Google brings back Black Friday prices for earbuds, phones, and more
Google’s Pixel Buds 2a come in a stylish purple shade that stands out. Google just launched its holiday sale, and it’s basically Black Friday and Cyber Monday revived. From smartphones to smart security devices, plenty of great gifts have returned to their Black Friday prices, with some third-party retailers in some cases offering better deals than Google. Prices for a few of our favorite gadgets are even matching their all-time lows, including the Pixel 9a, Pixel Watch 4, Pixel Buds 2a, and the latest Nest Doorbell. So if you’re still holiday shopping, here are the deals that genuinely stand out. Google Pixel 9A The Pixel 9A adds more robust water resistance and a brighter, bigger screen to what was already a winning formula for a good midrange phone. Read our review. Where to Buy: $499 $349 at Amazon $499 $399 at Best Buy $499 $399 at Google First up, the unlocked base Pixel 9a is one of...
Google’s Pixel Buds 2a come in a stylish purple shade that stands out. Google just launched its holiday sale, and it’s basically Black Friday and Cyber Monday revived. From smartphones to smart security devices, plenty of great gifts have returned to their Black Friday prices, with some third-party retailers in some cases offering better deals than Google. Prices for a few of our favorite gadgets are even matching their all-time lows, including the Pixel 9a, Pixel Watch 4, Pixel Buds 2a, and the latest Nest Doorbell. So if you’re still holiday shopping, here are the deals that genuinely stand out.
Google Pixel 9A
The Pixel 9A adds more robust water resistance and a brighter, bigger screen to what was already a winning formula for a good midrange phone. Read our review.
Where to Buy:
$499 $349 at Amazon
$499 $399 at Best Buy
$499 $399 at Google
First up, the unlocked base Pixel 9a is one of the best smartphone deals we saw on Black Friday, and it’s back at its all-time low of $349 ($150 off) at Amazon. It’s our favorite midrange phone, offering a 6.3-inch OLED screen and a great camera for the price, even if it lacks the Pixel 10’s telephoto lens or Pixel 9’s low-light performance. It’s powered by the older but still snappy Tensor G4 chip and the battery can easily last a full day, even with the always-on display enabled. You also get wireless charging, a robust IP68 rating, and seven years of software updates, which matches the support Google offers on its pricier phones.
Pixel Buds 2a
Google’s latest pair of wireless earbuds feature crisp sound quality, a comfortable design, and solid active noise cancellation, which is great considering the budget-friendly price tag. They even offer built-in support for Gemini and, unlike the entry-level AirPods, a purple option! Read our review.
Where to Buy:
$129 $99 at Amazon
$129 $99 at Best Buy
$129 $99 at Target
Speaking of cheap gadgets that offer a lot of value, Black Friday brought the first meaningful discount on Google’s Pixel Buds 2a before the deal disappeared. Now, once again, though, you can snag them at their all-time low of $99 ($30 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and the Google Store. Even at full price, the buds are impressive, offering a useful active noise cancellation that reduces most background noise, along with a natural transparency mode. They deliver crisp, pleasant sound for the price and include built-in Gemini support. Plus, they come in a unique purple color option that looks fabulous, making them an overall great pick for Android users on a budget. Read our review.
Google Pixel Watch 4
The Pixel Watch 4 has a bigger display, longer battery life, more repairable design, and new Satellite SOS mode. It also leverages Google Gemini, and introduces an AI Health Coach. Read our review.
Where to Buy:
$349.99 $299.99 at Amazon (41mm, Wi-Fi)
$349.99 $299.99 at Best Buy (41mm, Wi-Fi)
$349.99 $299.99 at Target (41mm, Wi-Fi)
Smartwatches make for popular gifts, and the Pixel Watch 4 is one of the best on the market particularly for Android owners. Right now, you can buy the Wi-Fi-enabled version of the 41mm Pixel Watch 4 from Amazon, Google, and Best Buy starting at $299.99 ($50 off).The wearable brings a number of impressive improvements over the Pixel Watch 3. Along with full support for Gemini, it’s faster, lasts longer, and is twice as bright thanks to its new domed Actua 360 display with slimmer bezels for more screen real estate. Both the display and battery are now replaceable and repairable, and Google added thoughtful perks like a side-mounted charger that turns your watch into a small at-a-glance display for things like battery percentage. On the health and fitness side, you get dual-frequency GPS, retroactive AI activity recognition, and improved sleep tracking. Plus, LTE models get a new Satellite SOS mode that lets you call for emergency services even without cellular service. Read our review.
Google Nest Doorbell (third-gen)
With 2K video, support for the Gemini for Home AI a**istant, 24/7 recording, and some free smart alerts, Google’s third-generation wired doorbell is a great option for home monitoring.
