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Prime Day is almost upon us and we're seeing some early gadget deals, including Apple's sixth-generation iPad Mini back on sale for $400. This discount takes 20 percent off its sticker price of $500 and marks the latest instance of the iPad Mini hitting this all-time low since Apple released it in late 2021. Right now the deal only applies to the iPad Mini's 64GB Space Gray and Pink models.

The iPad Mini is small but mighty, with an A15 Bionic chip, a 12MP Ultra Wide front camera and up to 10 hours of active use per charge. Its 8.3-inch Liquid Retina display also features P3 wide color, an anti-reflective coating and True Tone. Plus, the iPad Mini is compatible with the second-generation Apple Pencil. 

Apple's 64GB 10th-generation iPad is also on sale for $400, and it's a good option if you're looking for something with a bit of a larger screen. The 10.9-inch Liquid Retina display model is 11 percent off, down from $450, in Pink, Silver and Yellow. It has many of the same features as the iPad Mini, such as a 12MP Wide camera, 4K video, a USB-C connector and 5G connectivity. It falls behind in terms of only working with the first generation Apple Pencil, using an A14 Bionic chip, and having an sRGB color display — meaning colors aren't as accurately shown. However, a lot of these features, like 4K video and an A14 Bionic chip, are improvements from the ninth-generation iPad.

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Google is already testing its Med-PaLM 2 AI chat technology at at the Mayo Clinic and other hospitals, The Wall Street Journal has reported. It's based on the company's PaLM 2 large language model (LLM) that underpins Bard, Google's ChatGPT rival — and was launched just months ago at Google I/O. 

Unlike the base model, Med-PaLM-2 has been trained on questions and answer from medical licensing exams, along with a curated set of medical expert demonstrations. That gives it expertise in answering health-related questions, and it can also do labor-intensive tasks like summarizing documents and organizing research data, according to the report. 

During I/O, Google released a paper detailing its work on Med-PaLM2. On the positive side, it demonstrated features like "alignment with medical consensus," reasoning ability, and even the ability to generate answers that were preferred by respondents over physician-generated responses. More negatively, it showed the same accuracy problems we've seen on other Chat AI models. 

Microsoft is also developing medical AI chat tech based on OpenAI's ChatGPT, having teamed up with the healthcare software company Epic. Google is also working on using its AI for ultrasound diagnosis and cancer therapy, it revealed in March. Both companies have promised to keep patient information confidential, saying they don't train their models on patient data. Last month, Microsoft expressed alarm about its ChatGPT technology being used by doctors to improve communications with patients. 

In an internal email seen by the WSJ, Google said it believes the updated model could "be of tremendous value in countries that have more limited access to doctors." Still, Google has admitted that the technology is still in its early stages. "I don’t feel that this kind of technology is yet at a place where I would want it in my family’s healthcare journey," said Google senior research director Greg Corrado. However, he added that the tech "takes the places in healthcare where AI can be beneficial and expands them by 10-fold." 

If you're looking to up your streaming game this summer, now might be the time to do it. Elgato's Stream Deck + is down from $200 to $180 — a ten percent discount. This deal is one of the first real sales on the Stream Deck + since it came out last year. 

The Stream Deck + comes with eight customizable LCD keys that automate actions like going live, playing music and changing scenes. It includes a touch bar and four knobs to control parts of your stream, such as audio, lighting and video. The Stream Deck + also has plugins for Camera Hub, Elgato Wave Link, Spotify, Twitch and more. 

Its counterparts, Elgato's Stream Deck Mini and Stream Deck Classic, are on sale, too, if you're looking for something a bit cheaper. The Stream Deck Mini is 13 percent off, down from $80 to $69.90, making it the most affordable option in the lineup. It offers six customizable LCD keys and includes integrations like YouTube and Twitch. The main differences here are that the Stream Deck Mini allows you to automate fewer actions at a time, and it doesn't have the control knobs to manage features like audio and lighting. 

The Stream Deck Classic falls somewhere between its siblings — so it might be your Goldilocks option. It has 15 customizable LCD keys and integrations like Discord and Spotify but no control knobs. The Classic is on sale for $120, down from $150, giving it the largest discount of the three at 20 percent. 

