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Even if you won’t be watching the Super Bowl, you can still take advantage of the sales brands are running on home theater equipment ahead of the game. Sonos, which rarely offers discounts, just announced deals on some of their soundbars and smart speakers. TVs from Samsung are on sale too. This week, Samsung unveiled three new Galaxy S23 smartphones during Wednesday’s Unpacked event. You can pre-order the phones now, and Amazon and Samsung are both offering a free storage upgrade plus a gift card when you do. We’ve got a discount code for $55 off Pixel Buds Pro and the price on the 2022 iPad Air dropped by $100. Here are the best tech deals from this week that you can still get today.
Sonos Arc Soundbar
Sonos keeps a short leash on their products, generally only selling through their own site and carefully regulating when things go on sale. Turns out the Super Bowl is one such occasion and a few of our favorite Sonos speakers are seeing decent discounts this week. One of the top speakers from our soundbar guide is the Sonos Arc. It’s usually $899, but is $100 off as of today. We like it for the modern design and stellar sound. Thanks to internal smarts, it can also automatically calibrate to your living room and happily integrates with additional speakers.
The Beam Soundbar is $50 off right now, bringing that one down to $399. It’s our top pick for a midrange soundbar, thanks to its solid sound quality, compact design and easy set-up. This newer model improves on the previous Beam — which we thought was already pretty great — with the addition of Dolby Atmos. The deals on both Sonos speakers will run through February 12th.
Sonos One
When we gathered up our favorite smart home gadgets, the Sonos One topped the list for the best smart speaker. We like that it’s compact enough to fit most places in your home.
It’s compact enough to fit in most areas in your home, but more importantly, it delivers excellent audio quality that’s superior to a lot of other smart speakers out there. When tuned properly to the acoustics of your room — which requires the iOS app — the sound is fantastic, with punchy bass and clear highs. Unfortunately, the Android app doesn’t have TruePlay tuning (Sonos has not said whether it’s in the works), but the speakers should still sound admirable. It’s also compatible with a slew of streaming services, including major ones like Spotify and Pandora.
The main benefit that a Sonos speaker brings over the competition is that it’s a gateway to a multi-room audio setup that you can build out over time. It’s also convenient if you plan on building a home theater setup later on, as the One integrates well with Sonos soundbars, including the Arc and Beam.
Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra
Samsung’s Galaxy S22 Ultra starts at $1,200 for the smaller 256GB storage capacity. Right now Amazon, Best Buy and Samsung are all offering a free bump up to the 512GB size (which has a suggested price increase of $180). Both Amazon and Best Buy are throwing in $100 gift cards when you pre order through them, which will ship once the phones are released February 17th. At Samsung’s site, you’ll also get the free storage upgrade, plus $100 bonus in the form of a Samsung credit. The Ultra is the flagship phone, with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor, a 200 MP camera and of course that built-in S Pen. Here are our initial impressions.
The standard Galaxy S23 will also come with a free storage upgrade from all three outlets, bumping its base 128GB storage up to 256GB with no upcharge. That phone goes for $800 and comes with a $50 gift card at Amazon or a credit at Samsung. If you want the S23+ you can get 512GB of storage for the same $1,000 price tag as the 256GB size. The plus also comes with a $100 gift card at Amazon, and a credit at Samsung. Here’s what we thought after seeing the S23 and S23+.
Beats Fit Pro
We named Beats Fit Pro the best wireless earbuds for working out and they just dropped to $150 on Amazon. That’s 25 percent off and just $5 more than their lowest price ever. We gave them a score of 87 in our review, admiring the great noise cancelling performance and the fact that they offer all of Apple’s earbud features, without being AirPods. Big bass and a wing tip that makes sure they stay put when you move make them particularly suited to working out — as does the IPX4-rating for sweat and water resistance.
The Beats Studio Buds are also on sale. They’re $50 off, making them $100 at Amazon — that’s also very close to a record low. We liked the comfortable fit and balanced sound when we reviewed them. They’ll give you all the same sweat resistance and Apple integrations as the Fit Pros and AirPods. And while they are impressively small, they do lack on-board controls.
Samsung S95B OLED TV
While we haven’t done a full review on Samsung’s S95B just yet, many who have reviewed it agree it’s one of the best options out there for a top-end TV from 2022. Right now the 55-inch model is $1,448, or 34 percent off. That matches the low we saw during Black Friday sales. The bigger 65-inch model is seeing an even deeper discount of 41 percent off. Bringing that one down to $1,798. That’s not its all-time low, but it’s just $20 more than its cheapest price.
The QD-OLED panel on both sizes has earned props for delivering high contrast and deep blacks and puts out a higher level of brightness than some other OLEDs. It comes with four full-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 ports, and can deliver 4K video at a 120Hz refresh rate so when the big game is over, you’ll get immersive and smooth graphics on the latest gaming titles.
When we gathered up our favorite smart home gadgets, the Sonos One topped the list for the best smart speaker. We like that it’s compact enough to fit most places in your home.
It’s compact enough to fit in most areas in your home, but more importantly, it delivers excellent audio quality that’s superior to a lot of other smart speakers out there. When tuned properly to the acoustics of your room — which requires the iOS app — the sound is fantastic, with punchy bass and clear highs. Unfortunately, the Android app doesn’t have TruePlay tuning (Sonos has not said whether it’s in the works), but the speakers should still sound admirable. It’s also compatible with a slew of streaming services, including major ones like Spotify and Pandora.
The main benefit that a Sonos speaker brings over the competition is that it’s a gateway to a multi-room audio setup that you can build out over time. It’s also convenient if you plan on building a home theater setup later on, as the One integrates well with Sonos soundbars, including the Arc and Beam.
