The AirPods Pro drop back to an all-time low, plus the rest of this week’s best tech deals
This week, the biggest event in tech took place in Seoul with
Samsung
‘s Unpacked showcase. Among other announcements, the company officially unveiled its latest foldable smartphone, the
Galaxy Z Fold 5
. It’s not even available yet, but
Amazon
is offering a $200 gift card if you pre-order from its site. This week also saw a bunch of continued video game sales from sites like
Xbox
,
Playstation
and
Epic Games
. Other site-wide sales include 20 percent off at
Otterbox
and a sale on music equipment at
Reverb
. Plenty of single items are seeing discounts as well, like the always popular
Apple
AirPods Pro
and the
Kids Kindle
(which isn’t just for kids). Dell is offering a $50 discount on the
Xbox Series X
, though we don’t expect that deal to stick around long. Here are the best tech deals from this week that you can still get today.
Apple AirPods Pro
The latest generation
AirPods Pro
are back to their all-time low price of $199. That’s the same as they went for during Amazon’s Prime Day. The buds have one of the best transparency modes of all the buds we’ve tried, and we think they’re the best pick for people who use iPhones. They pair quickly with other Apple devices and make great use of Siri for hands-free commands. A good battery life and a wireless charging case are just two more points in the buds’ favor.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5
Earlier this week, Samsung announced its latest flagship foldable smartphone, the
Galaxy Z Fold 5
during its Unpacked event. The folks at Amazon are hoping you’ll pre-order the handset from them — and are offering a $200 Amazon gift card plus a storage upgrade if you do so. The base configuration of the Z Fold 5 retails for $1,800, which comes with 256GB of storage. Amazon’s deal gets you the 512GB model plus a physical gift card shipped separately from the phone.
Engadget’s Sam Rutherford spent some time with the new foldable recently. The most notable upgrade from last year’s model is Samsung’s new Flex Hinge, which eliminates most of the gap between the two screen halves when folded. A second-generation Snapdragon 8 chip and support for new gestures round out the new features.
Samsung Galaxy Watch 6
Samsung also revealed two new wearables during Unpacked. If you pre-order the
Galaxy Watch 6
from Amazon, the company will throw in a $50 Amazon gift card. The offer only applies to the Bluetooth models, not the LTE or Watch 6 Classic variants. To help you take advantage of Samsung’s new one-click mechanism, Amazon will also include a fabric band to swap out with the included strap.
The watch starts at $300 for the 40mm case size and bumps to $330 for the 44mm size. Engadget’s Cherlynn Low had a chance to check out the watch during a hands on event and you can check out her thoughts here. This latest generation has a sharper and brighter display and has an updated processor and larger battery that offers a claimed eight hours of use after just eight minutes of charging.
Kindle Kids
The
Kindle Kids
ereader is a top pick in our guide to educational toys for kids. Though, to be fair, this isn’t a toy. The internal tech is identical to a standard Kindle, with a 300 ppi screen, adjustable front light, 16GB of storage and weeks of battery life. But the kids version throws in a colorful case and includes a year of Amazon Kids+, a subscription that grants access to thousands of kid-appropriate books and hundreds of audiobooks. It usually goes for $120, which is $20 more than the standard Kindle, but the sale is knocking it down to just $80, making it a good buy for a kid or even a full-grown adult who enjoys saving money.
Xbox Series X
It’s been tough to find the new Xbox console in stock, let alone at a discount, but right now the
Xbox Series X
is $50 off at Dell. It comes in a bundle with a copy of the open-world racing game
Forza Horizon 5
for a total of $450. The game usually retails for $45 on its own. Dell did this discount before, but didn’t offer a game. Even if you don’t care about racing, this may be a good time to buy, considering the Xbox Series X console (or its cheaper, digital-only
Series S
sibling) will be a required purchase for the upcoming Bethesda game
Starfield
,
unless you plan to play on a PC. This deal has already gone out of stock once, so you may want to jump now if you’re interested.
Otterbox Back to School sale
We often recommend products from
Otterbox
in our guides and from now through July 29th, the site is running a site-wide, 20 percent off sale. One of their battery banks, the
Fast Charge
, is among our top picks in our portable battery guide. The 15,000mAh capacity model usually goes for $45, but is $36 after the discount. The bank packs enough charge to fill a late-model iPhone or a Galaxy S-series twice, with a little left over. It also recharges quickly and looks nice, something not all charging accessories manage to do.
