Now that Amazon has not one but two Prime Days per year, you might think they'd run out of deals. Not so. The world's largest retailer has plenty of deals to go around for Black Friday, including these discounts on their own devices. And for this sale, you don't even have to be a Prime member to snag the savings. 

Amazon makes a slew of its own hardware, including Echo smart speakers, Fire tablets and Kindles. Most come with the ever-improving and evolving smart AI assistant Alexa, giving you the option of unifying your smart home and controlling it just by talking. Lots of these deals match or even beat Prime Day prices, so it's a great time to buy if you want to give the gift of a Kindle or ring in the new year with an Alexa-enabled Echo Show display. Here are the best deals on Amazon devices we could find for Black Friday. 

Echo

Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

Amazon has so many Echo options, it's hard to keep track. This is the original Echo, the very first smart speaker that brought Alexa into our homes to handle everything from setting timers and telling jokes to controlling our smart home universe. It's usually $100, but Black Friday knocks 50 percent off, making it just $50. This is the forth generation of the speaker, released in 2020 with a brand new spherical design aesthetic. We gave it a score of 89 in our review, handing out props for its excellent sound quality and Alexa's continually improving helpfulness. While the sound of one speaker was great, we did note that pairing up two Echos is where you really start to hear lush, room-filling sound. Now that they're half price, it's easier to pick up two of them. 

Echo Dot

Amazon

Like its name and appearance suggests, the Echo Dot is the smallest member of the Echo family, a speaker meant to unobtrusively bring Alexa's capabilities to more places in your home. Right now it's down to $25, which is 50 percent off its usual MSRP of $50 and a first-ever discount for this generation. Gen five was just released in October and includes an upgraded speaker, along with a temperature sensor that can pair up with your smart thermostat. In addition to being a speaker, the new Dot also acts as a mesh WiFi node, extending the range of your WiFi coverage by an extra 1,000 feet — provided you're using Amazon's Eero WiFi routers, which are discounted below. 

Echo Studio

Echo Studio is a bigger and louder version of the Echo smart speaker, built to deliver hi-res audio. It's usually $200, and rarely goes on sale, but for Black Friday, it's $45 off the list price. We gave the Studio an 88 in our review, saying Amazon had finally nailed the audio element of its smart speaker lineup. With the larger build and speaker array, it's clear Amazon is trying to compete with other smart speaker manufacturers like Sonos and Bose. And it does a great job of it. Note that the Studio also makes a decent home theater option. This is the newest generation, released back in 2020, and Amazon has promised to continue to provide security and software updates for at least four years, even if they come out with a newer generation of the Studio.

Echo Show 5

Amazon

The Echo Show 5 is on sale for $35 for Black Friday, a steep, 59 percent discount from its usual $85 sticker. The "Show" series of Echo devices add a screen to the smart speaker setup, effectively creating a smart home hub and entertainment center in one. The Echo Show devices are numbered (5, 8, 10 and 15) to represent screen size, and the Show 5 is the smallest version. It's touchscreen measures 5.5 inches on the diagonal, and the relatively small footprint is ideal for studio apartments and nightstands (as long as you're cool with a camera in the bedroom). It can play TV shows and music, display your photos and make video calls. We reviewed this latest generation and gave it an 85, applauding the impressive sound quality for the size and the alarm clock like stature (and snooze button). 

Echo Show 8

Engadget

Bumping up the size of the display, the Echo Show 8 gives a little more breathing room to the video it produces, and has two speakers instead of Show 5's one. Black Friday cuts the price down to $70, which is a full $60 off its usual $130 price tag. We gave the Show 8 an 87 in our review, remarking on the beautiful display and the quality video calls. Like the Show 5, you can watch shows and movies via Amazon Prime, Netflix and Hulu, and listen to music via Spotify and Amazon Music. The camera can serve as an indoor security cam, allowing you to get alerts about detected movement or peek in at home using the Alexa app on your phone. 

