Kalakshar US

The OnePlus 11 is launching globally on February 7th, but the flagship smartphone will actually make debut in China earlier on January 4th, OnePlus announced. The company has also announced pretty much all the specs, including the processor, RAM and storage, showing it’ll be right up there with other high-end smartphones. 

The OnePlus 11 will be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip, already announced with recent Xiaomi and Vivo phones. That chip promises not just the usual speed improvements, but upgrades to AI, camera features, 5G speeds and graphics, including ray tracing support. 

You’ll get 12 or 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM, along with up 512GB of UFS 4.0 storage, and it should have OnePlus’s Color 13 version of Android 13 right out of the box. Full camera specs have yet to be released, but we’re seeing three cameras on a circular module with Hasselblad branding front and center. 

Along with the smartphone (shown in green and black colors), OnePlus is expected to unveil the Buds Pro 2 and TWS earbuds on January 4th, and also internationally in February. We should learn all the details (perhaps apart from international pricing) at the event on January 4th, though you’ll have to pay close attention with CES 2023 going on at the same time.  

 

Shortly after Windows 11 arrived, Microsoft made some key improvements in the Notepad app that hasn’t seen much change since the Windows 95 days. Now, it may be introducing an even bigger feature, judging by a leak from a senior Microsoft product manager spotted by The Verge. “Notepad in Windows 11 now has tabs!” the person said on Twitter, before the tweet was deleted several minutes later. 

The screenshot included in the tweet shows two tabs, along with a note “confidential, don’t discuss features or take screenshots.” That warning clearly failed to do the job, but the screenshot indicates that tabs are in testing and may arrive to Windows Insiders sometime down the road.

Given how much we all depend on tabs in web browsers, it’s hard to believe they’re not more ubiquitous on other apps. Microsoft added that feature to File Explorer on Windows 11 earlier this year, helping reduce the sprawl across screens when you’re searching or copying files. The company did test tabs for Windows 10 apps some years ago, but essentially abandoned that project.

Notepad is an old app, to say the least, having arrived in 1983 to help Microsoft sell people on using a mouse in MS-DOS. Considering it’s largely the same plain text editor it was two decades ago, it’s amazing it’s still used as much as it is. If you’re using Notepad so much that you need tabs, my hat’s off to you — but the feature is just a rumor until we see it released into the wild. 

 

The Federal Trade Commission has ordered Mastercard to start providing competing payment networks with the information they need to process debit card payments. In a proposed enforcement action announced on Friday, the FTC said Mastercard had allegedly violated a provision of the Dodd-Frank act known as the Durbin Amendment by prohibiting merchants from routing transactions over alternative networks.

The action targets “tokenization,” the technology that underpins mobile payment applications like Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay. When you go to make a debit or credit card purchase with your phone’s mobile wallet, the software substitutes sensitive information, including the primary number associated with your account, with a separate set of single-use “tokens.” Mastercard and Visa say the practice prevents fraud since tokens contain no exploitable information when they’re in transit. It’s only when they arrive at Mastercard or Visa’s servers, and they’re mapped back to their original account holder, that they point to someone.

According to the FTC, Mastercard has historically stopped competing networks from accessing its token vault. That means whenever consumers decided to pay with a mobile wallet, merchants had to route the transactions over Mastercard (or Visa) and pay the company’s transactions fees, which are typically higher than that of its competitors. The Durbin Amendment calls for banks to support two competing payment networks on all debit cards. It was a provision Congress introduced to promote competition among networks. The FTC didn’t say if it reached a similar agreement with Visa.

“While we are taking these steps to bring this matter to a close, there should be no question that tokenized transactions provide an increased level of protection to both consumers and merchants,” Mastercard spokesperson Seth Eisen told Bloomberg. “This focus on security guides our efforts in a highly competitive market and provides the incentive for us to continue investing in innovations that promote the peace of mind every person expects.” Eisen added Mastercard would “continue to work to update our processes to comply with the consent order and provide even greater choice.”