Where to Buy:
$179.99 $139.99 at Amazon
$179.99 $139.99 at Best Buy
The latest Google Nest Wired Doorbell is ideal if you want to keep an eye on packages, and it’s down to $139.99 ($40 off) at Amazon and Best Buy. Released in October, the wired model is the upgraded version of our top pick for a video doorbell. It adds noticeably sharper 2K video along with a wider and taller field of view, letting you see more of your porch. It’s also built to work with the new Gemini for Home AI a**istant, which can handle more complex tasks than the older Google a**istant. And it still offers the perks that made its predecessor stand out, like free smart notifications that tell you whether it’s a person, package, animal, or vehicle outside of your door. And, if you pay extra for a subscription to Google Home Premium, you can get facial recognition along with 24/7 recording.
I used frame generation wrong for months – here’s what helped
Even though I've been using an RTX 4090 since 2022, I barely ever enabled frame generation for anything besides benchmarking. Every time I toggled it on, I was just underwhelmed with how the game felt while moving around, and turned it back off within minutes. Sure, the FPS counter looked...
Even though I've been using an RTX 4090 since 2022, I barely ever enabled frame generation for anything besides benchmarking. Every time I toggled it on, I was just underwhelmed with how the game felt while moving around, and turned it back off within minutes. Sure, the FPS counter looked impressive and made for a great screenshot to show off to my friends, but the actual experience never felt nearly as transformative as the numbers suggested.
Daniel Martinez Dallas
Published by: aplhsindia.in
Stop treating the Raspberry Pi 5 as a smart home hub — it’s actually built for something bigger
The Raspberry Pi has always been easy to recommend for home automation, but the Raspberry Pi 5 complicates that recommendation in a useful way. If all you need is a box to run Home Assistant, a few Zigbee devices, and some basic automations, it’s more machine than the job really...
The Raspberry Pi has always been easy to recommend for home automation, but the Raspberry Pi 5 complicates that recommendation in a useful way. If all you need is a box to run Home Assistant, a few Zigbee devices, and some basic automations, it’s more machine than the job really needs. A Raspberry Pi 4 can still handle that workload comfortably, and older models can remain useful for modest setups. The Pi 5 starts to make more sense when the home automation hub becomes part of a wider home lab rather than a single-purpose appliance.
Lisa Wheeler Ireland
Published by: aplhsindia.in
Buying Plex Pass Lifetime is still one of the best streaming decisions I’ve ever made
I've been using Plex for more than half a decade, and one reason I've stuck with it is the lifetime subscription I bought. I still think it's one of the best purchases I've made for home streaming because Plex has almost everything you need for remote access and media management.
I've been using Plex for more than half a decade, and one reason I've stuck with it is the lifetime subscription I bought. I still think it's one of the best purchases I've made for home streaming because Plex has almost everything you need for remote access and media management.
ستایش حیدری Iran
Published by: aplhsindia.in
PC gamers are leaving 20-30% performance on the table with this one setting
Let's say you spent months picking out parts or researching a pre-built PC. You made sure to get 16GB of fast dual-channel RAM, so your games would run smoothly, and your desktop wouldn't choke under heavy multitasking. But somehow your system feels strangely sluggish. You notice erratic 1% low frame...
Let's say you spent months picking out parts or researching a pre-built PC. You made sure to get 16GB of fast dual-channel RAM, so your games would run smoothly, and your desktop wouldn't choke under heavy multitasking. But somehow your system feels strangely sluggish. You notice erratic 1% low frame rate, which is stuttering, in CPU-bound games like Cyberpunk or Counter-Strike. Alongside this, opening heavy apps feels slightly delayed. For some reason, despite the fact that you opted for 16GB of RAM, it just feels like your PC is a machine with half of the memory capacity it has.
John Doe New York
Published by: aplhsindia.in
States ask judge to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster
A federal judge is officially being tasked with deciding whether to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster. More than 30 states are asking Judge Arun Subramanian to order a sale of the ticketing giant, a "sufficient number" of large amphitheaters, and limit its ability to tie access to its remaining amps to...
A federal judge is officially being tasked with deciding whether to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster. More than 30 states are asking Judge Arun Subramanian to order a sale of the ticketing giant, a "sufficient number" of large amphitheaters, and limit its ability to tie access to its remaining amps to the use of its promotions services. In April, a jury found that the company is an illegal monopolist, after more than a month of trial. The initial remedies proposal doesn't include a further breakup of some other parts of Live Nation's business that California Attorney General Rob Bonta told The Verge and other outlets earlier this week the …Read the full story at The Verge.
Dario Morin Switzerland
Published by: aplhsindia.in
Lenovo’s G02 retro handheld is reportedly packed with copyrighted ROMs, including Nintendo games
The wild world of retro handhelds just got a little weirder.
The wild world of retro handhelds just got a little weirder.
Herberto Ramos Brazil
Published by: aplhsindia.in
I stopped switching between four apps the moment I connected them to Claude Project
For a long time, my workflow was spread across too many disconnected places. Editorial tasks lived in one dashboard, side projects in another. My ideas were scattered across note apps, and my inbox was getting buried under marketing threads. At some point, switching dashboards and keeping context became more exhausting...