Echo Show 10

Engadget

Going even bigger, the Echo Show 10 not only grants more space for your video, the tracking feature swivels to face you. Right now it's $170, which is a sizable, $80 chunk off of the usual $250 MSRP, especially considering this rarely goes on sale. Our Echo expert Nicole Lee noted in her review that the screen rotation feature is sorta creepy, but it does allow you to see whatever it is you just asked Alexa to display. Like its smaller siblings, the Show 10 can play movies and TV, music and audio books and make video calls, including video conferencing via Zoom. We were impressed by the 13 megapixel camera and thought that the audio quality was fantastic, thanks to dual front-firing tweeters and a powerful woofer. 

Echo Show 15

Engadget

The Echo Show 15 is now just $170, which is $80 off its list price of $250. If you're thinking that a 15-inch display is bordering on TV territory, you're not wrong. Amazon announced at its fall hardware event this year that all Echo Show 15s would be upgraded to act as Fire TVs with a software update. Whereas the smaller Show models limited you to shows from Amazon Prime, Netflix and Hulu, a Fire TV interface means you can watch pretty much anything that streams. And it still delivers all the features of a smart display, with Alexa's assistance, video and security cam abilities, and smart display widgets. When we tested the smart display out, we liked the attractive, picture-frame like design and the bright and clear picture, which you can now use to watch more stuff.  

Kindle

Amazon

While you can read e-books on a tablet or even your phone, it can be hard on your eyes, particularly if you read for a long time or spend the other part of your day staring at a comptuer screen. Using e-ink instead of an an LCD or OLED panel, e-readers are easier on your eyes. The Amazon Kindle is by far the most popular e-reader out there and right now it's $15 off for Black Friday. This is the eleventh generation of the original Kindle, released just this October. It's usually $100 for the ad-supported model and $120 if you don't want to see ads on your lockscreen. The latest edition has an upgraded 300 ppi (pixels per inch) display, which now puts it on par with the Paperwhite. It's the most compact of the Kindle family but has a 16 GB storage capacity that takes a long time to fill with regular e-books.  

Kindle Paperwhite

Amazon

The Kindle Paperwhite brings a few upgrades to the standard model, with a flush-front design and IPX8 waterproof rating. Right now, the fifth and latest generation Paperwhite is $45 off. Released in late 2021, the Paperwhite hasn't seen many discounts outside of Prime Day events. It has a usual MSRP of $140 for the 8GB storage size with ads on the lockscreen, but Black Friday makes that configuration $95. Go for no ads and a larger 16GB storage capacity and the e-reader usually goes for $170, but is now $120. The 6.8-inch screen on the Paperwhite is a little larger than the 6-inch standard Kindle, and also comes with the option of a warm backlight, which isn't the same as no backlight, but still minimizes the amount of sleep-robbing blue light that hits your eyeballs. 

Kindle Paperwhite Signature

Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

When we reviewed the Kindle Paperwhite Signature edition, we called it "the best e-reader. Period." In fact, the only complaint we had was the price. Black Friday has taken some of the sting out of the $190 price tag with a $60 discount bringing it down to $130. Unlike the other Kindles, the Signature edition doesn't have an ad-supported version, the upgraded price evidently enough to keep the marketing at bay. What it does have is wireless charging, 32GB of storage, automatically adjusting LED lighting (with warm light options) and a more responsive screen. 

Kindle Oasis

Amazon

The most expensive model is the Kindle Oasis. It's usually $250 for the 8GB ad-supported version and $270 without lockscreen ads. Go for the 32GB models and you can add $30 to those prices. For Black Friday, Amazon has knocked a steep $95 off the list price. Unlike the other Kindles, the Oasis isn't wall-to-wall screen. Instead there's a large bezel at one landscape edge with physical buttons to turn the page, which some might remember from early-model Kindles. It also has the biggest screen at seven inches, along with the same 300 ppi screen and waterproof rating of the Paperwhite models.  

Fire TV Stick 4K

Amazon

With the ability to turn just about anything with an HDMI port into a smart TV, Amazon's Fire TV Stick 4K is well worth its $50 MSRP. It's even more worthwhile when it's $25 for Black Friday. If you've got a 4K TV or monitor, this is probably the version you want, as it supports 4K ultra HD, Dolby Vision and HDR10+. Plug in the HDMI dongle to your screen and use the Alexa remote to call up your favorite streaming apps, shows and movies.  