The FTC plans to collect comments from the public before voting to finalize the order against Mastercard.

 

Twitter says it’s working on bringing back the #ThereIsHelp banner, a feature that pointed users to suicide prevention hotlines and other safety resources when searching for certain content. On Friday, Reuters reported that the company had removed the safety tool earlier in the week on orders from Elon Musk.

After the outlet published its story, Ella Irwin, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, confirmed the removal but said it was temporary. “We have been fixing and revamping our prompts. They were just temporarily removed while we do that,” she told Reuters. “We expect to have them back up next week.”

On Saturday morning, Musk denied Twitter had ever removed the feature. “The message is actually still up. This is fake news,” Musk wrote on Twitter, adding, “Twitter doesn’t prevent suicide.” When Engadget tired searching for terms like “suicide” and “COVID-19” on Saturday afternoon, the banner did not appear.

Moving forward, Irwin told Reuters Twitter plans to adopt an approach used by Google. She said the company “does really well with these in their search results and [we] are actually mirroring some of their approach with the changes we are making.”

The disappearance of the #ThereIsHelp banner, even if it was only momentary, led to criticism of Twitter from some consumer safety advocates. Eirliani Abdul Rahman, a former member of the company’s recently dissolved Trust and Safety council, told Reuters she found the event “extremely disconcerting and profoundly disturbing.” Rahman also pointed out companies typically work on safety features “in parallel,” leaving existing ones in place before replacing them.

In the US, you can reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by dialing 988 or 800-273-8255.

 

Apple has stopped rolling out an optional Home app upgrade after users began reporting issues with the software. “We temporarily removed the option to upgrade to the new Home architecture,” the company says on a support page spotted by MacRumors. “The option to upgrade will return soon. If you already upgraded, you are unaffected by this change.”

Released as a part of iOS 16.2 and macOS Ventura 13.1 on December 13th, the recalled update was an upgrade to HomeKit’s underlying architecture. Apple said the rewrite would make the platform “more reliable and efficient.” However, some of those who installed the software quickly encountered issues, including select Siri terms not working correctly and their smart home devices not showing up within the Home app. MacRumors was one of the first publications to spot that Apple had removed the option to install the upgrade. The company later confirmed the move after The Verge contacted it.

“We are aware of an issue that may impact the ability for users to share the Home within the Home app. A fix will be available soon,” an Apple spokesperson told the outlet. “In the meantime, we’ve temporarily removed the option to upgrade to the new Home architecture. Users who have already upgraded will not be impacted.” If you’ve already installed the new architecture, you’ll need to wait for Apple to release a fix for the software; there’s no option to revert to the older framework.

 

Once again, AMD is ready to take on NVIDIA’s latest video cards with powerful alternatives at a lower price. And once again, AMD still lags behind when it comes to ray tracing. That’s pretty much the story behind the Radeon RX 7900 XT and 7900 XTX, two confusingly-named GPUs meant to be the pinnacle of AMD’s new RDNA 3 graphics architecture. At $899 and $999, respectively, these cards are certainly easier to stomach than NVIDIA’s $1,199 RTX 4080 and the monstrously expensive $1,599 RTX 4090 (both of which actually sell for far more at most stores).

For the most part, AMD’s new cards deliver solid 4K gaming performance, especially with the help of the company’s FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) upscaling technology. It’s just a shame that you’ll have to live with slower ray tracing performance than the competition. (On the bright side, they offer a major ray tracing upgrade over AMD’s last batch of Radeon GPUs.)

So what makes these cards so special? They’re the first GPU’s built on a chiplet-based design, similar to AMD’s latest CPUs. That should allow AMD to tweak its designs easily down the line, making it simpler to scale RDNA 3 down to laptops and lower-end GPUs. The 7900 XTX and XT feature a 5nm compute die and a 6nm memory die connected by a 5.3 TB/s interconnect. Together, that means they can reach up to 61 teraflops of computing power and utilize up to 24GB of GDDR6 RAM.

