The shopping frenzy over Black Friday is over, now we’re back to our regularly scheduled programming – almost. The holidays are approaching fast and if you haven’t picked up a gift yet, for yourself or others, now is a good time.
The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra has settled under $1,000 for the base 256GB model, but due to how the current discounts work out, the upgrade to 512GB is kind of pricey.
Samsung’s other flagship, the Galaxy Z Fold6, has a massive $590 discount right now (again, the discount for the 256GB model is better than that for the 512GB one). There’s still a sizable gap between the slab flagship and the foldable one, but there are no signs of that changing anytime soon.
Moving over to Motorola for some more affordable offerings, the Edge (2024) is 45% off. It has a premium look with a curved OLED display and a vegan leather back, complete with IP68 dust and water resistance. The 50+13MP camera and 5,000mAh battery with 68W/15W charging are pretty good for the mid-range. It’s the Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 that is the only weak spot for the Edge.
If you just want a cheap 5G phone, the Moto G (2024) costs half what the Edge (2024) does. It’s a fairly basic model with a 6.6” HD+ IPS LCD (120Hz), a Snapdragon 4 Gen 1 and a 50MP camera. The battery has the same capacity, 5,000mAh, but supports only slow wired charging (15W).
Like other tech giants, Apple is focusing on AI and re-released the iPad mini with an Apple A17 Pro chipset and more RAM to support the new Apple Intelligence. It also bumped up the base storage to 128GB, reducing the pressure to jump to the pricey 256GB model.
The iPad mini (2024) is pretty much the only high-end mini tablet on the market. The Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 is the smallest in its family, but it is still an 11” slate. With a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, it is perfectly capable of running Galaxy AI features (those that run on the device, of course). If you get the 128GB model, you can expand its storage with a microSD card (we have a couple of suggestions at the bottom).
The Apple Watch Series 10 is a complete redesign – Apple made it thinner, gave it a larger display (the largest yet, in fact), beefed up the speaker, so now you can use it to listen to music or podcasts without a headset, there’s even a depth gauge and water temperature sensor like on the Watch Ultra (but without the Ultra price premium and physical bulk).
Sony refreshed its LinkBuds series with two models simply called Open and Fit. Both cost the same, so it’s a matter of preference. The Open let you hear everything around you as if you’re not wearing headphones, but you can still listen to music, podcasts or whatever without bothering people nearby. The Fit are oriented more towards blocking off the outside world with better noise cancellation.
Finally, a couple of microSD cards for those who can still make use of them. The Samsung Pro Plus and Evo Select are both rated A2 (that is for random access, making it suitable to install apps on) and U3 V30 (sequential write speeds). The difference between the two is that the Pro Plus offers faster transfer speeds, while the Evo Select gets you more storage for less money.
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