Samsung QN90B QLED TV
If a 43-inch TV is more your speed, here’s a high-end option that hit a new low price this week. Samsung’s 43-inch QN90B is down to a new low of $898, which is 25 percent off its MSRP. The 55-inch model is down to $1,298, which is an all time low. The QN90B is a more traditional LED LCD panel with a Mini LED backlighting to give it better contrast and HDR performance that most TVs of this type, and its great that its available in a 43-inch size. If you’re going for the larger 55-inch size, however, we actually recommend Samsung’s S95B, mentioned above, for its superior OLED panel.
Vitamix Explorian E310
Vitamix blenders are ideal for sauces, salsas, dips and icy drinks — all of which may come in handy at a Super Bowl party. The Vitamix series we recommend in our smart kitchen gadget guide is from the Explorian lineup, which isn’t the most powerful of the Vitamixes, but instead balances price and performance. We think it’s the best option for most people. The E310 usually goes for $350, but is $50 off right now. If you decide you do want all possible power in your blender, go for the Ascent series, most of which are also $50 off, which takes a little of the sting out of their starting price of $500.
iPad Air
Apple’s 2022 iPad Air is $99 off right now, bringing the “almost future-proof” tablet down to $500 at Amazon. It dips down to this price fairly often, so it’s wise to wait until you see the discount before hitting add to cart. This is the 64GB WiFi model of Apple’s latest M1-equipped iPad Air. The larger-capacity 256GB model is also $99 off, bringing it down to $650. The M1 chip is fast enough for content creation, gaming and running other demanding apps. And you’ll get an impressive 10 hours of battery life. The build is top-notch and overall, we think it’s the best iPad for most people. Especially when it’s nearly $100 cheaper.
Pixel Buds Pro
In our estimation, Google’s Pixel Buds Pro are the best earbuds for anyone who carries an Android device in their pocket. Right now at Wellbots, you can save a healthy $55 off the usual $200 price tag when you use the code ENGTSOUND at checkout. We called them Google’s best earbuds yet, praising their ability to deliver deep and punchy base notes along with active noise cancellation that effectively blocks out world around you. On-board tap controls let you easily adjust volume, control your playlist and toggle the ANC and you can easily recharge the buds and case wirelessly. One of our complaints was the price bump over the previous models, but hopefully this discount makes that less of an issue.
Kindle Paperwhite
Amazon just added two new colors to the backs of their Kindle Paperwhites and are offering a 27 percent discount to go with the new look. That brings the $150 e-reader down to $109, which doesn’t beat the Black Friday sale price of $99, but is the best price the device has seen since then. The discount only applies to the 16GB capacity model in the new colors, green or blue. The 8GB capacity model isn’t available in the new colors and the black version is still full price.
The new colors — and discount — apply to the Paperwhite Signature Edition as well. We called it the “best e-reader period” in our review and this is one of the few times outside of the holidays that the device has gone on sale. Both the blue and green versions are on sale for $140, which is a 26 percent discount off the usual $190 price tag.
Disney+
To make it easier for us to afford the growing list of streaming services out there, many providers are offering ad-supported versions of their services at reduced prices. Right now, the Disney Plus ad-supported variant is down to $6.99 a month for your first three months. It goes back up to $7.99 after that, but you’re free to cancel at any time. You may remember a time when Disney plus without ads was only $7, but just like many other streaming services out there, they’ve raised prices recently. Still, for the amount of content available, including Marvel movies, Star Wars shows, Disney features and Pixar fare, it feels worth the cost.
Arlo Video Doorbell
Here’s a chance to keep tabs on your front door — for half the price. Arlo’s Essential Video Doorbell is on sale for 50 percent off right now at Amazon, bringing the $200 device down to $100. It’s battery-powered, which is great for those without a wired already installed at their front door and gives you a 180-degree field of view. It’ll send HD video with HDR to your smartphone or home hub and allows you to see, hear and speak to whomever is out there. The wired-only version is on sale for 47 percent off, bringing it down to $80. And Arlo’s exterior security cameras are 38 percent off, or $80 each.
Meta’s Quest Pro headset only arrived three months ago, but it saw its first discount this week. It’s a pricey device to begin with and even with a 27 percent discount, it will still put you back $1,100. We tried out the VR headset, and had a lot to say. Meta hopes the Quest Pro will become the device that starts to truly enable the Metaverse. Whether or not we want to live and work in VR just yet is still up for debate, but for those that do, this is a powerful (and relatively comfortable) way to do it.
Spigen Ultra Hybrid MagSafe case
We’ve got a whole list of the best iPhone cases we’ve tried, and a good all-purpose option is Spigen’s Ultra Hybrid MagFit case. It’s a clear cover that has anti-yellowing properties, which should keep it looking clean and new for longer than other cases. Raised edges help protect the screen and camera array from making too much contact with other surfaces, and you’ll be able to use it with any magnetic accessories you want.
WD_Black SSD Cards
It’s another good week to add extra storage to your computers and gadgets. Right now Amazon is running discounts on a range of storage cards and drives. Discounts range from 20 to 50 percent on Western Digital Black gaming SSDs and SanDisk microSDs. WD_Black’s 250GB Internal Gaming SSD is down to $35, which is 42 percent off the original $60. The 500GB version is fifty percent off, or $40.
As for the cards, SanDisk’s 256GB Ultra microSDXC is down to $25, which isn’t the lowest it’s ever been, but is still a decent 25 percent off. SanDisk’s 1TB Ultra microSDXC is 20 percent off, or $109.
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