AMD also claims it beefed up ray tracing performance by 50 percent per compute unit, compared to its previous RDNA 2 architecture. Its video engine has been upgraded with support for AV1 encoding and decoding at up to 8K/60fps. That format isn’t widely adopted yet, but it aims to deliver better video compression for 4K and 8K footage compared to existing codecs like H.264.

True to their names, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and XT aren’t very different. The top-end XTX sports 96 compute units, the same amount of ray accelerators and clock speeds between 2.3Ghz and 2.5GHz. The XT, meanwhile, offers 84 compute and ray tracing units and clocks between 2GHz and 2.4GHz. The higher end card comes equipped with 24GB of GDDR6 RAM, compared to 20GB on the XT. (Notably, they both offer more memory than the 16GB RTX 4080.) 

Given their similarities though, it’s unclear why anyone would opt to save $100 for the 7900 XT. If you’re willing to spend close to $1,000 on a video card, you might as well go full-tilt and grab as much memory and power as you can. It would have been nice to see something slightly cheaper from AMD, even if it meant delivering a card that’s a bit slower than the 7900 XT.

The reference GPUs we’re reviewing look and feel like premium components, as we’ve come to expect from AMD’s flagship cards. Most importantly, though, they only take up two slots on your motherboard, whereas the enormous RTX 4080 and 4090 take up three. The 7900 XT and XTX also rely on two 8-pin power connections, so you won’t need to string any new PSU cables or cram in a dongle like with NVIDIA’s cards. The 7900 XTX requires an 850-watt power supply, thanks to its starting power draw of 355W, while the XT model can work with a 750W PSU. Both cards hovered around 66C under load, which was right between what we saw on the RTX 4080 and 4090.

While I was eager to see how these new GPUs compared to NVIDIAs, I had to go through several rounds of driver and motherboard BIOS updates on my Ryzen 9 7900X before both cards were stable enough to actually use. That’s something I occasionally run into when testing cutting-edge hardware (NVIDIA’s cards also required a BIOS update), but there were still issues with AMD’s cards even after that. Halo Infinite, for example, refused to launch matches with either card. Sometimes my PC would completely shut down while testing Cyberpunk 2077, which required me to unplug my desktop and reset my BIOS before Windows would boot again.

I’ve been benching AMD and NVIDIA video cards on this PC, equipped with a premium Corsair 1000W PSU, for the past several months without any stability issues. So it was a surprise to see just how much havoc these GPUs could wreak. I haven’t seen other reviews complaining of similar issues, so I’ll chalk up my experience to early drivers. AMD just released a new driver that resolves an issue of high power draw during video encoding, so I’m hoping the company is also trying to address the bugs I’m seeing.

None

3DMark TimeSpy Extreme

Port Royal (Ray Tracing)

Cyberpunk

Blender

AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX

12,969

14,696/68fps

4K FSR RT: 57fps

2,899

AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT

11,688

13,247/61fps

4K FSRT RT: 50fps

3,516

NVIDIA RTX 4080

12,879

17,780/82fps

4K DLSS RT: 74fps

9,310

NVIDIA RTX 4090

16,464

25,405/117.62 fps

4K DLSS RT: 135fps

12,335

AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT

7,713

9,104/42.15fps

N/A

N/A

When the cards ran smoothly, they proved to be fairly competitive with the RTX 4080. The 7900 XTX was on-par with the 4080 when it came to 3DMark’s TimeSpy Extreme benchmark and Geekbench 5’s Compute test. The 7900 XT scored 1,000 points lower on TimeSpy Extreme, which was 3,000 points higher than last year’s RTX 3080 Ti, but it was bested by that NVIDIA card when it came to Geekbench. Hitman 3 also ran blazingly fast on both cards in 4K, reaching 165fps and 180fps when I flipped on FSR upscaling. Much like NVIDIA’s cards, there’s little reason to run any game in 4K without the help of advanced upscaling tech.

