Apple’s annual Back to School Beats promotion is back, allowing you to pick up a free pair of Beats headphones with the purchase of any iPad Air, iPad Pro, or Mac. While the promo applies to both the Solo 3 and BeatsX headphones like last year, new this year is the capability to apply the $199 credit to the high-end Studio 3 wireless headphones.
The Solo 3 and Beats X are free after the credit, and the Studio 3’s are $150. While none of Apple’s hardware is on sale for the back-to-school season, you’ll be able to purchase your hardware through the company’s education store in order to take advantage of the promotion.
Doing so lets you take up to $200 off, which comes to a savings of roughly 5-10% off retail depending on what you buy. The only exception in this sale is the Mac Mini, any other Mac will qualify. The announcement of the sale comes at the same time as a surprise update to both its MacBook Pro and Air product lines.
The biggest changes there is the addition of the Touch Bar on the entry level Pro – $1,199 with your education discount — and the addition of the 8th-Generation Intel processor found throughout the rest of the line. The MacBook Air starts at $999 with the education discount. Both models are available for shipping immediately from Apple’s website.
If you’re wondering if the new MacBook is worth it, we’ve reviewed the higher-end MacBook Pros earlier this year. At that point, you had to spend $500 more to get the better processor and Touch Bar, which we considered a bit steep for a Core i5 processor. This week’s changes bring the MacBook Pro more in line with competitors, and for many the computer will be sufficiently powerful for a wide variety of tasks.
We’d also opt for the MacBook Pro over the Air due to the Pro’s vastly superior specs, unless you’re looking for a small, thin, and lightweight laptop for more general tasks. But of course, this all comes down to personal preference.
Looking for more Apple deals? We’ve found iPad deals, MacBook deals, and Apple Watch deals ahead of Prime Day 2019.
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