Fire TV Stick 4K Max

Amazon

If you've upgraded your routers to support WiFi 6, you'll probably want to go with the Fire TV Stick 4K Max. While it usually goes for $55, right now it's down to $35. It has everything offered with 4K, with the added upgrade to the latest wireless local network standard. Like the 4K, the Max supports video with a 4K resolution to match your 4K TV and lets you control and view Alexa-enabled devices, like a Ring Doorbell, going so far as to offer a picture-in-picture features so you can see who's at the door without stopping your show. 

Fire TV Stick 

Amazon

If you don't need support for a 4K screen, the Fire TV Sick is an HD streaming dongle that will push 1080p images to your TV or monitor. The standard Fire TV Stick is half off for Black Friday, bringing it down to just $20. Alexa is built into the remote, so you can ask the assistant to help you find what to watch and the remote can also control your TV's power and volume. Fire TV Stick also supports Dolby Atmos audio for titles that have it, and assuming you have compatible home audio equipment.  

Fire TV Stick Lite

Amazon

The most affordable option in the Stick lineup, the Fire TV Stick Lite supports 1080p viewing, and allows voice control via Alexa. Right now the usual $30 sticker has dropped to $15. The Lite brings you the same Fire TV interface on whichever screen you plug the dongle into, but the remote does not control your TVs volume or power buttons. If you use a separate remote for those functions anyway, then it's not an issue. 

Fire TV Cube

Nicole Lee / Engadget

Amazon hasn't discounted the new Fire TV Cube, but the previous-generation is on sale for $60 for Black Friday, which is 50 percent off its usual price and a new record low. This set-top box supports 4K, HDR content with Dolby Vision and Atmos, plus hands-free Alexa commands. There is a newer version available now, which adds things like WiFi 6E capabilities, a speedier processor and additional HDMI and USB ports, but it'll cost you $140.

Echo Buds

Amazon

Amazon's only entry in the headphones market are the Echo Buds. This is the second and most recent generation that usually goes for $120 but right now they're $70 with a $50 discount. Like the premium buds these are competing with, Echo Buds have active noise cancellation that shuts out the world and a passthrough mode that lets it in. The buds plus the case will give you a 15-hour max listening time and of course, Alexa is baked right in.   

Echo Frames

Brian Oh / Engadget

Will you enjoy having Alexa on your face? The Echo Frames are your opportunity to find out. They've got a $270 usual sticker sticker price, but right now they're $130 which is 52 percent off. These are the most recent, second generation and called them "surprisingly compelling" when we tried them out. We liked how comfortable a pair of glasses with speakers built in could be. It was also easier for Alexa to hear us to take commands. While they can play music, it doesn't sound very rich, so they're better for calls and notifications, though we did note that Amazon needs to work out some notification kinks.  

Fire 7 tablet

Amazon

In the vast tablet marketplace, Amazon positions itself as the affordable option. The Fire 7 tablet is their best-selling (and lowest-priced) model with a regular retail of $60. This is the 2022 model, which we've already seen dip to $42 earlier this month, but for Black Friday, it's down to $40. That's incredibly cheap for a tablet, and like we noted in our review, this works best as a 7-inch screen for performing basics like internet browsing and watching videos. We also liked the addition of USB-C charging and the long battery life, along with Alexa's built-in utility.  

Fire HD 8 tablet

Amazon

Like Echo Show displays, Fire Tablets are numbered to match their screen sizes, with an 8-inch screen on the Fire HD 8 tablet. This is the 2022 generation, which usually retails for $100, but Black Friday brings it down to $55, which is a solid 45 percent off. The Fire HD 8 comes with either 32 or 64GB of memory storage and a screen that hits that high-def, 720p resolution threshold (though not the "full HD" resolution of 1080p). You get up to 13 hours of battery life on a charge and of course, Alexa is there to handle all your assistant-based requests.  

Fire HD 10 tablet

Amazon

The Fire HD 10 is the largest of the Fire tablets, in terms of screen size, RAM and storage. The 32GB model is usually $165 without lockscreen ads, or $150 for the ad-supported version. It's $75 off right now, bringing the 32GB slabs down to $90 and $75, respectively. If you want the larger 64GB storage size, those devices are $95 off right now, too, making the ad-supported version $95 and the ad-free option $110. All models of the HD 10 have similar specs to the Fire HD 8, with a battery life of up to 12 hours, and the same storage capacity options of 32 or 64GB, but the HD 10 comes with an extra gigabyte of RAM over the HD 8, for a total of 3GB, plus an expanded processor configuration (8-core), and of course a larger screen.   