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Meta's Twitter competitor is off to a flying start. Within just four days of the app going live on Wednesday evening, Threads already has more than 100 million users according Quiver Quantitative's Threads Tracker. It helps that Thread is a sibling app to Instagram and it's easy for the image-sharing platform's billion-plus users to sign up — unless they live in the European Union, where it's not yet available.

Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's CEO, has provided several updates on Threads' user numbers. The app had 10 million users in the first seven hours and more than 30 million by Thursday morning. Around 24 hours later, that figure had more than doubled. 

It’s very, very early days for Threads, as the app is missing basic features that many users see as essential. It has minimal accessibility options at the minute, with no way to append alt text to an image for those who use screen readers. Search is limited to usernames, there’s no hashtag support and you can't post to Threads from the web.

Perhaps most gallingly of all, Threads doesn’t yet have a chronological feed of posts. The algorithmic feed is full of brands, influencers and celebrities, making it difficult for users to keep up with what friends and family are posting. A chronological feed is on the way, but Twitter may still be many people's app of choice for up-to-the-minute news.

"Politics and hard news are inevitably going to show up on Threads — they have on Instagram as well to some extent — but we're not going to do anything to encourage those verticals," Instagram head Adam Mosseri wrote, noting that the aim of Threads isn't to replace Twitter.

"Politics and hard news are important, I don't want to imply otherwise," Mosseri added. "But my take is, from a platform's perspective, any incremental engagement or revenue they might drive is not at all worth the scrutiny, negativity (let's be honest), or integrity risks that come along with them. There are more than enough amazing communities — sports, music, fashion, beauty, entertainment, etc — to make a vibrant platform without needing to get into politics or hard news."

Quiver Quantitative's Threads Tracker uses data taken from Instagram users' profiles, according to the person who built the tool, co-founder Christopher Kardatzke. "By viewing the profiles of people who joined the platform, I can see where they were in line and get a general idea of how many users have signed up," he said. He added that the estimates appear to line up with Zuckerberg's Threads posts about user milestones.

We all need to mature someday, and for Lotus, that time is now. Welcome to the Eletre, the company's first production SUV. An electric one at that, with comfortable seating for four or een five. Lotus has been historically known for producing cars that typified the bare minimum needed for enjoyable driving.

The Eletre? Well, it's a lot. It weighs a lot, at about 5,500 pounds. Its styling certainly extends to a point of excess, and that interior is nothing if not dazzling. This thing won't be for everybody, in fact I'm not sure who it is for, but it's easily the highest quality, and most comprehensive, interior that Lotus has ever produced. And, with an Unreal Engine-based infotainment system sitting on top of not one but two Qualcomm SoCs, plus four separate LIDAR arrays, there's no shortage of tech cred.

What is missing? The emotionality of all the cars Lotus has produced until now and, frankly, a clear sense of purpose. After a few days behind the wheel I'm not convinced many folks will truly love this thing, but Lotus simply had to evolve to survive, and this is an impressive first effort. Watch the video below for the full story.

Evernote has axed most of its workforce. In a statement shared with SFGate, Bending Spoons, the Milan-based app developer that bought the company last November, said Friday it had laid off nearly all of Evernote's employees in the US and Chile. Bending Spoons plans to move most of the company's remaining operations to Europe. The layoffs come less than six months after the firm cut 129 positions at Evernote because the app had been "unprofitable for years." Bending Spoons didn't share exactly how many employees were affected by this latest round of layoffs. A scan of LinkedIn reveals some software engineers that had been with Evernote for a few years lost their jobs on Friday.

"Our plans for Evernote are as ambitious as ever: Going forward, a growing, dedicated team based in Europe will continue to assume ownership of the Evernote product," Bending Spoons CEO Luca Ferrari told SFGate. "This team will also be in an ideal position to leverage the extensive expertise and strength of the 400-plus workforce at Bending Spoons, many of whom have been working on Evernote full-time since the acquisition." Ferrari added Bending Spoons would provide affected employees with 16 weeks of salary, a prorated performance bonus and up to one year of health insurance.

How the company plans to make Evernote successful in a market crowded with competitors like Notion and Obsidian Ferrari did not say. Whatever Bending Spoons has planned for Evernote, there's no denying this marks another low point for what was once one of the more popular note-taking apps you could download and an early darling of the App Store boom. Evernote enjoyed a valuation of $1 billion at its height, but a lack of focus and buggy software left the company a shell of itself in recent years.

