I dived down the rabbit hole of trying to replace my laptop affordably and decently... I was wondering, what kinds of discounts do enrolled students get on laptops? (I'm not enrolled yet, but come 14th I expect to be.)
Idk what the deals are atm but I got my surface pro (inc keyboard - usually a surface go/pro wouldn't come with one) for about $600 iirc from the microsoft online shop using a student discount. The model I got doesn't have much memory so a couple years later I've ended up getting a cheap HHD but being able to handwrite notes has been amazing, especially for maths and chem units. Before that, I didn't have a laptop that would survive 5 seconds off charge and it was hard to study/work with friends since I was always tied down by needing to find a computer (to access lecture slides, get assignment info, write up assignments etc.)
I know this is getting kind of tangential to your question but: if you already have a laptop you can use for uni, you can probably hold off until end of financial year sales to really bargain hunt and have a sem of experience and talking to other students to see what they find useful. Otherwise, you don't have any device you can use like that & you're in a position where you can get a laptop early in your degree I would recommend that.
Hope this helps!