More than three years after its release, the M1 MacBook Air is finally available at Walmart. And, shockingly, Walmart is selling the laptop for just $700. This is the best price we’ve seen for the M1 MacBook Air, and it isn’t even a sale price. It’s just Walmart’s price.
The M1 MacBook Air launched in late 2020 with prices starting at $1,000. It’s still a fantastic laptop, and it will receive software support for several more years, but it’s discontinued. Retailers like Best Buy still try to sell the laptop at MSRP, and to date, the best sale price we’ve seen is $750. Walmart may be late to the game, but it’s undercutting everyone.
Here’s the weird thing: this is the first Mac that Walmart has ever sold direct to consumers. You could always buy Macs on the Walmart website, but the listings were made and fulfilled by third party vendors. It seems that Apple is using Walmart to offload the remaining stock of M1 MacBook Air. To be clear, these units are brand new, not refurbished or open-box.
“We’re working hard to bring premium brands to our physical and virtual shelves, and we’re excited to work with Apple to do just that.”
In a short blog post, Walmart states that it is working to bring “premium brands” to its store shelves. This M1 MacBook Air listing was made with cooperation from Apple, meaning that Walmart has established a relationship that may continue in the future.
More notably, this relationship may define how other “premium brands” are represented at Walmart. Instead of loading its warehouses with costly items that are difficult to sell, Walmart may try to position itself as the final stop for premium-yet-discontinued products. Brands like Apple could benefit from such an arrangement, as it’s an opportunity to get rid of old stock and build a new class of loyal customers.
Whether this arrangement will hurt Apple’s image is yet to be seen. In any case, those who are in need of a good laptop should seriously consider Walmart’s M1 MacBook Air listing. The M1 MacBook Air is powerful enough for professional or creative software, yet it has an extremely lightweight design and battery that genuinely lasts all day.
Unfortunately, Walmart is only selling the base model M1 MacBook Air. Most people will be fine with this model, the only major pitfall is its tiny 256GB SSD. If you need a lot of storage space, you may want to hunt around for a more expensive configuration or pair the MacBook Air with an external drive.
Note that Walmart’s website may run out of M1 MacBook Airs. The retailer will begin selling these laptops at physical locations “soon,” so if the website sells out, drive on over to your nearest Walmart.
Source: Walmart