It's probably fair to say that when most people conjure images of the pharmaceutical industry, it's not often there's an association between the production of life-saving drugs and environmental decline. But according to one 2019 study by The Conversation, drug companies produce more tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents per million dollars than the automotive industry. "By our calculations, the pharma market is 28 percent smaller yet 13 percent more polluting than the automotive sector," the outlet said of the state of the pharmaceutical industry in 2015. Put another way: drug companies need to reduce their carbon emissions for the health of the planet and everyone living on it.

Thankfully, a group of scientists from the University of Bath in the United Kingdom may have found a way for the industry to do exactly that. In a study published in the journal ChemSusChem, the team describes a process they created for converting β-pinene, a component found in turpentine, into pharmaceutical precursors that they then used to synthesize paracetamol and ibuprofen. Right now, most companies producing those painkillers use chemical precursors derived from crude oil. Turpentine, meanwhile, is a waste by-product the paper industry makes at a scale of more than 350,000 metric tonnes per year. The researchers say they also successfully used turpentine to synthesize 4-HAP, a precursor for beta-blockers, the asthma inhaler drug salbutamol and a range of household cleaners.

In addition to being more sustainable, the team's "bio-refinery" process could lead to more consistent drug costs for consumers since turpentine isn't subject to the same geopolitical pressures that can send energy and oil prices skyrocketing. However, a significant pitfall of the process in its current form is that it costs more to produce drugs with turpentine than crude oil. The team suggests consumers may be willing to pay slightly higher prices for more sustainable drugs, but let's be honest, when someone is sick or in pain, paying more for relief is the last thing most people want to do.

After a meteoric rise in popularity late last year and into early 2023, it looks like OpenAI’s chatbot is beginning to lose some steam. According to data internet analytics firm Similarweb shared with The Washington Post, last month mobile and desktop traffic to ChatGPT’s website fell by 9.7 percent globally. If Similarweb’s data is accurate, the drop marks the first time the chatbot has seen a user decline. In June, app tracker Sensor Tower also saw downloads of ChatGPT’s iOS client fall off after peaking earlier in the month. OpenAI did not immediately respond to Engadget’s comment request.

Waning interest in ChatGPT appears to be part of an industry trend. Similarweb’s numbers show fewer people visiting the desktop and mobile websites for Microsoft Bing, Google Bard and Character.AI in recent months. Microsoft, for instance, saw traffic to its search engine surge between February and March when Bing AI became available in public preview. Since then, monthly traffic to the website has steadily declined, returning nearly to the levels it was before Microsoft retooled Bing around GPT-4. Separately, Similarweb says it saw a drop in ChatGPT engagement, with user minutes down by 8.5 percent as of May 2023.

As for what could be causing the decline, ThePost suggests the end of the school year may have something to do with it. With most college students on summer break, it speculates not as many young adults are using ChatGPT to write their papers. Another reason could be that companies like Samsung are prohibiting employees from using AI chatbots over the very real fear of a potential data leak. Whatever the reason for the decline, you can bet no one at OpenAI is panicking. If anything, the research lab is probably happy to see fewer people use the public version of ChatGPT. CEO Sam Altman has said the service costs OpenAI an “eye-watering” amount to operate.

When it comes to online merchandizing, nobody is bigger than Amazon. The same can be said for Walmart's utter domination of physical retail. But for a brief time in 2016, the two behemoths sought to get all up in each other's lanes. The resulting multi-year fracas would shake the world of commerce to its foundations with every above-board strategy and under-handed trick made available to crush the competition. In Winner Sells All, journalist Jason Del Rey recounts the business battles both between and within these titans of industry as both corporations sought to further entrench their market positions. In the excerpt below, we see some of said underhanded tricks.

Harper Collins

Excerpted from Winner Sells All: Amazon, Walmart and the Battle for Our Wallets by Jason Del Rey . Published by Harper Business. Copyright © 2023 by Jason Del Rey. All rights reserved.

In the late 2010s, the power and valuations that Amazon and other titans of the technology industry were accumulating incited a new movement in antitrust circles, catalyzed by a law school paper written by a then-unknown law student named Lina Khan. In her seminal paper, “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox,” published in the Yale Law Journal, Khan argued that our interpretation of antitrust laws was outdated in light of a new digital economy, and there was a need to return to the days when merely having low prices or providing free services wasn’t enough to avoid scrutiny for anticompetitive behavior. 

