New thing I'm trying: once a month I'll go through the deals I'd actually spend my own money on, and — more usefully, I think — the ones I wouldn't. The running list lives on the deals page with prices and expiry dates; this post is the commentary. Everything here I've either used myself or handled in a shop, no exceptions. If I haven't touched it, it doesn't get a mention.
Buy it: the IdeaPad Slim 3 is still £429
This deal has now survived three price checks, which almost never happens — most "deals" I track last a fortnight before the price quietly creeps back up. £429 for a Ryzen 5 with 16GB and a 512GB drive remains the best pound-for-pound spec in the budget segment this year. The fan is noisy under load and the screen is ordinary, and I'd still tell most people to buy it. It's also my top pick in the student laptops post, which tells you where I think the value is right now.
Buy it: the 1440p 100Hz monitor at £149
This is my "pick #1" from the monitors post back in July, down another £20 since then. Height-adjustable stand, decent IPS panel, 97% sRGB. At £149 it's genuinely the monitor I'd put on a student desk or a spare-room office without hesitating. The one con that matters: the OSD buttons are still terrible, and no discount fixes that.
Buy it (if you're honest about what it is): 1TB NVMe at £52
Storage prices have fallen off a cliff this year — a 1TB DRAM-less NVMe drive for £52 would have been a Black Friday headline in 2024. It's not a boot drive for a speed freak (it's a budget DRAM-less controller), but as a games/second drive it's absurd value. If your laptop has a spare slot, this is the cheapest meaningful upgrade there is.
Skip it: the "£99 tablet bundle"
Every October the tablet bundles show up, aimed squarely at the back-to-school crowd, and every October they're the same: an 8GB tablet with a keyboard that flexes like a yoga instructor, a "free" stylus that skips, and a suite of preinstalled apps you'll spend an evening removing. £99 sounds harmless. A £99 paperweight is still a paperweight. If you need a cheap laptop, buy a cheap laptop.
Skip it: the 8GB laptop at £349 "was £499"
On paper it's £80 cheaper than the IdeaPad. In practice it's the machine from my 8GB experiment — fine for notes, miserable the first time a deadline lands on a video call with twelve tabs open. The £80 saving costs you 8GB of RAM and half the storage. It's not a deal, it's a downgrade with a sticker on it.
How this post works
Prices are checked the Sunday before posting and the full table — with expiry dates — lives on the deals page. If a price moves after I post, that's retail for you; the table gets a "last checked" stamp so you can see how fresh it is. No sponsored placements, no "paid partnership" rows dressed up as deals. If a retailer sends me a coupon code and the underlying price is still bad, it doesn't make the list. That happens more than you'd think.
Prices checked 6 October 2026. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Comments are open. 18 so far, mostly people spotting price drops I missed — keep them coming, it genuinely helps. Spotted a deal? Mail me.