerful laptop, you don't necessarily have to get the MacBook Air. With Apple's price hike, the company has just made some budget laptops seem more attractive than they once were. In fact, you can even consider used laptops that are still worth buying. 

But if you prefer your tech brand-new, here are five powerful laptops that now undercut the MacBook Air while offering more or less the same features, like a lightweight design and competitive battery life. We've selected these laptops largely based on their current market prices, but you can read more about our selection process at the end of the article.

Starting at $1,399, the Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11 is slightly cheaper than the 15-inch MacBook Air post the price hike. It's powered by Qualcomm's latest second-generation Snapdragon X2 Plus chip and is available in various configurations.

The Snapdragon X2 Plus chip was announced with big performance boost claims, although it's hard to find reviews of the Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11 with this specific processor under the hood as of this writing. The base model of the Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11 comes with 16 GB of memory, 512 GB of storage, and a 14-inch FHD+ OLED panel.

However, this laptop has limited ports: it only has three USB-C ports, and it doesn't even have a headphone jack, unlike the Air. Although it's currently selling for $100 less than the 15-inch MacBook Air, the price keeps fluctuating, and we've seen it for as low as $1,200, which is a fantastic price.

Although Microsoft's 13-inch Surface Laptop originally started at $899 when it first hit the market in 2025, the company was one of the victims of the memory crisis and was forced to hike prices. The 13-inch Surface Laptop now starts at $1,199 for the variant with 16 GB of memory and 256 GB of storage, which is still $100 cheaper than the MacBook Air 13.

The Surface model in question runs Qualcomm's 8-core Snapdragon X Plus processor. While this chip is not as powerful as Apple's M5 chip that powers the MacBook Air, it's still pretty capable by modern standards, especially if you're not going to be performing CPU- or GPU-intensive tasks.

Aside from the Snapdragon X Plus, the 13-inch Surface Laptop features two USB-C ports like the Air, a 1080p webcam, and Wi-Fi 7 support. It delivers excellent battery life with nearly 31 hours of runtime against the 13-inch MacBook Air's 18 hours, according to PC Mag's tests, so you won't compromise on that if you decide to get the 13-inch Surface Laptop.

The HP OmniBook 5 is available in different configurations, with some selling for more than the Air while others go for less. So whether it's cheaper than the MacBook Air depends on the specific configuration you pick. The variant with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus chip, 32 GB of RAM, 512 GB of storage, and a 14-inch 2K OLED display is a great pick if you want a cheaper laptop than the MacBook Air, even if by a slight margin.

This variant costs $1,450 as of this writing, making it $50 cheaper. The Snapdragon X Plus is a pretty capable chip, as we've pointed out previously. Besides, what makes this HP OmniBook 5 variant even more attractive is that it has double the memory compared to the base 15-inch MacBook Air, which only ships with 16 GB of RAM. 

HP's OmniBook 5 also offers an OLED touch display and a more versatile selection of ports than the Air, with two USB-C ports, a single USB-A port, and a headphone jack. With a screen size similar to the 15-inch MacBook Air, the OmniBook 5 is also portable, weighing 3.52 pounds — slightly heavier than the 15-inch Air but only by 0.2 pounds.

Asus refreshed its iconic ZenBook A14 laptop this year, giving it a performance boost. It retains the same design but gets slightly new internals in the form of the Snapdragon X2 Elite chip and Wi-Fi 7 support. The Asus ZenBook A14 sells for $1,350 on Best Buy, and that gets you the variant with 16 GB of memory and 512 GB of storage. That makes it $149 cheaper than the 15-inch MacBook Air's new starting price of $1,499. 

With Qualcomm's 18-core Snapdragon X2 Elite chip under the hood, this laptop is just as powerful, if not more powerful, than the M5 MacBook Air. According to tests by Windows Central, the ZenBook A14 performed better than an M5-powered MacBook Pro (yes, the Pro, not the Air) on Geekbench 6. As a result, you won't be compromising on performance despite going for less. 

The ZenBook A14 features a 14-inch FHD+ OLED display and gives you a wide assortment of ports, including an HDMI 2.1 port, three USB ports (two USB-C and one USB-A), and a headphone jack. It weighs just 2.4 pounds, making it lighter than even the smaller and lightweight 13-inch MacBook Air, let alone the larger and bulkier 15-inch model at 3.3 pounds. That said, the ZenBook A14 isn't alone in earning such bragging rights — there are other laptops lighter than the MacBook Air.

The Lenovo Slim 7i Aura Edition is part of the company's ultra-light laptop portfolio. Besides competing with the MacBook Air on portability, it weighs just 2.82 pounds, making it slightly heavier than the 2.7-pound 13-inch model. The Lenovo Slim 7i Aura Edition costs $1,156 on Amazon, meaning it was pricier than the 13-inch MacBook Air before the price hike. Performance-wise, this laptop is powered by the Intel Core Ultra 7 256V.

Despite being an upper-midrange chip in Intel's Lunar Lake family, the performance is good enough for a productivity laptop, and it can even hold its own in gaming, according to tests by PC Mag. While the performance isn't better than even the M3 chip, let alone the M5 one in the MacBook Air, it should be sufficient for everyday tasks. In other areas, the Slim 7i Aura Edition features a 14-inch OLED panel with a 16:10 aspect ratio, offering more vertical space, 16 GB of memory, and 1 TB of storage.

There are plenty of ports compared to the MacBook Air: an HDMI 2.1 port, a microSD card reader, two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports, a USB-A port, and a headphone jack. There's also a 32 GB RAM variant of the Lenovo Slim 7i Aura Edition with 1 TB of storage and a touchscreen panel going for $1,400, which is cheaper than the 15-inch MacBook Air.

To compile this list of laptops, the first selection criterion was to find laptops that are powerful enough to perform day-to-day tasks without lag or stutters. Price was the second factor we considered. However, we weren't simply looking at cheaper MacBook Air alternatives. We only considered laptops whose price was originally higher than the Air but have become cheaper after Apple's price hike. That way, any models that were previously more pocket-friendly than the Air didn't make the list.

One thing you should note about the prices we've listed is that they may have changed by the time you're reading this because tech prices have become volatile in 2026. Some companies have already announced several rounds of price hikes. For example, Raspberry Pi has raised the prices of its products several times since last year.