“Amazon doesn’t just want to dominate markets; it wants to own the infrastructure that underpins those markets,” said Stacy Mitchell, the longtime critic of both Amazon and Walmart who runs a left-leaning think tank called the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR). “And that’s an order of magnitude difference of a monopoly ambition than Walmart’s.” Mitchell had spent many years agitating for the government to step in to slow down Walmart during its go-go Supercenter growth years and she is still clear today that she finds the company’s power problematic. 

But in her view, and that of many Big Tech critics in her circles, Amazon poses an altogether different threat to business competition. “It’s not just the retail platform, but it’s AWS [Amazon Web Services], it’s the logistics piece, it’s [Alexa] and being the interface for how we interact with the web, and all the devices and everything that are connected to the smart home,” she said. “It enables Amazon to favor its own goods and services in those markets, to levy a kind of tax on all the businesses that rely on that infrastructure, and to surveil all of that activity and use that intelligence to its own advantage.”

As the pressure from Washington, DC, increased, Amazon leaders were becoming heated. In one key annual meeting of Bezos’s senior leaders in early 2020, Jassy, the then-CEO of AWS, digested the content of a memo sitting in front of him. It laid out Amazon’s plans for messaging in response to accusations that it was too big or too powerful and engaged in anticompetitive behavior. As Bezos listened in by phone, Jassy pointedly asked those before him why the messaging didn’t argue that Walmart, and AWS rival Microsoft, should be investigated. Other top company officials tried to explain that each of those companies had already been scrutinized years ago and their time had passed. But Jassy’s reaction left a lasting impression on those in attendance.

“It was very clear from his comments that we shouldn’t let our foot off the gas,” someone in attendance told me years later. In subsequent years, especially in the part of the company that focused on so-called competition issues, “there wasn’t a day that Walmart didn’t come up.” The fact that Walmart, with more annual revenue than Amazon, was not being scrutinized by policy makers drove executives like Jassy crazy. It didn’t help when Amazon executives discovered that Walmart was indirectly funding a nonprofit front group called Free and Fair Markets, which was bombarding reporters and social media with anti-Amazon accusations. For some time, Amazon leaders suspected that a competitor, or group of competitors, was funding the operation but couldn’t prove it. One of Amazon’s longtime spokesmen, Drew Herdener, grew frustrated every time the group placed an op-ed or social media message that got traction.

“How does the press not know this is a front group?” he would lament. As a result, an Amazon communications staffer named Doug Stone spent upward of a year trying to help reporters uncover the group’s funders. Finally, in the fall of 2019, the Wall Street Journal pulled back the veil in an expose titled “A ‘Grass Roots’ Campaign to Take Down Amazon Is Funded by Amazon’s Biggest Rivals.” A Walmart spokesperson denied funding the group to the newspaper—the article had stated that Walmart used an intermediary to pass along funds to FFM, so the company’s defense might have been a matter of semantics— but said that Walmart “share[s] concerns about issues” that the group was publicizing.

Amazon Prime Day 2023 is almost here, but you can still snag some early deals before the two-day shopping event begins in earnest. We've rounded up the best early Prime Day deals we can find below. Remember that you'll need to subscribe to Prime to take advantage of many (but not all) of the offers, and that there's always a chance that prices drop lower during the event itself. For those with no interest in Prime, we've also included a few of the best tech deals that aren't explicitly tied to the event.

Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max

Amazon’s Fire TV Stick 4K Max has dropped to $25 for Prime members before Prime Day, which is more than half off its regular price and ties its all-time low. This the most powerful streaming dongle Amazon makes, with a superior processor than the standard Fire TV Stick 4K, plus support for WiFi 6, Dolby Vision, HDR10+ and Dolby Atmos audio. While Amazon's Fire TV OS can be messy compared to other platforms from Roku, Google and Apple, it still gets you access to just about all of the major streaming apps. A few other Fire streaming devices have been discounted as well, including the latest Fire TV Cube, which Prime members can pick up for $110.

