Start your back-to-school shopping early with these Prime Day PC deals

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If you're shopping ahead for an affordable laptop or desktop for back-to-school, Amazon's Prime Day sale could be just the ticket. The online retailer's big sale-a-thon has provided a number of steep discounts on PCs like the Lenovo IdeaCentre AIO 3i for $578, and some of the budget-friendly options make for great back-to-school picks.

Shopping for a new laptop or desktop now, instead of waiting until closer to fall, not only will give your kids extra time to familiarize themselves with their new devices, but it will also save you a bit of money in the process. Here are some of the top deals for budget-friendly laptops and desktops that just got even more wallet-friendly thanks to Prime Day sales.

Prime Day deals: USA | UK | Canada | India

Lenovo IdeaCentre AIO 3i | $680 $578 at Amazon

Lenovo's IdeaCentre AIO 3i is an all-in-one iMac competitor with a 22-inch FHD touchscreen display. This PC desktop is loaded with Windows 11 and is powered by Intel's 11th Gen Core i3 processor and 8GB of RAM. This AIO will be great for the home or for college students looking to save space in their dorms. Rare among desktops these days, this PC also comes with a DVD-RW drive for backups. With the Prime Day discount, you're saving 15% on this AIO.

HP Pavilion Gaming Desktop | $760 $600 at Amazon

Buying a new PC, even one that's intended for school, shouldn't be all work and no play. HP's Pavilion Gaming Desktop comes with plenty of power to keep students productive and entertained. This AMD-powered rig comes with a Ryzen 3 5300G processor and Radeon RX 5500 graphics, making it a powerful and versatile system that can grow with your needs. At $600 after a $160 discount, the desktop comes with a keyboard and mouse, though you'll need to add your own display to get started.

ASUS VivoBook 14 Laptop | $350 $270 at Amazon

This ASUS laptop was already budget-friendly to start with, but after a 23% discount, the VivoBook 14 just got even friendlier on your wallet. This great 14-inch laptop packs in a FHD resolution IPS display, ensuring that your students will have plenty of screen real estate to multitask, video conference, and collaborate with their classmates, and get their academic work done. And at 3.3 pounds, it's still light enough to take with them to class or to the library. This notebook packs in Intel's 11th Gen Core i3 processor and comes with a built-in fingerprint scanner to keep things secure.

Acer Aspire TC-1760-UA92 Desktop | $620 $520 at Amazon

A $100 price cut on this Acer Aspire desktop makes it even more attractive. Now at just over $500, the Aspire TC desktop is a solid bet for students looking for a capable system that will last them for years. This desktop doesn't pack in discrete graphics, but it does come with Intel's latest 12th Gen Core i5-12400 processor, 12GB of RAM, and 512GB of solid-state M.2 storage. A keyboard and mouse are included in this price, but you'll have to bring your own display.

Acer Nitro 50 N50-620-UA91 Gaming Desktop | $830 $680 at Amazon

This desktop is one of the more expensive picks on our list, but it will provide you plenty of value and years of use. Equipped with a 6-core Intel 11th Gen Core i5 processor and discrete NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 graphics, the Nitro 50 desktop is great for schoolwork, gaming, and creative work. If you have a budding video editor, graphic designer, or Photoshop artist on your hands, the discrete GPU on this system will definitely come in handy.

These are just some of the sampling of affordable laptops and desktops that Amazon offers for Prime Day. For more deals, be sure to visit our Prime Day hub and check out our live blog of laptop deals for the e-retailer's sale-a-thon event.

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Chuong's passion for gadgets began with the humble PDA. Since then, he has covered a range of consumer and enterprise devices, raning from smartphones to tablets, laptops to desktops and everything in between for publications like Pocketnow, Digital Trends, Wareable, Paste Magazine, and TechRadar in the past before joining the awesome team at Windows Central. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, when not working, he likes exploring the diverse and eclectic food scene, taking short jaunts to wine country, soaking in the sun along California's coast, consuming news, and finding new hiking trails.