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Laptop deals: Which store has the best for Black Friday?

Laptop deals for Black Friday are upon us, with bargains on HP, Celeron, and Dell computers already available. Best Buy, Walmart, and Staples have some of the best Black Friday laptop deals. 

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Mark Lennihan/AP/File
The HP Chromebook 11", left, is displayed with a Chromebook 14" at a Google event last month in New York. The 14" Chromebook is one of many HP Black Friday laptop deals shoppers can expect.
  • By Marcy Bonebright Contributor

Hear that? It's the clock ticking away the minutes until the Black Friday laptop deals officially begin. Until then, we'll keep rounding up the best of the Black Friday laptop ads so far. Read on to see what the latest crop of ads has yielded. Be sure to bookmark this page and check back often, as we'll be adding even more awesome Black Friday laptop deals as we come across them.

Ultraportable Laptop Prices Still Impressive

HP Pavilion Celeron 1.1GHz 14" Chromebook for $179.99 at Staples: Weighing in at just under 4 lbs., this HP 14" Chromebook is the ideal ultraportable for your basic computing needs. And when Staples drops it to $180, this'll be the cheapest new 14" Chromebook we've ever seen, and tied as the cheapest new Chromebook we've seen in any size.

ASUS Celeron 1.5GHz 12" Touchscreen Laptop for $249.99 at Best Buy: This Asus ultraportable may lack the bells and whistles of higher-end touchscreen laptops, but $250 is still a seriously great price. Until now, the best price we'd ever seen for any new 12" touchscreen laptop was $280, so this deal is definitely worth grabbing if you're looking for a basic laptop with touch capabilities. (This build currently goes for at least $325 elsewhere.)

HP Pavilion TouchSmart Celeron 1.5GHz 14" Touchscreen Laptop for $278 at Walmart: If you're itching to get a touchscreen laptop, but Best Buy's all-time low on a 12" ultraportable doesn't interest you, then check out this slightly better-equipped HP Pavilion TouchSmart. The 14-B109WM has both a bigger screen and a bigger hard drive than Best Buy's offering, and it only costs $28 more. Plus, it's one of Walmart's guaranteed doorbusters; you're sure to bag the cheapest 14" touchscreen laptop we've ever seen, even if your local store runs out.

HP Split 2-in-1 Haswell 1.3GHz 13" Touchscreen Convertible Laptop for $499.99 at Best Buy: This sleek laptop/tablet combo blows our ultraportable laptop prediction out of the water; we thought we'd see a 12" laptop with an Ivy Bridge chip for $519. Instead, the HP Split 13-m110dx boasts a 13.3" touchscreen and a fourth-gen Haswell dual-core CPU, and Best Buy is dropping it to just $500. It'll be the best price we've seen for any new 13" convertible tablet by at least $132.

Budget Laptops Offer Surprising Features

HP AMD E-300 1.3GHz 16" LED-Backlit Laptop for $178 at Walmart: If you thought we were nuts predicting a general-use 15" dual-core laptop for $170 on Black Friday, weep for our sanity no more. This HP 15.6" laptop sports a dual-core AMD E-300 CPU and a 500GB hard drive, and it's just a few bucks over our prediction. When Walmart marks this system down to the guilt-free impulse buy price of $178, it'll be tied with the item below as the cheapest new 16" laptop with a dual-core processor that we've ever seen.

Dell Inspiron Celeron 1.6GHz 16" LED-Backlit Laptop for $178 at Best Buy: Not to be outdone by Walmart, Best Buy is also offering a 16" dual-core laptop for under $180. Although this Dell only has a 320GB hard drive, it's still tied with the system above at an all-time low price.

HP Pavilion TouchSmart AMD 1.5GHz 16" Touchscreen Laptop for $429.99 at H.H. Gregg: Although a touchscreen rarely falls into the category of "specs you'd find on a budget laptop," it's an awesome add-on to find at this price point. We've only seen one 16" quad-core touchscreen laptop for less than this, and that was a Newegg daily deal.

Dell Inspiron 15 Haswell 1.6GHz 16" LED-Backlit Laptop for $499.99 at Dell Home: If you're dying to get your hands on a config with one of those shiny new Haswell CPUs, this Dell Inspiron 15 is a great choice. In addition to the Core i5 Haswell chip, this workhorse laptop has 6GB of RAM and a 750GB hard drive. Best of all, $500 is the lowest price we've ever seen for a Haswell-equipped Inspiron 15.

High-End Laptop Steals Still Hard to Come By

 Toshiba Ivy Bridge 2.4GHz 16" LED-Backlit Laptop for $649.99 at Staples: Although it's only got an Ivy Bridge CPU and will require a mail-in rebate to get the $650 price, this Toshiba S55-A5295 packs an awful lot of power into its 15.6" build. This is $145 under the best current price for this configuration and the second-best price we've ever seen for any 16" laptop with 12GB of RAM and a 1TB hard drive. (If you're looking for this configuration with a Haswell, BJ's Wholesale Club will have one for $100 more.)

Alienware 14 Haswell 2.5GHz 14" LED-Backlit Laptop for $999 at Dell Home: Don't be fooled by the Alienware 14's compact housing; this little laptop is jam-packed with features any PC gamer would drool over, like a Haswell CPU, 8GB of RAM, and NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 1GB graphics. Better yet, Dell will drop this system to just under $1,000, making it the cheapest Alienware 14 config we've ever seen.

Although we didn't make a ton of changes to this list, we've already seen some truly stellar laptop prices coming out of the leaked Black Friday ads. Gamers and those looking for a tricked-out laptop shouldn't despair; we're certain that Black Friday will yield some serious deals on serious systems. Don't forget to sign up for an email alert to find out when we post a deal on a laptop that suits your budget and your lifestyle. Also, be sure to check out our Black Friday deals page for all the latest news, ads, and predictions.

Marcy Bonebright is a contributor to Dealnews.com, where this article first appeared: http://dealnews.com/features/best-black-friday-laptop-ads/

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