Fire TV Stick Lite

Amazon’s Fire TV Stick Lite is half off and down to only $15. It was slightly cheaper last Prime Day when it was on sale for $12, but nevertheless, this is a great sale on Amazon’s most affordable streaming dongle. With its support for 1080p video and WiFi 5 connectivity, it’s arguably best for those on tight budgets who just want to upgrade an old TV with basic streaming chops.

Amazon Fire HD 8

If you're on an ultra-tight budget and need a new tablet, the Fire HD 8 is worth considering at its current deal price of $55, which matches its lowest price to date. Normally, the device retails around $90. This tablet has a smaller (8-inch) and lower-resolution (1,280x800) display than the Fire HD 10, and it isn’t as quick in day-to-day use. Like all Fire tablets, its app support lags well behind iPadOS, which is most noticeable in its lack of Google apps. But it has just enough power for the basics, it gets a solid 10-ish hours of battery life and it’s light in the hand. You can expand its 32GB of storage with a microSD card, too. If all you want is a competent tablet for casual reading and streaming for as little as possible, it should do the job.

Amazon Echo Buds (2023)

The latest Echo Buds just arrived in May yet they’re already 30 percent off at Amazon for Prime members. You can get them for $35, which is $15 off and ties the lowest price we’ve seen. We recommended the Echo Buds to those who prefer an open design in our best budget wireless earbuds guide. They lack active noise cancellation and don't completely seal off the ear canal, but their sound quality is decent for the price, and they come with features we don't often see in cheap earbuds, such as multipoint connectivity, auto-pausing and a customizable EQ tool. Naturally, they also work well with Alexa. If you hate the feeling of in-ear headphones, they'll be a good value.  

Amazon eGift Card + $5 promo credit

Amazon is giving Prime members a $5 promotional credit when they buy an eGift card valued at $50 or more before July 10th. You'll need to use the promo credit by August 25, 2023, but the only things it won't apply to are items sold by third-party merchants and e-books.

Blink Mini

Prime members can get a two-pack of Blink Mini security cameras for $34 right now. Single cameras are also on sale for $18. While these Blink cameras are wired, they have most of the same features as the standard wireless models, including 1080p video recording, motion alerts and support for two-way talk. Several other Blink wireless cameras are on sale as well.

Amazon Kindle Unlimited 3-month membership

If you're a Prime member who has never subscribed to Kindle Unlimited, you can get a three-month trial to Amazon's e-book service for no extra cost. Normally, the subscription goes for $12 a month after a 30-day free trial. Just note that the membership will be set to auto-renew by default. As a refresher, Kindle Unlimited makes a selection of e-books, audiobooks and digital magazines accessible on-demand. It doesn't include every e-book in the Kindle library, but it may still be worthwhile if you're a particularly avid reader. If nothing else, this deal makes it easier to figure out if it's worth paying for. 

Audible Premium Plus 3-month membership

Similar to that Kindle Unlimited offer, Prime members who are new to Audible Premium Plus can get three months of the audiobook service for free. This membership usually costs $14.95 a month after a 30-day free trial, so you're saving about $30. Premium Plus is Audible's upper tier: Like the less expensive Audible Plus, it provides an assortment of audiobooks, podcasts and other audio content you can access on-demand. The main difference is that it also includes a monthly credit that you can use to buy any book in the Audible store permanently. As with Kindle Unlimited, Premium Plus will be most worth it if you burn through audiobooks and podcasts quickly, but this extended trial is a comfier way to see if it's useful. Again, be aware that the subscription will be set to auto-renew by default.

Amazon Echo Dot

Amazon has knocked the latest Echo Dot down to $23, which is roughly half off its typical street price, and is throwing in a Sengled color smart bulb for no extra cost. We consider the Echo Dot the best smart speaker you can get for less than $50 thanks to its compact design, surprisingly good sound quality for its size and handy Alexa integration. The newest Echo Dots can also act as Eero WiFi boosters, adding up to 1,000 square feet of coverage to your existing Eero system.

Amazon Echo

Amazon has discounted several other Echo speakers as well. The base Echo, for one, is down to $55, which is $5 more than its all-time low but still $35 off its typical going rate. This is the top pick for less than $100 in our smart speaker buying guide, as it represents a clear step-up from the Echo Dot in terms of sound quality. If you aren’t tied to Apple or Google, we generally found it to outperform the HomePod Mini and Nest Audio as well.