The performance gulf between AMD and NVIDIA appeared once I started dabbling with ray tracing. The 7900 XTX and XT scored well below the RTX 4080 in the 3DMark Port Royal benchmark (at least they managed to beat the 3080 Ti). I also only saw around 57fps in Cyberpunk 2077 on the Radeon 7900 XTX while playing in 4K with full ray tracing and AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution technology. Without FSR, that frame rate dipped to an unplayable 25fps. The slower 7900 XT only managed to hit 50fps in 4K with FSR and ray tracing enabled.

Basically, if you’re eager to get a video card that reaches well above 60fps in 4K with ray tracing, you’ll have to look elsewhere. But if you can live with 1,440p, you’ll find more to like: The 7900 XTX reached 130fps in Cyberpunk with ray tracing, FSR and graphics settings maxed, while the 7900 XT hit 114fps. That’s almost enough to max out a 120Hz gaming monitor! Personally, I still find 4K gaming to be overrated — 1,440p still looks great, and you may never notice the benefits of pushing more pixels. But I’ll admit that I’ve been spoiled by NVIDIA’s DLSS3 upscaling technology, which allowed me to hit 74fps in Cyberpunk while playing in 4K with ray tracing. That’s as close to gaming heaven as I’ve ever been.

But there’s one thing you’ll find with these AMD GPUs that you won’t with NVIDIA’s: Reasonable street prices. Even after their launch, you can still snag the 7900XT and XTX close to retail. Many RTX 4080 models, meanwhile, are inching towards $1,500 at online retailers (assuming you can find them in stock at all). Spending close to $1,000 on a video card is still hard to stomach, but at least it makes more sense than going all the way to $1,500.

The Radeon RX 7900 XTX and XT are a solid step forward for AMD, especially when it comes to 4K gaming. But I’m hoping the company can get its driver situation in order, and perhaps eke out better ray tracing performance in the process. Most gamers are still better off waiting for AMD and NVIDIA’s next-gen mid-range cards, which are sure to be launching soon. But if you’re an avowed AMD fan, you’ve finally got the high-end upgrade you’ve been waiting for.

 

After a long delay, Sports Story is now available on Nintendo Switch. Fans of Golf Story have been awaiting the follow-up for quite some time. Sports Story was initially supposed to arrive on the console in 2020, but as has been the case with so many games over the last few years, it was delayed.

Sports Story features many of the same characters as Golf Story. It follows the events of the previous game and it has a similar blend of sports, role-playing and adventuring. You’ll still get to play some golf in this one, and you can partake in tennis, soccer, BMX and (unsurprisingly, given that this is an RPG) fishing. You can also explore dungeons and abandoned ruins or simply hang out at the mall.

Nintendo said last month that Sports Story would arrive sometime in December, and that held true. The company announced the sudden debut of Sidebar Games’ latest title to close out a week of bite-sized indie game updates. Mortal Shell and dreamy puzzle game Melatonin were among the other surprise releases on Switch this week. Nintendo also revealed that a Risk of Rain remake, the charming-looking The Gecko Gods and the absolutely delightful dog photography game Pupperazzi are all coming to the console next year.

 

The iPhone 14 Pro’s A16 Bionic chip uses a similar architecture to the A15 in the iPhone 13 Pro, but that was only Apple’s fallback plan, according to a report from The Information. The company wanted to add a next-generation GPU that supports ray tracing, but the silicon team discovered crucial design mistakes late in development. It allegedly had to scrap its plans and opt for the A16 we got.

The botched plans can reportedly be traced back to Apple’s silicon engineers being “too ambitious with adding new features.” The planned 2022 silicon would have supported ray tracing, the technique that makes light in video games behave as it does in real life. Software simulations had suggested it was feasible, and the company moved forward with prototyping. But test hardware drew more power than the engineers had expected, which would have hurt battery life and overheated the device.