Fire HD 8 Kids Pro tablet

Amazon

The 2022 Fire HD 8 Kids Pro tablet is geared towards kids aged six to twelve and usually goes for $140. Thanks to Black Friday, it's nearly half price, bringing it down to just $80. It's a full-featured tablet, with a 13-hour battery life and a 1280 x 800 resolution screen, but has a few kid-focused features like the included protective case (with built-in stand) and a web browser that blocks inappropriate content, with age-adjustable filters. It also comes with a free year of Amazon Kids+ subscription which grants access to kid-friendly e-books, audiobooks, music shows and games.   

Fire HD 10 Kids Pro tablet

Amazon

The Fire HD 10 Kids Pro tablet came out in 2021 and, like the name suggests, has a 10-inch screen. It sells for $200, list price, but is now $80 off, bringing the price tag down to $120. Like the 8 Kids Pro, this comes with a year subscription to Amazon Kids+ and a protective case. You get a bigger and higher-resolution HD screen, along with an extra gig of RAM. It has the same 32GB of built-in storage, as the 8 Kids Pro, which is expandable to 1TB with a microSD card. 

Blink security cameras

Amazon

These inconspicuous Blink cameras are our top security cam pick in our latest smart home guide. For Black Friday, you can get a Blink Outdoor set starting at only $60, which is 40 percent off its usual rate. Both the indoor and outdoor cameras connect to your Alexa-enabled devices, like your phone or the Echo Shows above. Both are motion-activated, have two-way talk and audio, and work wirelessly with a two-year battery — that Alexa will remind you to change. The biggest difference is that Blink Outdoor can handle the weather outside, and Blink Indoor prefers the protection of the indoors.    

Blink Mini security cameras

Amazon

Even smaller than the standard Blink cameras, the Blink Minis are wired cameras that usually go for $35 a piece. That's a decent price, but during the Black Friday sale, you can get two cameras for just $30. Like their larger siblings, Blink Minis offer two-way talk and audio, motion-activated responsiveness and of course, full support for Alexa controls. These can even act as chimes for your Ring doorbell. 

Ring Video Doorbell

Ring

The Ring Video Doorbell is the flagship model, and $100 list price. Right now it's 40 percent off, making it just $60. It can be installed using your existing doorbell wiring or wirelessly using a rechargeable battery. With 1080p video and a built-in mic and speaker, you can see, hear and talk to whomever shows up on your doormat, using your smartphone or smart display. 

Ring Video Doorbell Pro 2

Amazon

The Ring Video Doorbell Pro 2 only comes in a wired version, but also adds on a bunch of features to justify its $260 list price — which Black Friday has brought down to $170. The wider field of vision gives you a head-to-toe view of people at your door and the 3D motion detection can more accurately pinpoint relevant movement, helping to avoid sending you pointless alerts when someone's just jogging by on the sidewalk. Sign up for the Ring Protect subscription and you can even have Alexa greet your visitors with specific greetings.  

  Eero Wi-Fi routers

eero

WiFi 6 is the most recent network protocol and the Eero Pro 6E will make sure your entire house is running it. It will handle internet speeds of over a gigabit per second. One router can cover a 2,000 square-foot area and has an MSRP $300. With Black Friday savings, it's down to $179. If you've got a bigger home, go for the three pack, which is also on sale. Setting up the set inside your home will cover a whopping 6,000 square feet. Usually $700, the deal knocks $280 off for a sale price of $419.  

Your Cyber Week Shopping Guide: Get the latest Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers by following @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribing to the Engadget Deals newsletter. Also, shop the top Black Friday and Cyber Monday Deals on Yahoo Life. Learn about Black Friday trends on In the Know, and our car experts at Autoblog are covering must-shop Black Friday and Cyber Monday auto deals.

Denis Sverdlov, the CEO and founder of the embattled EV startup Arrival, has stepped back from the company's day-to-day operations, according to The Financial Times and Bloomberg. Sverdlov won't be leaving the company completely but will instead switch places with Arrival chair Peter Cuneo, who served as CEO of Marvel Entertainment before it was acquired by Disney. 

