I Found the Best Memorial Day Desktop Deals — Save Hundreds on These PCs

Memorial Day desktop deals have landed hard this year, and Cesar Cadenas, a staff writer at ZDNET, spent the weekend sifting through online promotions so the rest of us do not have to. On May 24, 2026, he published a tight roundup of six machines worth a serious look, spanning refurbished iMacs, all-in-ones for home offices, compact towers, and at least one gaming rig that costs as much as a used car. The discounts are steep and the timing is right. Memorial Day weekend has quietly become one of the biggest shopping events of the year, right up there with Black Friday for electronics.

The problem with events like these, as Cadenas points out, is not a lack of deals. It is the opposite. There are so many options that picking one can feel paralyzing. Do you buy a new iMac? A discounted Lenovo tower? A refurbished machine that is technically used but hundreds of dollars cheaper? The noise is real. His list cuts through it.

A Crop of Deals Worth Your Time

These are genuine cuts. The team uses established price comparison tools and trackers, digs through customer reviews, and leans on hands-on testing throughout the year, and every desktop on this list cleared that bar. ZDNET only writes about deals its own experts would recommend to friends and family. And they're not the fake kind where a retailer inflates the original price to make the savings look bigger; they're mostly in the 15 to 26 percent range, with a couple reaching much deeper.

Here is the part the press release skipped. One of the best Memorial Day desktop deals is not new at all.

The iMac That Rarely Goes on Sale

Apple M4 in Refurbished Form

The Apple iMac M4, refurbished, sits at $1,500 at Best Buy. That is $399 off the original $1,899 price tag, a 21 percent discount. Finding a new M4 iMac on sale is genuinely hard. Cadenas writes, "They rarely do." So a refurbished unit in every color becomes the smart play for anyone who wants Apple's latest silicon without paying full freight.

"1.3 times faster at handling productivity tasks than the M3, and up to 2.1 times faster than the M1."

That claim comes from Apple itself. The M4 chip also supports Apple Intelligence, the company's generative AI features, including automatic proofreading. Each model includes a 24-inch 4.5K Retina display. For anyone doing 4K video work or just keeping too many browser tabs open, the performance holds up.

But there is a catch. The iMac is refurbished. And here is why that might not matter. Best Buy is selling these units in every color, and the savings are real. If you can live without a sealed box, you pocket nearly four hundred dollars. That money buys a lot of accessories.

All-in-One Contenders

Dell and Lenovo Bring Screens

Two all-in-one machines made the shortlist. For people who want a clean desk and a big display without a separate tower, the Dell 24 AiO (2025) is the entry-level pick at $950, and that's a 15 percent drop from $1,120. It runs a 13th-Gen Intel Core i5-1334U processor, 16GB of DDR5 RAM, and a 512GB SSD. Cadenas says it's well-suited for casual web browsing, office work, video streaming, school assignments, and more. So it provides a full range of ports and takes up little space.

It's the premium alternative. And at $1,730, the Lenovo Yoga AiO 32i saves buyers $570 off the $2,300 original price. The 32-inch 4K Ultra HD screen with 495 nits peak brightness and 97 percent DCI-P3 color gamut coverage is described by Cadenas as, "Colors practically leap out, and images are shown in crystal clear detail." Harmon Kardon speakers and Dolby Atmos support round out the media experience. So this machine pulls double duty as a workhorse and an entertainment hub.

Towers: Compact to Colossal

HP and Lenovo for Everyday Work

It's priced at $860 with savings of $560, and it runs an Intel Core Ultra 7 265 processor, 16GB of DDR5 RAM, and a 1TB SSD. It supports Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, and video output to up to four external screens. One detail worth pausing on is the dark wood trim across the front panel, and Cadenas notes it gives the machine 'a unique aesthetic that allows it to naturally blend into home offices.' Most desktops in this price range look like black boxes. But this one doesn't.

$680 gets you the Lenovo IdeaCentre Tower 8, down from $850. That is a 20 percent discount. It measures just 3.5 by 11.47 by 13.37 inches and weighs a little over 9 pounds. Customer reviews on Best Buy, according to the piece, praise its compact size and low noise levels. Inside, an AMD Ryzen 7 2500U processor, 16GB of DDR5 RAM, integrated AMD Radeon 780M graphics, and a 1TB SSD handle office work and light content creation. Lenovo throws in a free keyboard and mouse.

HP Omen 45L for Gamers

And this is where it gets interesting for gamers. The HP Omen 45L sits at $2,200, a 26 percent cut from $3,000. That is an $800 discount. The machine pairs an Intel Core Ultra 7 265K processor with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 graphics card and 16GB of DDR5-6000 RAM. Cadenas says it has "enough power to run games at their highest resolution possible and handle heavy creative workloads." A liquid-cooled radiator pulls in cool air from outside to keep internal temperatures down during long gaming sessions.

Before You Click Buy

Memorial Day's Monday, May 25. But this year deals started before the long weekend and will likely linger through it, while the six machines above are a curated slice of a much larger sales event that ZDNET also covered with roundups for TVs, SSDs, Apple products, laptops, phones, and outdoor gear.

Some quick takeaways for anyone browsing Memorial Day desktop deals this weekend:

• Look for discounts of at least 20 percent. Most of the machines on this list hit that threshold.
• Refurbished does not mean compromised. The iMac M4 deal proves that sometimes the best value sits in the open-box section.
• Match the machine to the work. Towers like the IdeaCentre and OmniDesk excel at productivity. The Omen 45L is purpose-built for gaming. All-in-ones split the difference for media and office tasks.
• Check what is included. Lenovo bundles a keyboard and mouse with the IdeaCentre Tower 8. Not every deal does that.

These aren't doorbuster gimmicks. The numbers tell a different story than the usual holiday hype. But Cadenas and the ZDNET team built this list by checking price trackers, reading customer reviews, and applying their own testing experience. The result is a short, honest roundup of Memorial Day desktop deals that actually deliver on the promised savings, and if a new computer has been on your list, the window's open.