Because Apple caught the mistakes late in development, it had to scrap the plans for this generation and opt instead for the A16 that shipped this fall. (In Apple’s September keynote, rather than puffing up the new chip’s monumental gains, as it typically does, it only briefly mentioned that the GPU had 50 percent more memory bandwidth.) The report’s sources described the screwup as “unprecedented in the group’s history.”

The Information‘s report connects this incident to bigger-picture struggles within the Apple Silicon team. It details the effective but highly demanding leadership under the senior vice president of Hardware Technologies, Johny Srouji. He runs the group “like a well-oiled machine,” but it’s also struggled with the limits of Moore’s law and a talent exodus to startups and rival chip makers. It allegedly lost the most talent to Nuvia, founded by former Apple chip designer Gerard Williams III — a well-liked leader among Apple’s silicon engineers. (Qualcomm bought Nuvia in 2021.) The designer who replaced Williams, Mike Filippo, then “clashed with engineers” before leaving to join Microsoft. Apple hasn’t yet replaced him. Additionally, the company reportedly tried to limit the talent exodus by showing presentations to engineers highlighting the riskiness of working for chip startups, warning that most fail.

 

Microsoft has filed a formal response to a Federal Trade Commission antitrust lawsuit that seeks to block it from buying Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion. It pushed back against the agency’s claims that the takeover would harm competition in the gaming industry. The company argued that consumers would benefit. “The commission cannot meet its burden of showing that the transaction would leave consumers worse off, because the transaction will allow consumers to play Activision’s games on new platforms and access them in new and more affordable ways,” Microsoft wrote.

The FTC asserted earlier this month that, should the deal close, it “would enable Microsoft to suppress competitors to its Xbox gaming consoles and its rapidly growing subscription content and cloud-gaming business.” The agency pointed to Microsoft making some titles from Bethesda (whose parent company ZeniMax it bought last year) exclusive to its own platforms.

In the filing, Microsoft acknowledged that it planned to make three future Bethesda titles exclusive to Xbox and PC. The names of those games were redacted, but Starfield and Redfall will only be available on Xbox, PC and Xbox Cloud Gaming, while the FTC claimed in its complaint that Microsoft plans to make Elder Scrolls VI an exclusive as well.

One of the major sticking points about the deal is the future of Call of Duty. In an attempt to appease regulators, Microsoft has pledged to keep Call of Duty on competitors’ platforms for at least 10 years if the acquisition closes, and to bring the blockbuster franchise to Nintendo consoles. Sony hasn’t taken Microsoft up on that deal, however.

“The acquisition of a single game by the third-place console manufacturer cannot upend a highly competitive industry. That is particularly so when the manufacturer has made clear it will not withhold the game,” Microsoft wrote. “The fact that Xbox’s dominant competitor has thus far refused to accept Xbox’s proposal does not justify blocking a transaction that will benefit consumers.”

Microsoft and Activision Blizzard both claim that keeping Call of Duty away from other platforms wouldn’t make sense. Activision said in its own filing that making the franchise exclusive “would be disastrous for Xbox,” as it would lose billions in game sales and give up “a massive portion of the gamers that Activision has worked so hard to attract and retain.” It added that “in a world with nearly unlimited gaming alternatives, making Call of Duty exclusive is not a plausible outcome.”

Both companies took issue with the FTC, with Microsoft claiming that its procedures are unconstitutional. “The structure of these administrative proceedings, in which the commission both initiates and finally adjudicates the complaint against Microsoft, violates Microsoft’s Fifth Amendment Due Process right to adjudication before a neutral arbiter,” Microsoft said in reference to the agency’s decision to file the complaint in its own administrative court, rather than in a federal one. The company also argued that hearing the case in the FTC’s administrative court “violates Article III of the US Constitution and the separation of powers.”

Activision asserted that by disregarding the supposed benefits to consumers and focusing “on supposed harms to Xbox’s deep-pocketed competitors,” the FTC was straying from the “underlying purpose” of antitrust laws to protect competition instead of competitors. It said the agency was “blinded by ideological skepticism of high-value technology deals and by complaints from competitors” and that it “lost sight of the realities of the intensely competitive gaming industry.”