Arrival had big plans for the EV space and was developing an electric van, bus and car. In the middle of 2022, however, the company cut its workforce because it was running out of cash. It also announced that it was shuttering its bus and car projects completely to focus on developing its vans for the US market, citing the EV tax credits the US offers as a major factor in its decision. Cuneo will run the company while it's seeking to raise funds under the threat of bankruptcy. 

Arrival likely decided on the swap, hoping Cuneo could use his expertise — after all, he's known for orchestrating successful corporate turnarounds and had helped guide Marvel out of bankruptcy during his tenure as its CEO. Whatever Cuneo decides to do, he'll have to accomplish it without the help of one key executive: Avinash Rugoobur, company president and strategy chief, has left his roles but will still serve as a board member. 

The EV startup teamed up with UPS to build a new generation of electric delivery vans in 2018, and in 2020, UPS put in an order for 10,000 vehicles to be rolled out over the next few years. Arrival said in September that despite issues with production, it was done building a "production verification vehicle" and that it will be able to deliver 20 vans to customers by the end of the year. 

Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk says a "general amnesty" for banned accounts will get underway next week for those who "have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam." He polled users on whether Twitter should offer the amnesty, seemingly overlooking the fact that such polls can be easily gamed by bots. Over 72 percent of the 3.2 million votes approved of Musk's amnesty proposal. 

Musk reinstated Donald Trump's account last weekend after a similar poll. Trump has yet to tweet after getting his account back, though he has continued to post on his own app, Truth Social. Late last week, Musk restored the accounts of comedian Kathy Griffin (who had been needling Musk before her account was suspended), right-wing provocateur Jordan Peterson and conservative satire website Babylon Bee.

The latest twist in the Twitter saga comes a day after the company fired another 50 or so engineers without notice, according to reports. They were dismissed just after the company started a code review program, whereby engineers are asked to submit samples of their work on a weekly basis. Dozens of engineers were fired by email the night before Thanksgiving because their “code is not satisfactory,” according to The Verge's Alex Heath.

Others received a warning about their performance. “Note that not meeting expectations could result in your termination of employment…please use this opportunity to restore our confidence and demonstrate your contributions to the team and company," that warning email read.

The fired engineers were reportedly offered four weeks of severance pay if they sign a separation agreement and waive any claims against Twitter. They had remained at the company after Musk laid off around half of the workforce. Last week, he asked the remaining employees to commit to working at his vision for an "extremely hardcore" Twitter 2.0. Those who opted out (around 1,200 of the 3,900 who were still at the company as of early last week) were let go with the promise of three months of severance pay.

The latest batch of firings occurred just two days after Musk is said to have told employees that layoffs were done and that Twitter is hiring, with a focus on "people who are great at writing software." One of the engineers Twitter turfed out on Wednesday is Ikuhiro Ihara, who led the drive to double the tweet character limit to 280 back in 2017. Twitter also let go Ying Xiao, a senior staff machine learning research scientist who a colleague described to Platfomer's Zoë Schiffer as “the best ML modeler” around. It appears that some of the fired engineers were on H1B visas and now face a race to find a new job if they want to stay in the US.

Schiffer also reported that Twitter cut holiday pay for its remaining contractors right before a holiday weekend. That move came not even two weeks after the company culled thousands of its contractors. Musk is said to have slashed perks for employees this week too, including daycare allowances, home internet costs and training — effectively cutting workers' compensation packages.

These measures are part of Musk's intense push to slash costs at Twitter, which owes at least $1 billion in annual interest payments on the loans he took out to help buy the company. Earlier this week, it was reported that Twitter has been stiffing vendors and contractors on payments, with some owed millions of dollars in back pay. Twitter no longer has a communications department that can be reached for comment.

Robots that can whack a golf ball down a fairway aren't exactly new, but building one that can play the nuanced short game is a more complex problem. Researchers at Paderborn University in Germany have done just that with Golfi, a machine that uses a neural network to figure out how to line up a putt and how hard to hit the ball to get it into the hole from anywhere on the green.