We recommend Apple’s
AirTag Bluetooth trackers
to iPhone users in our guide to those devices. Right now a four-pack is down to $85 at Amazon, which is the lowest price we’ve tracked. Of all the finding networks out there, Apple’s FindMy is by far the most comprehensive as it uses every iPhone in an area (unless the owner has opted out) to ping nearby AirTags and help find them when they’re lost. They’ll also ring when you tap a button in the app so you can find your lost keys.
Apple Pencil
If you have a recent model of an iPad Air, Mini or Pro and have been considering adding a stylus to your setup, you may want to consider grabbing the
second-gen Apple Pencil
while its on sale for $89. The 23 percent discount is the steepest discount so far, matching the Prime Day sale price. But now you can get it from Walmart or target as well as from Amazon. The Pencil makes drawing and hand-writing on your tablet easier and it even magnetically attaches and charges to the side of compatible devices. Just note that the current generation standard iPad curiously only pairs with the first-gen Apple Pencil.
Xbox’s Ultimate Game Sale
Video game companies and retailers often celebrate the summer months with some sort of sale on popular titles — maybe because gaming indoors
beats
heat-fusing to the pavement outside. Right now
Xbox
is hosting an Ultimate Game Sale with deals up to 80 percent off. Not all of the discounts are best-ever prices, and the steepest savings are typically reserved for older titles, but a decent selection of games we like are on sale right now, such as
Halo: The Master Chief Collection
($10 off),
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
($17 off) and
Elden Ring
($18 off)
.
Some of our recommended Xbox exclusives are going for less than $10, including
Gears 5
,
Ori and the Will of the Wisps
and
Rare Replay
. Of course, many sale items are also available with an Xbox Game Pass subscription, so if you already subscribe, check that availability first.
PlayStation Summer Sale
PlayStation’s Summer Sale
is discounting exclusives like
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
($40 off) and
Horizon Forbidden West
($30 off). The PS5 remake of the original
The Last of Us
is on sale for $50, while the
well-reviewed
puzzler
Humanity
is $24. Non-PS exclusives are also on sale, like the time-bending FPS
Deathloop
($15), the sci-fi RPG
Cyberpunk 2077
($25) and one of our favorite co-ops,
It Takes Two
($16).
Epic Games Store Summer Sale
If you don’t play on a console, you can still save on some good PC titles with the sale at
Epic Games
.
Red Dead Redemption 2
is down to $20, for one, while the remasters
Mass Effect Legendary Edition
and
Tony
Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2
are available for $15 and $16, respectively. Elsewhere, the action-game-meets-delivery-sim
Death Stranding: Director’s Cut
is on sale for $20, and
Dead Island 2
, the zombie action-RPG that was released in April, is available for $45.
Outside of Epic’s sale, two more of our favorite games from 2022 are discounted. Nintendo has the fast-paced first-person shooter (but with cards for weapons)
Neon White
for 30 percent off and the rollerblading, ’70s drenched shooter,
Rollerdrome
is half price at Steam.
Reverb Summer of Savings
The music equipment marketplace Reverb is also having a summer sale right now, with discounts on instruments and music production gadgets site-wide. A few deals worth calling out include the
Novation Summit
synth for $460 off of $2,300 and
Universal Audio’s Volt 276
studio pack for $130 off of $429. That brings the studio pack down to $299, which is the usual price of the interface on its own, which means you’re getting the included Volt condenser mic and Volt headphones for free.
The Volt 276 is one of our top picks in our audio interface guide and we gave it a 90 in our review. Engadget’s Terrance O’Brian appreciates its all-analog emulation of “one of the most iconic compressors of all time” and said most other interfaces at this price point can’t match the 276’s stylish and ergonomic design.
Samsung PRO Plus microSD
Samsung’s
Pro Plus microSD
card is what we recommend for most people, based on our tests. It offers nearly the best sequential write performance of the cards we tested and bested all cards for for random read/write speeds. Usually $19, the 128GB size is currently down to $12 at Amazon, which nearly matches its Prime Day low. If you’ve got a camera, tablet or gaming handheld that could use more space, this is a good time to grab some extra storage.
Bose SoundLink Flex
One of our top Bluetooth speakers, the
Bose SoundLink Flex
, is down to $129 at Adoramam, Target and directly from Bose right now. That matches the price it hit during Amazon’s recent sale. The Flex is compact, but manages to give bright, dynamic sound and offers a surprising amount of bass for its size. It plays for 12 hours on a charge and can even pair with other Bose speakers for stereo sound.
Kasa Matter Smart Plug
A few different Kasa smart plugs are currently
on sale at Amazon
, including the
Kasa KP125M
, which is our pick for a Matter-enabled plug in our
guide to smart plugs
. Usually $40 for a two-pack, the sale drops it to $30 after a discount and a clickable coupon. Matter connectivity means it’ll work with Alexa, Apple HomeKit, Samsung SmartThings and
Google
Home, so whichever voice assistant you prefer should be supported. In our tests it paired easily (though required a few extra steps for Apple’s system) and stayed reliably connected.
