HP's Black Friday sale has a £499 mega-deal on the 14-inch OmniBook 3

While Black Friday is another fortnight away, almost all retailers and brand shops have rolled out their official sales – including HP, which has some stellar deals on a number of laptops.

If you're looking for a cost-effective purchase with a big discount, then an obvious option is the HP OmniBook 3 – a 14-inch Windows laptop with plenty of storage and Qualcomm's Snapdragon X chipset keeping things running smoothly.

Check out the HP OmniBook 3 deal on HP's Store

HP has pushed the deal out beyond its own store, should you prefer to shop at Currys, for example, both of which beat the Argos and Amazon price by quite a margin. It's a big discount for a great little laptop workhorse.

While the OmniBook 3 already made a strong case for itself in the sub-£1000 category, this near-40% cut in price brings it into the sub-£500 category.

That's a major part of the appeal, of course, but you're not getting a sub-par product as a result. The Snapdragon X processor was Qualcomm's first Oryon-based chip that can run Windows and its programmes without a hitch.

The chip is also designed with power-saving in mind, so you'll get excellent battery life – at around 14 hours per charge. Ideal for working on the go, or if you just want to stream lots of shows. It's a win-win.

The PC space has become somewhat confusing in recent years, as there are abundant chip options – from Intel, AMD, Qualcomm and more – that might have you scratching your head.

The Snapdragon X inside this HP is the first-generation version, rather than the more recent X2, but it still runs splendidly – here's an explainer about what Snapdragon X Elite is and its pros and cons versus other options.

In the era of Googlebooks – all 5 launch models which we got to sample – with £1,000+ asking prices and a software experience that can't (yet) touch what Windows has to offer, the current landscape makes this HP deal shine all the more.

Sure, the best laptops do cost a pretty penny, but a lot of that comes down to materials and the build quality – yet even this HP uses recycled aluminium for a quality finish. It's got a whole lot going for it – and looks like a Black Friday mega-deal ahead of the day proper.

Mike is T3's Tech Editor. He's been writing about consumer technology for 18 years and his beat covers phones – of which he's seen hundreds of handsets over the years – laptops, gaming, TV & audio, and more. There's little consumer tech he's not had a hand at trying, and with extensive commissioning and editing experience, he knows the industry inside out. As the former Reviews Editor at Pocket-lint for 10 years where he furthered his knowledge and expertise, whilst writing about literally thousands of products, he's also provided work for publications such as Wired, The Guardian, Metro, and more.