Nevertheless, Microsoft wants to agree on conditions with the FTC and other regulators that will lead to them rubberstamping the deal. “Even with confidence in our case, we remain committed to creative solutions with regulators that will protect competition, consumers and workers in the tech sector. As we’ve learned from our lawsuits in the past, the door never closes on the opportunity to find an agreement that can benefit everyone,” Microsoft president and vice chair Brad Smith said.

“There is no sensible, legitimate reason for our transaction to be prevented from closing. Our industry has enormous competition and few barriers to entry. We have seen more devices than ever before enabling players a wide range of choices to play games,” Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick said in a statement to Engadget. “Engines and tools are freely available to developers large and small. The breadth of distribution options for games has never been more widespread. We believe we will prevail on the merits of the case.”

The deadline for the acquisition to close is in July. If it hasn’t done so by then, Microsoft and Activision will need to renegotiate the deal or abandon it — Microsoft would then face a breakup fee of as much as $3 billion. As Axios notes, though, the FTC’s antitrust case is set to go before its administrative court on August 2nd. In the meantime, the agency could still seek a preliminary injunction in federal court to stop the deal from closing.

The proposed acquisition is also facing scrutiny from regulators in the UK and the European Union. The jurisdictions’ respective competition agencies are expected to issue rulings on the deal in the first half of 2023.

 

While it’s a bit late for most tech gifts to ship in time for Christmas, there are still many deals going on for those looking to buy something nice for themselves. Apple’s AirPods Pro, for one, are down to an all-time low of $200, while Sony’s WF-1000XM4 earbuds are still at a low of $178. Several recommended gamepads from 8BitDo are on sale, as are various well-regarded OLED TVs from LG. And if you’re a PC gamer, both Steam and the Epic Games Store have kicked off sweeping holiday sales on their respective storefronts. Here are the best tech deals from this week that you can still get today.

Apple AirPods Pro

Apple’s AirPods Pro have dropped back to $200 at multiple retailers, which matches the lowest price we’ve tracked and comes in about $30 below the pair’s usual going rate over the last few months. We gave the AirPods Pro a review score of 88 earlier this year and currently recommend them as the “best for iOS” pick in our guide to the best wireless earbuds. The sound quality and active noise cancellation (ANC) here are among the better options on the market, as is the included transparency mode. Plus, like all AirPods, they offer a host of features that make them particularly convenient to use with other Apple devices. Their call quality and six-ish hours of battery life are just average, however.

Buy AirPods Pro (2nd gen) at Amazon – $200

Sony WF-1000XM4

If you don’t own an iPhone, the top overall pick in our best wireless earbuds guide is Sony’s WF-1000XM4, which is also on sale for $178, matching the lowest price we’ve seen. We gave this pair a review score of 86 last year, praising its upper-tier ANC, solid yet customizable sound quality, 8- to 10-hour battery life and array of useful bonus features. The earpieces here are on the bulkier side, so they might not fit all ear shapes comfortably, but they do isolate an impressive amount of noise even without the ANC turned on. If you’re on a tighter budget, meanwhile, Anker’s Soundcore Space A40 is another noise-canceling set we like that’s on sale for a new low of $60 at Target. 

Buy Sony WF-1000XM4 at Amazon – $178

8BitDo game controllers

8BitDo’s Pro 2 gamepad is down to $40, which is a $10 discount and tied for the best price we’ve tracked. This is a comfortable and extensively customizable wireless controller we’ve recommended in past gift guides. It doesn’t work with PlayStation and Xbox consoles, but if you need a spare gamepad for Switch, PC or mobile devices, it’s arguably a better value than Nintendo’s Switch Pro Controller. Just note that it can’t wake the Switch up from sleep mode, if you plan on using it with that console.