The robot takes a snapshot of the green with a Microsoft Kinect 3D camera and it simulates thousands of random shots taken from different positions. It takes factors like the turf's rolling resistance, the ball's weight and the starting velocity into account. Paderborn doctoral student Annika Junker told IEEE Research that training Golfi on simulated golf shots takes five minutes, compared with 30-40 hours were the team to feed data from real-life shots into the system.

Once Golfi has figured out the shot it should take, it rolls over to the ball and uses a belt-driven gear shaft with a putter attached to make the putt. The robot doesn't get the ball in the hole every time, though. Junker said the robot nailed the shot around 60-70 percent of the time. That's still a better accuracy rate than most amateur golfers and at least you won't see Golfi fly off the handle like Happy Gilmore if it misses.

However, Golfi sometimes drove over the ball and moved it out of position. The researchers have only tested the robot in the lab, so real-world conditions, like greens with divots or steep slopes, may pose problems for a system that relies on a bird's-eye view.

In any case, the researchers didn't set out to build a robot capable of competing with PGA Tour pros. They hope that the techniques they used in Golfi could be used for other robotics applications. “You can also transfer that to other problems, where you have some knowledge about the system and could model parts of it to obtain some data, but you can’t model everything,” Niklas Fittkau, another Paderborn University doctoral student and co-lead author of a paper on Golfi, told IEEE Research.

Back in 2016, a different robot called LDRIC sank a hole-in-one at a PGA event (albeit on the fifth attempt). I wonder who footed the bill for a round of drinks at the clubhouse afterward.

Google has disclosed several security flaws for phones that have Mali GPUs, such as those with Exynos chipsets. The company's Project Zero team says it flagged the problems to ARM (which produces the GPUs) back in the summer. ARM resolved the issues on its end in July and August. However, smartphone manufacturers including Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo and Google itself hadn't deployed patches to fix the vulnerabilities as of earlier this week, Project Zero said.

Researchers identified five new issues in June and July and promptly flagged them to ARM. "One of these issues led to kernel memory corruption, one led to physical memory addresses being disclosed to userspace and the remaining three led to a physical page use-after-free condition," Project Zero's Ian Beer wrote in a blog post. "These would enable an attacker to continue to read and write physical pages after they had been returned to the system."

Beer noted that it would be possible for a hacker to gain full access to a system as they'd be able to bypass the permissions model on Android and gain "broad access" to a user's data. The attacker could do so by forcing the kernel to reuse the afore-mentioned physical pages as page tables.

Project Zero found that, three months after ARM fixed these issues, all of the team's test devices were still vulnerable to the flaws. As of Tuesday, the issues were not mentioned "in any downstream security bulletins" from Android manufacturers.

Engadget has contacted Google, Samsung, Oppo and Xiaomi to ask when they will deploy the fixes to their Android devices and why it has taken so long for them to do so. As SamMobile notes, Samsung's Galaxy S22 series devices and the company's Snapdragon-powered handsets aren't affected by these vulnerabilities.

Critter & Guitari's lineup of hackable music computers and video synths are undeniably unique. They do things that practically no other instrument can, plus they're probably the most visually distinctive portable music devices out there. Its latest creation is the 201 Music Synthesizer, an arguably long overdue replacement for the company's first product — the Pocket Piano. 

Like its flagship Organelle, the 201 is built on open source software, specifically Pure Data and Faust. But rather than trying to be all things to everyone, it's more narrowly focused. It ships with six built-in synth engines covering chiptune-style bleeps, analog-esque sounds, drum samples, physical modeling (likely via Karplus Strong), and vocal synthesis. Rather than four knobs that vary in purpose depending on what patch you've loaded (which may or may not have particularly good documentation, depending on who created it), the 201 has three parameter knobs for envelope, tone and "surprise" — for when you just want a happy accident. 

One of the things that makes the 201 really standout though, is the pattern generator and sequencer. While you can simply play notes live and record them for later recall, the synth can also create patterns for you. A couple of presses on the unique maple keys and the 201 will start spitting out simple octave jumps, arpeggios or random polyphonic chaos. And if something strikes your fancy, you can save that as well. And you can save literally thousands of sequences to the included 8GB microSD card. 