For a long time, my workflow was spread across too many disconnected places. Editorial tasks lived in one dashboard, side projects in another. My ideas were scattered across note apps, and my inbox was getting buried under marketing threads. At some point, switching dashboards and keeping context became more exhausting than the actual work.
Jane Smith Los Angeles
Published by: aplhsindia.in
I finally see why everyone removes Windows bloatware – here’s my complete removal list
There are things Windows is good at, and other aspects where it fails miserably. Bloatware, I believe, falls under the latter. Over the years, Microsoft has been pushing more and more apps on Windows that offer no real utility to the vast majority of users. And after AI integration picked...
There are things Windows is good at, and other aspects where it fails miserably. Bloatware, I believe, falls under the latter. Over the years, Microsoft has been pushing more and more apps on Windows that offer no real utility to the vast majority of users. And after AI integration picked up, the list got even longer.
Emily Brown Houston
Published by: aplhsindia.in
I bought the RX 9070 XT for FSR 4, but the games I actually play don’t support it
When I bought my RX 9070 XT upon release, I expected FSR 4 to be one of the bigger parts of my upgrade. AMD's machine-learning upscaler had been positioned as the answer to DLSS, and the actual gameplay footage that was put out by reviewers backed up the image quality...
When I bought my RX 9070 XT upon release, I expected FSR 4 to be one of the bigger parts of my upgrade. AMD's machine-learning upscaler had been positioned as the answer to DLSS, and the actual gameplay footage that was put out by reviewers backed up the image quality claims. A year later, with Adrenalin 25.12.1 installed and the FSR 4 override toggle sitting right there in the driver, I still spend most of my evenings on FSR 3.1 or whatever older version a given game shipped with. Not because FSR 4 looks worse, but because the games actually loaded on my drive don't qualify for the override more often than they do. The toggle is a great piece of engineering, but the widespread support it promises isn't as widespread in practice.
Aapo Latt Finland
Published by: aplhsindia.in
This $900 network switch has been flawless for nearly a decade, and it just taught me that it was a mistake
There's something about a network humming along for years without fault. After many hours of painstakingly configuring every aspect of it, from virtual local area networks (VLANs) to DNS filtering, there's little I've found to provide the same amount of accomplishment as getting my LAN fully up and running. The...
There's something about a network humming along for years without fault. After many hours of painstakingly configuring every aspect of it, from virtual local area networks (VLANs) to DNS filtering, there's little I've found to provide the same amount of accomplishment as getting my LAN fully up and running. The center of my home network is OPNsense and a few switches, including an almost-decade-old EnGenius ECS2512FP. This eight-port multi-gig network switch helps make the magic happen, taking in a 10Gb uplink from the network and providing eight points for the home lab to connect to.
Jane Smith Los Angeles
Published by: aplhsindia.in
Anker’s new earbuds have the best call quality I’ve ever heard
The Liberty 5 Pro series are Soundcore’s most ambitious earbuds yet. Soundcore, Anker's audio brand, has mostly lived in the budget-to-midrange world, but with its new Liberty 5 Pro earbuds, it's aiming at the big guys. The two new earbuds - the Liberty 5 Pro and Liberty 5 Pro Max...
The Liberty 5 Pro series are Soundcore’s most ambitious earbuds yet. Soundcore, Anker's audio brand, has mostly lived in the budget-to-midrange world, but with its new Liberty 5 Pro earbuds, it's aiming at the big guys. The two new earbuds - the Liberty 5 Pro and Liberty 5 Pro Max - use Anker's new Thus chip, which has more processing power than previous Soundcore earbuds to try and compete with the chips found in Apple, Sony, and Bose products. And that extra processing power gives the Liberty 5 Pro the best in-call noise canceling I've heard in any earbuds.Previously, the highest-priced Soundcore earbuds (not counting the sleep buds) were the Liberty 4 Pro at $150, but the Liberty 5 Pro are $170 and the L …Read the full story at The Verge.
Emily Brown Houston
Published by: aplhsindia.in
Anker’s new earbuds are the first with its AI chip that boosts noise reduction
The Liberty 5 Pro Max feature a larger touchscreen with more controls and the ability to record meetings without a phone. | Image: Anker Anker has announced a new version of its Soundcore Liberty Pro earbuds: the new Liberty 5 Pro. These are the company's first earbuds featuring the Thus...
The Liberty 5 Pro Max feature a larger touchscreen with more controls and the ability to record meetings without a phone. | Image: Anker Anker has announced a new version of its Soundcore Liberty Pro earbuds: the new Liberty 5 Pro. These are the company's first earbuds featuring the Thus AI audio chip Anker announced last month, here being used to bolster noise reduction capabilities and help ensure the user's voice can be clearly heard during calls, even in noisy environments. They're the first new Soundcore Liberty Pro earbuds since the 2024 version that launched with a charging case screen. Joining the Liberty 5 Pro are a new Max version that add AI-powered note-taking capabilities through their charging case.The Liberty 5 Pro are available starting today for $169.99 in …Read the full story at The Verge.