If you’re looking for something more affordable than the Echo Dot, the unidirectional Echo Pop doesn’t sound as nice, but it offers most of the same Alexa capabilities and is currently on sale for $18. The Echo Dot with Clock, meanwhile, has similar hardware to the standard Dot, but adds an LED display that can show the time and basic weather and music info. That one is down to a new low of $30. And while the larger Echo Studio can’t top something like the Sonos Era 100, it’s still the best-sounding Echo, and it could be a decent value at its current price of $155 if you already own several other Alexa speakers and want to save some cash. That deal also matches the lowest price we’ve tracked.

Amazon Echo Show 5

The latest Echo Show 5 is half off and down to a record low of $45. We’ve previously recommended the Show 5 to those who prefer Alexa over the Google Assistant and want a smart display that won’t take up much space. It’s particularly useful as a smart alarm clock, as it has a gentle sunrise alarm feature and a tap-to-snooze function. This new model has a faster processor, a slightly larger speaker and an extra mic for better Alexa performance.

Amazon Echo Show 8

If you don’t need something so compact, the Echo Show 8 is our favorite Amazon smart display overall and is currently on sale for $60. That’s a new all-time low and roughly $45 off the device’s average street price. Compared to the 5.5-inch panel on the Echo Show 5, the 8-inch touchscreen here is much better suited for making video calls or viewing photos. You get a vastly superior camera, more powerful speakers and a faster processor as well. As with the Show 5, there's also a physical camera shutter and mic mute button.

The more spacious Echo Show 10 and Echo Show 15 are also down to new lows at $163 and $182, respectively. Neither of those devices are outright bad, but our reviews found them to be less universally appealing than their smaller and more affordable siblings.

Ring Video Doorbell + Echo Show 5

Amazon’s sweeping early Prime Day sale on Ring devices includes a bundle that gives you the Ring Video Doorbell plus an Echo Show 5 for only $65. Considering the Video Doorbell alone is going for $55 as an early Prime Day deal, that means you’ll only spend $10 on the Show 5 if you opt for the bundle. The Video Doorbell itself is a fairly basic 1080p option, but it's easy to install and generally accurate at delivering motion alerts

Amazon Kindle Paperwhite Kids

The 16GB version of Amazon’s Kindle Paperwhite Kids is down to $105, which is $65 off and a new low. While this e-reader is marketed toward children, it features the same hardware as the standard Paperwhite, with a lightweight and waterproof design, 6.8-inch 300 ppi display, 10-week battery life and extensive e-book library. Here, though, you also get a cover case, a longer two-year warranty and a year of Amazon's Kids+ service (which you can ignore if you aren’t buying for a little one). We gave the Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition a review score of 97 back in 2021. The Kids edition lacks that model’s ad-free lock screen (when you aren't using a child account, at least), upgraded front light, wireless charging and 32GB of storage, but the two devices are otherwise similar.

Motorola Razr+

The foldable Moto Razr+ only just arrived last month, but it's already received a 15 percent discount for Prime Day, albeit in a roundabout way. You'll need to be a Prime member and request an invite first, after which you’ll be able to buy the phone on Prime Day for the discounted price. While jumping through Amazon’s hoops is annoying, doing so will get you an unlocked Razr+ for $850 instead of $1,000.

We spent some time with the new foldable before it came out last month and gave it a full review upon its debut. The verdict? Samsung’s Galaxy foldables have some serious competition. The Razr+ has a 6.9-inch screen when open and offers a 3.6-inch screen when folded, which is much larger than the 1.9-inch exterior screen on the Galaxy Z Flip 4. The foldable design unlocks different uses, as it can act as its own tripod in addition to taking up less space in your pocket. 

Eero Pro routers

A number of Eero and Eero Pro WiFi router packs have been discounted for Prime members ahead of the shopping event. You can pick up one Eero router for as low as $45, or an Eero Pro router for $70. We recommend going for the Eero Pro if you can, since it's a tri-band system that supports speeds up to 1Gbps and covers slightly more square feet than the standard Eero does. Just keep in mind that these are not the latest Eero systems; for WiFi 6 support, you'll have to shell out a bit more money for an Eero 6 set.