Like the Organelle, you can actually hack together your own patches for the 201 using Pure Data or Faust, but that's more of a nice bonus than the main selling point here. Under the hood of the 201 is a 900Mhz ARM processor with 512MB RAM, which should be plenty for most synth patches, but it's not quite as powerful as the Organelle M. The 201 also has a built-in speaker, a 1/4-inch stereo out jack, 1/8-inch MIDI in and out, USB-A for connecting MIDI controllers, and USB-C for accessing the files on the microSD card.

Of course, to be a true replacement for the Pocket Piano, the 201 also needs to be portable. So, in addition to the AC adapter, it can be powered by three AA batteries. And at about one pound and a little over nine-inches long, it's pretty easy to toss in a backpack. 

The Critter & Guitari 201 Music Synthesizer is currently crowd funding over at Kickstarter and has already surpassed its goal. If you'd like to secure one when they start shipping in April of 2023 you can back it before December 20th for $295. 

Black Friday may still be a few hours away, but we're already seeing a bunch of great deals on our favorite tech. This comes after a slow trickle of deals popping up across the web ever since the start of November. While we don't have the supply chain issues we did last year, it's still a good idea to start your holiday shopping as early as possible — even if it's just a few hours before the biggest sale day of the year. The sooner you check off items from your list, the sooner they'll arrive and you'll be ready to go for the holidays. To make things easier for you, we've collected the best early Black Friday tech deals here so you don't have to go searching for them.

Bose QuietComfort 45

Billy Steele/Engadget

The Bose QuietComfort 45 headphones are back on sale for $249 right now, or 32 percent off their usual price. These are some of our favorite over-ear cans thanks in part to their excellent active noise cancellation and clear, balanced audio. The design isn't as slick as some of our other favorites, but they're comfortable to boot, plus their 24-hour battery life means you'll be able to wear them for long stretches of time without interruption.

AirPods Pro (2nd gen)

Billy Steele/Engadget

The latest AirPods Pro are on sale for $200 for Black Friday. That $50 discount is the most significant we've seen on these buds that just came out a couple of months ago. The new Pros earned a score of 88 from us for their improved sound quality, excellent Transparency Mode and solid active noise cancellation. We also appreciate the addition of the U1 chip inside the buds' wireless charging case, which enables Precision Finding using the Find My app.

Apple 10.2-inch iPad

Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

The 2021 iPad remains on sale for $270, which is the best price we've seen it. While Apple did just come out with an updated version, that latest model is much more expensive, coming in at $449. The 10.2-inch iPad is still a great option if you want iPadOS but only have so much to spend. We gave it a score of 86 for its solid performance, improved front cameras and excellent battery life.

AirTags (4 pack)

Chris Velazco/Engadget

A four-pack of Apple's AirTags is on sale for $80 right now, which is $20 off their usual price. That also brings the price per tracker down to $20, which is one of the lowest we've seen. These stocking-friendly gadgets make great gifts for iPhone users who want to digitally keep track of their things. They can use the Find My app to check the last known location of their keys, wallet and other belongings, and use their iPhones to be led directly to their stuff with on-screen directions if it's nearby.

Sony WH-1000XM5

Billy Steele/Engadget

Sony's WH-1000XM5 headphones are down to $348 right now, which is the best price we've seen since they came out earlier this year. These are our current favorite wireless headphones, and Sony essentially changed only a few things about the previous WH-1000XM4 to make these cans even better. They have improved noise cancellation and sound quality, plus a slick new design and a solid battery life. We also appreciate their Speak-to-Chat feature and multi-device connectivity.

Chromecast with Google TV

Engadget

Both the 4K and HD Chromecasts with Google TV are on sale for Black Friday, coming in at $40 and $18, respectively. These two streamers are essentially the same, expect for the resolution that each support: the higher-end model with stream 4K content, while the other tops out at 1080p. They share a compact design and both come with a handy remote that makes navigating the Google TV interface much easier. Plus, you can speak to the Google Assistant through these dongles, calling about it to search for things to watch, answer questions and more.

Sonos One

Sonos' Black Friday deals include the Sonos One speaker for only $175, which is $44 off its normal price. Sonos gadgets rarely go on sale, much less direct on Sonos' site, so the entire sale is one to consider this Black Friday. The One earned a score of 90 from us when it first came out for its attractive design, excellent audio quality and its support for Amazon's Alexa, the Google Assistant and AirPlay 2. Also included in the sale is the Sonos Arc, one of our favorite soundbars, which is $180 off and down to $719.