If you’re willing to pay more for a controller with Hall effect joysticks, which are traditionally more resistant to drift over time, or if you prefer an Xbox-style layout, 8BitDo’s Ultimate Controller is also on sale for $63. While that’s only $7 off its typical price, this is the first discount we’ve seen for the recently-launched device. For those who play lots of retro-style games, meanwhile, the company’s Sn30 Pro is like a more modern version of an old Super Nintendo pad, and it’s currently $10 off at $35.

Buy 8BitDo Pro 2 at Amazon – $40Buy 8BitDo Ultimate Controller at Amazon – $63Buy 8BitDo Sn30 Pro at Amazon – $35

PS5 DualSense Wireless Controller

If you need a spare gamepad for your PlayStation 5, Sony’s DualSense controller is still available for an all-time low of $49 at various retailers, including Amazon, GameStop, Walmart, Adorama, Target and Best Buy. The sale applies to several color finishes and comes out to a $20 or $25 discount depending on which model you choose. The DualSense itself isn’t as convenient on PCs as the 8BitDo pads above or Microsoft’s Xbox Series X/S controller (which is down to $40), but it still provides a comfortable shape and impressive haptic feedback for newer PlayStation games.

Buy PS5 DualSense Controller at Amazon – $49Buy PS5 DualSense Controller at GameStop – $49

Apple MacBook Air

Apple’s latest MacBook Air is still on sale for $999 at B&H, matching the lowest price we’ve seen. Normally, Apple sells this version, which includes 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD, for $1,199, though we’ve seen it fall to $1,049 a number of times in recent months. Either way, the M2-powered Air is the top pick in our guide to the best laptops, and we gave it a glowing review score of 96 earlier this year. As an everyday notebook, it gives little to complain about, but note that this entry-level configuration has slower storage performance than Apple’s higher-priced SKUs. Still, if you aren’t planning to do more involved work like editing high-resolution videos, this shouldn’t be a major hindrance on a day-to-day basis. Just be aware that B&H says this deal is set to end later Friday afternoon.

Buy MacBook Air M2 at B&H – $999

Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 2

A configuration of Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Go 2 with a Core i5-1135G7 processor, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD is on sale for a new low of $600. That’s about $100 off this model’s typical street price as of late. We gave the 12.4-inch notebook a review score of 86 back in June and currently recommend it in our guide to the best affordable Windows laptops. The main appeal here is in the design, as the Surface Laptop Go 2’s slim and lightweight chassis, comfortable keyboard and bright display lend it a classier feel than most options in this price range. Its performance is quick enough for casual work, too, but don’t expect a powerhouse, and the keyboard is unfortunately devoid of backlighting.

Buy Surface Laptop Go 2 at Amazon – $600

Steam Winter Sale

It’s a good time to be a PC gamer (or Steam Deck owner), as Steam and the Epic Games Store have kicked off their annual holiday sales. Both promotions are scheduled to run until January 5. There are simply too many deals for us to run down everything, but some highlights on Steam include the acclaimed action-RPG Elden Ring down to $42, the cutesy cat adventure Stray for $24, the sharply written Disco Elysium for $10, the VR shooter Half-Life: Alyx for $24 and a bundle that includes a bunch of Valve-made games for $7. Several other picks from our best PC games guide are also on sale.

Epic’s sale doesn’t cover as many games, but it does include a recurring coupon that takes 25 percent off any purchase you make over $15. This can save you a few bucks if you aren’t beholden to Steam: The PC port of 2018’s God of War, for instance, is down to $23 at Epic with the coupon, but only down to $30 at Steam. For console owners, note that PlayStation and Xbox are running holiday sales as well, though the deals there are generally ones we’ve seen several times throughout the year.

Shop Winter Sale at SteamShop Holiday Sale at Epic Games Store

LG OLED TVs

If you’re looking to upgrade your TV, a handful of LG’s well-regarded OLED sets are down to all-time lows. The 42-inch model of LG’s C2 TV, for instance, is down to $797 at Amazon, which is about $200 off its usual going rate. (If you’d rather not shop through Amazon, BuyDig is throwing in a $40 gift card on top of the discount.) This model can’t get as bright as the QD-OLED panel on Samsung’s S95B OLED TV, so it’s best suited in dark or moderately-lit rooms, but it still provides the deep black levels, high contrast and wide viewing angles you’d expect from a high-end OLED display. 