The
Kasa EP25
plug is our top pick overall and also connects to all four major smart home eco systems. It’s currently $38 for a four-pack after a 24 percent discount.
Apple MacBook Air M1
The lowest price on a MacBook in Apple’s current lineup is on the 2020
MacBook Air with the M1 chip
, which is down to just $750 at both Amazon and at
Best Buy
for the 256GB base model. That matches the lowest price we’ve seen, including what it went for during Amazon’s Prime Day. It’s the budget pick in our MacBook buyer’s guide, and the one we recommend to students or anyone who needs a reliable machine for casual computing. It earned a high score of 94 in our review in part thanks to the performance of the M1 chip, which is responsive, launching and running apps effortlessly while conserving the battery life.
Apple MacBook Air M2
If you want the newer
M2 chip in your MacBook Air
, you can grab the base model of that machine from B&H Photo for $999. That matches the lowest price we’ve tracked for the 256GB base model and $100 savings. We gave the ultraportable an impressive 96 in our review, calling it a “near-perfect Mac.” It has a Liquid Retina display, a quad speaker array and a battery that lasted over 16 hours in our video tests. For ports, you get two Thunderbolt ports, a headphone jack and a MagSafe charging port.
Samsung Smart Monitor M8
Samsung’s 32-inch
M8 Smart Monitor
is part computer monitor and part smart TV, meaning it can do everything a monitor can do when hooked up to a PC, but you may never need to do that. All on its own, it can stream Netflix, Disney+, Peacock and other services just by connecting to your WiFi. The included Microsoft 365 programs means you can compose and edit docs, browse the web and build some Excel sheets with no additional computer required. It can also act as your smart home display to control your smart devices and keep tabs on your connected cams and doorbells.
This is a refreshed version of the M8 that Samsung launched at CES in 2022 and right now it’s $100 off at Amazon, making it $600 instead of $700.
Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II
We think the
Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II
offer the best noise cancellation you can buy and recommend them in our guide. The buds are back down to $249 at both
Amazon
and directly from
Bose
. That’s a price they’ve hit many times before, but matches their all time low. Just remember that they don’t offer wireless charging and don’t have multipoint connectivity, meaning you can only pair with one device at a time.
Powerbeats Pro
We named the
Powerbeats Pro
the most comfortable option in our guide to workout headphones. The controls are intuitive, iOS integration is great and the comfortable, behind-the-ear hooks are easy to get in place and stay put (though they can interfere with sunglasses). We gave them an Engadget score of 86 when they came out in 2019. They’re a little older at this point and the over-ear design doesn’t block out any noise but they’re currently $90 off the MSRP, which is around $40 less than what they’ve been going for lately and matches their Prime Day sale price on Amazon.
Headspace
We’ve recommended
Headspace
a few times in our guides because it’s an intuitive app that can actually help you relax. If you take a minute out of your day and cue up a breathing exercise or guided meditation you may very well find that your shoulders release back down from up around your ears. Right now a year-long subscription is 30 percent off, making it $49 instead of $70. There’s far more content than any typical person will get through and new sessions are added continuously.
TP-Link Deco AXE5400 Tri-Band WiFi 6E Mesh System
If your WiFi connectivity could use a boost, it may be time to invest in an mesh router system. The top pick from our guide,
TP-Link’s Deco XE75
, is currently down to $330 for the three-pack instead of its usual $400. That’s not quite an all time low, as it went for $10 less during last year’s Black Friday deals and the most recent Prime Day sale, but is still a tidy discount. The set will cover up to 7,200 square feet but if you don’t need that much coverage, the
single
unit and
two-unit
packs are also on sale, though aren’t as steeply discounted. We like the Deco XE75 because the WiFi 6E routers support all three wireless bands (including the 6GHz band) and offers a great mix of power, user-friendliness and affordability — particularly when it’s discounted. You can read our full review here.
iRobot Roomba s9+
Our top pick for a premium robot vacuum, the
iRobot Roomba s9+
, has returned to it’s record low of $600 at Amazon. That’s a 40 percent discount and matches the sale price from Prime Day. Engadget’s Valentina Palladino found it to be a powerful machine that was better than most at navigating around furniture and other objects and despite having excellent suction, it actually moves faster than its cheaper sibling, the j7. It also looks pretty premium, with its copper accents and sleek design. The self-emptying base means less involvement from you and the setup only takes a few minutes so it can quickly get to work making your floors cleaner.
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