FAQ
How often do you update?
Every day! Expect the new prices up by 9am PT.
Do you make money?
Nope! (Well, mostly nope).
- We don't track or sell your data.
- We don't like ads personally, so why force them on you?
- Affiliates comissions would be nice, but we aren't large enough for most companies to partner with us.
- Sometimes it's nice not to be treated like a product.
Full disclaimer, we did partner with two stores as affiliates:
- Amazon. Their product API is unavailable unless we're part of their affiliate network, so this is necessary for our data collection.
- Newegg, because early on in the development of this site I reached out to them and they gave me an affiliate link in support. They're awesome. I've used them personally for over a decade and have always had a great experience.
Is it only gaming laptops?
Yup, we niched down to try and keep startup effort low by only focusing on laptops and gaming ones at that (Note - effort was still astronomical). Currently we'll see how well a tool like this works for others. If there's a positive response, we can certainly expand to include more than just gaming laptops.
Is it only in the United States?
Yes... for now. If we're successful enough we can expand outward to provide the same service to more countries!
Do you look at non-large retailers?
No. The only retailers we look at are big-box, reputable stores with lenient return policies. In addition, we only list items that are sold by the company itself, and none of their third-party vendors.
Update: BH doesn't do laptop returns. We didn't know this ahead of time or we would've skipped them. We've set a note on their listings to inform users of that policy.
How do you decide what a deal is?
This is a difficult problem! We approach it in two ways - by leveraging the computer's price history to look for it's personal lows, and our in-house ai price estimate. Combining these two comparisons against the current price gives us an insight into how much value is being packed in.
Why do you only show pre-made laptops?
Because of shipping time. To fully customize a laptop usually means someone has to build it for you, instead of the product already being in a box ready to send. Some customizable options will take multiple weeks to arrive because of this, especially factoring in overseas travel time. Buying pre-made usually means waiting a couple days instead of a few weeks.
One other benefit of pre-made laptops is that it's a stamp of approval for being a kosher, well-designed system that you don't have to think heavily about.
Why is your domain .ai?
Because we built a custom ai model to predict a laptop's value. Also it's trendy!
Are there any other similar tools out there?
IsThereAnyDeal.com is brilliant for finding video games at terrific prices. They're awesome - I highly recommend checking them out!
Fellow tools like this help save people time and money can make the world a better place for all of us.
A HUGE amount of gratitude and recognition also goes to:
- videocardbenchmark.net and cpubenchmark.net, for being tremendous resources with their amazing Passmark scoring system. They are the reason you can search for a game and be shown laptops that match that game's requirements.
- pcgamebenchmark.com, for making it easy to find a game's requirements.
- rawg.io, for game popularity lists as well as showing us that it's okay to be compassionate and generous with our gifts.
The Origin Story
My trusty, dusty laptop now acquiring yet another worrying grinding sound inside it's small cracked frame, I realized it's high time to look for a replacement. Unaware of what treacherous door I was about to open however, I quickly and painfully learned that shopping for a new computer is like opening a can of feral worms while hanging upside down in the dark covered in peanut butter.
- Where can I shop that is safe and trustworthy?
- How am I supposed to search across a dozen stores?
- What are all these different specs, and what do they mean?
- Why is every laptop description incredibly unhelpful?
- What's a good deal? Sometimes these store 'sales' were just the normal price somewhere else.
Regardless, I still need a new computer.
So I buckle down and start educating myself on laptops and the laptop market.
After two months (not an exaggeration) of diving into the laptop market, slowly digesting the gargantuan amount of data to consider, poring over reviews and forums, tracking prices in my 20+ tabs, my search ends. At long last, I make a decision and buy a laptop...
...and I can't stand the thing.
It doesn't perform like I want, doesn't look like I want, doesn't feel like I want, has a suspicious and worrying 'harmful chemicals' warning label on it, and I'm utterly filled with regret and despair. Were those two months of research for nothing? I put it back in a box and happily go back to my old, clunky, dying laptop.
How could I spend $1500 bucks on something that I didn't actually want?
I'd fallen into a cognitive bias, making a decision just to make the long exhausting shopping process end, regardless if that was the right choice. And now? Now it's back in a box to be returned, costing both the seller and me time and money. This is a lose-lose situation for both of us and it's not uncommon.
It's not a shopping problem, it's a psychological limit.
The human brain's working memory limit is about 4 things at one time (Cowen 2001). That's it - four chunks. Ever wonder why phone numbers (801-333-4444) are in sets of 3 and 4?
Have you seen the number of variables and specs in a laptop? Take all those, add another laptop's worth of specs, and try to compare them. You're probably at around two dozen variables by now. You cannot handle that alone.
Exceeding our working memory limit, we fall into cognitive bias trying to ease the burden we're not equipped to handle. It's the crux of 'too much to look at, just pick one and go' mentality - and that costs all of us time, money, and stress.
So I built this site.
I built a tool that learns the laptop market for me, and empowers my decision making with data instead of overwhelming it.
- All stores in one spot, so a single search covers all of them.
- Price tracking, so a sale can be spotted easily.
- AI custom model to learn the value of a laptop and determine if it's a deal.
- A breakdown of the components meaning in a laptop with actual context.
- And a lot more.
And I hope it's useful to you too.