Apple AirPods Pro (2nd gen)

Apple's second-generation AirPods Pro are back on sale for $200, which is $50 off their usual rate and a record low. These remain the best true wireless earbuds for Apple lovers, even though the company didn't drastically overhaul the design with this latest model. Most of the new features are under the hood, with Apple noticeably improving the pair's sound quality, noise cancellation and transparency mode.

Samsung Pro Plus microSD card

The 256GB version of Samsung's latest Pro Plus microSD card is down to a new low of $20. That's $10 off its MSRP. If you need more space, the 512GB model is within a couple dollars of its best price at $43.52. The Pro Plus is the top pick in our guide to the best microSD cards, as it finished at or near the top of all of our sequential and random speed tests. It's also backed by a 10-year warranty.

Samsung 980 Pro

The 2TB version of Samsung's 980 Pro is down to a new low of $100. We've seen this SSD steadily drop in price over the course of the year, but this deal marks a roughly $35 drop from the device’s average street price in recent months. The 980 Pro isn’t Samsung’s fastest SSD – that would be the 990 Pro, the 1TB model of which is down to $70 – but it still meets Sony's requirements for expanding the PS5’s storage. You’ll just need to add a heatsink for a few bucks more to go along with it. If you aren't buying for a PS5 specifically, a speedy PCIe 4.0 drive like this may be overkill but will provide fast storage all the same.

Both this and the Evo Plus microSD card deal come as part of a wider sale on Samsung storage devices. This includes the Fit Plus, a tiny flash drive we recommend in our best SSDs guide, down to $22, and the T7 Shield, a ruggedized version of one of our favorite portable SSDs, back down to $75. Both deals match the lowest prices we’ve tracked, and nothing in the sale is exclusive to Prime subscribers.

Apple iPad (9th gen)

The 64GB model of Apple's 9th-gen iPad is down to $250 at Amazon, matching the lowest price we've tracked. You'll see the price listed as $279 and an additional $29 discount will apply at checkout. Apple normally sells the device for $329, though we've seen it retail closer to $275 in recent months. This is the budget pick in our iPad buying guide: It lacks the accessory support, thinner bezels and laminated display of the iPad Air, but it's by far the most affordable route into iPadOS, and it remains fast and comfortable enough for casual reading, streaming and gaming. It's also the only current iPad with a headphone jack.

Shark RV1001AE

Shark makes some of our favorite robot vacuums and right now the Shark RV1001AE is half price, bringing it down to $300. This model has a bagless, self-emptying base, that you won’t have to empty for quite some time as it has a claimed capacity of up to 45 days. While we didn’t try this exact model, we have found robovacs from Shark to be simple to set up, with a particularly easy-to-use companion app. Shark's mapping function is typically accurate and the bagless base here should save you money in the long run, as buying device-specific bags can get pricey.

Samsung Galaxy Watch 5

The Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 is down to $199 for a 40mm model and $229 for a 44mm model. We gave the Galaxy Watch 5 a score of 85 last year, and it's currently the "best for Android users" pick in our smartwatch buying guide. While its battery life could be better, its design is durable and attractive, its OS is easy to navigate and its health tracking is relatively comprehensive. Samsung is expected to announce a Galaxy Watch 6 in the coming weeks, however, so it may be worth waiting to see how that model stacks up if you don't need a new smartwatch right this instant.

Anker 511 20W Nano Pro charger

Anker's compact 20W USB-C charger is cheaper than ever right now and down to $12. Not only is it much smaller than Apple's 20W adapter, but it can fast-charge the latest iPhones as well. It also has Anker's Dynamic Temperature Sensor that helps prevent overheating, and its Power Tuner Chip that adjusts power output depending on the device you have connected.

Google Pixel 7a

Google’s Pixel 7a is $50 off and down to a new low of $449 right now. It’s currently the best midrange phone you can get thanks to its fast Tensor G2 chipset, smooth 90Hz display, IP67 water resistance, fantastic cameras and support for wireless charging. If you’re willing to spend an extra $50, you can spend $500 and upgrade to the Pixel 7.

Elgato Stream Deck +

Elgato’s Stream Deck + is 10 percent off right now and down to $180 in one of the first real discounts we’ve seen on the gaming accessory. In addition to eight customizable buttons, the Deck+ also has a touch bar and four knobs that make it easier to control things like lighting and sound during a stream. The Deck+ also supports plugins for Camera Hub, Elgato Wave Link, Spotify, Twitch and more.

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