If you need something larger, the 65-inch LG B2 is down to $1,099 at Walmart (via authorized dealer Beach Camera), which is again roughly $200 off the price we’ve seen for most of the last couple of months. The B2 is a step down from the C2 with lesser HDR performance and a slower processor, but at this price it still offers excellent picture quality. Beyond that, the 48-inch LG A2 is back down to a low of $570 at Best Buy. This is the cheapest route into an LG OLED panel, but note that it’s limited to a 60Hz refresh rate and lacks HDMI 2.1 ports, reducing its appeal for gaming.

Buy LG C2 42-inch at Amazon – $797Buy LG B2 65-inch at Walmart – $1,099Buy LG A2 48-inch at Best Buy – $570

Apple Magic Keyboard

Apple’s Magic Keyboard for the iPad Air and 11-inch iPad Pro is still on sale for $210, which isn’t an all-time low but still $65 off the peripheral’s average street price in recent months. We gave the Magic Keyboard a review score of 84 back in 2020, and it still offers a comfortable typing experience, smooth trackpad and extra USB-C port to those who’d like to use their iPad more like a laptop. The main hangup is that it’s wildly expensive, but this deal lessens the burden at least somewhat.

Buy Apple Magic Keyboard 11-inch at Amazon – $210

Audible Premium Plus 

Amazon is running a promotion that lets new subscribers get four months of Amazon’s Audible Premium Plus audiobook service for $5.95 per month. Normally, you’d have to pay $14.95 a month after a 30-day free trial. This offer has been available for the past several weeks, but we’re noting it here because it’s set to end on December 31. 

As a reminder, Premium Plus is Audible’s upper tier: In addition to granting you access to the full Audible library, it lets you keep one title from a curated selection of audiobooks each month. It’s not an essential upgrade for most, but if you’ve been thinking of giving Audible a try, this is a decent way to see if the plan works for you. Just note that your membership will be set to auto-renew by default. 

Buy Audible Premium Plus 4-month at Amazon – $5.95/month

Samsung Smart Monitor M8

Samsung’s Smart Monitor M8 is still available for $400, which is an all-time low and roughly $180 below the 32-inch monitor’s average street price in recent months. This is a decent VA panel with a 4K resolution, but its big selling point is that it can double as a sort of tuner-less smart TV. Since it runs Samsung’s Tizen interface, it’s able to stream apps like Netflix, HBO Max and the like even when it’s not hooked up to a PC. It comes with a remote, webcam, mic and built-in speakers, and it can serve as a SmartThings hub. If you know you’ll actually use that smart TV functionality, the M8 is among the most versatile monitors you can buy, even if it’s limited to a 60Hz refresh rate and lacks local dimming.

Buy Samsung Smart Monitor M8 at Amazon – $400Buy Samsung Smart Monitor M8 at Samsung – $400

Google Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro

Earlier this year, we gave Google’s Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro review scores of 90 and 92, respectively, calling them the “best bargain in flagship phones” in the process. Both handsets are back on sale this week, with the 128GB Pixel 7 available from $499 and the Pixel 7 Pro down to $749 for the same amount of storage. We’ve seen these deals before, and neither marks an all-time low, but they’re still about $65 and $95 off the devices’ respective street prices over the last few months. 

Between the two, the 6.3-inch Pixel 7 gets a bit more battery life, while the 6.7-inch Pixel 7 Pro has a faster 120Hz refresh rate. Both phones, though, get you top-notch cameras, vibrant OLED displays, and a clean take on Android that’ll receive version updates through late 2025. They aren’t quite as powerful as something like Samsung’s Galaxy S22 Ultra, but at these prices they carry strong value.

Buy Pixel 7 at Amazon – $499Buy Pixel 7 Pro at Amazon – $749

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