Google Pixel Buds Pro

Billy Steele/Engadget

Google's best earbuds yet, the Pixel Buds Pro, have dropped to $150, which is $50 less than their usual price. these are the Android-maker's answers to Apple's AirPods Pro, and they are, without a doubt, one of the best pairs of wireless earbuds you can get if you don't have an iPhone. We gave them a score of 87 for their deep, punchy bass, reliable touch controls and wireless charging case.

Elgato Stream Deck MK.2

Engadget/Will Lipman

Elgato's Stream Deck MK.2 has dropped to $120 for Black Friday, which is a new record low. We've recommended various versions of the Stream Deck for a while now as an essential accessory for game streamers, but also a handy peripheral for power users to have, too. The MK.2 has 15 programmable buttons that let you trigger actions like launching an app, muting your mic and more, plus you can truly make it your own with a custom faceplate.

Audio-Technica ATH-M20xBT

Audio-Technica

The excellent and already affordable ATH-M20xBT are on sale for $59 for Black Friday, which is a record low. These are our current favorite budget cans thanks to their good sound quality, comfortable design, Bluetooth multi-point connectivity and 60-hour battery life. They may not have as slick of a design as more expensive headphones, or advanced features like noise cancellation, but you can't beat their value.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4

Cherlynn Low / Engadget

Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip 4 is on sale for $770 right now. Each iteration of Samsung's foldable phones is better than the last, and the Flip 4 is no different. It has a slick design that neatly folds in half, rendering it small enough to slip into your pocket. Not only do we appreciate its attractive and more durable design, but we also like its improved battery life and the increased number of hands-free applications it supports.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4

Sam Rutherford/Engadget

Samsung's latest flagship foldable, the Galaxy Z Fold 4, is $430 off and down to $1,370. It's certainly the most polished Fold Samsung has created, and we gave it a score of 86 for its brighter main screen, upgraded main and telephoto cameras, sleeker hinge and noticeably better battery life.

OnePlus 10 Pro

Mat Smith/Engadget

You can pick up the OnePlus 10 Pro smartphone for only $549 right now, which is the lowest we've seen it. The standout feature of this handset is its remarkably fast charging technology: you can get a full charge in just over a half hour using 80W SUPERVOOC charging. However, US users are capped at 65W SUPERVOOC, but that's still the speediest charging standard available stateside. Otherwise, we also appreciated the 10 Pro's lovely 120Hz display and its fast face-unlock feature.

iRobot Roomba j7

Valentina Palladino / Engadget

iRobot's Roomba j7 is on sale for $349 right now, which is the cheapest we've seen it, and you can get the j7+ for $599. This is one of iRobot's latest robo-vacs and it has enhanced obstacle avoidance which lets it navigate around a robot vacuum's arch nemesis: pet poop. It also has 10x the suction power of a standard Roomba, plus support for smart mapping and Alexa and Google Assistant voice control. With the j7+ model, you're also getting a clean base into which the robo-vac will empty its bin after every job.

Shark AV2511AE AI Robot Vacuum

Shark

The latest version of Shark's AI Robot Vaccum has dropped to $299 for Black Friday. This is one of our favorite robo-vacs thanks to its strong suction power, smart mapping feature and the included clean base into which it empties its bin after every job. We also appreciate that the clean base is bagless, so you don't have to regularly buy proprietary bags for it.

August WiFi smart lock

Engadget

August's WiFi smart lock is cheaper than ever at $159 for Black Friday. That's more than $70 off its usual price and a great deal if you're looking for a smart lock that's easy to install over most deadbolts and equally as easy to use. After you put ti on your door, you can use the companion mobile app to remote lock or unlock your home, and you can send limited-time keys to loved ones you who want to have access.

Crucial MX500 (1TB)

Crucial

Crucial's MX500 internal drive is down to a new low of $68 for the 1TB version, and you can find discounts on the other configurations, too. We've long recommended this drive for its standard form factor, its sequential reads/write speeds of up to 560/510 MB/s and its AES 256-bit hardware encryption. It also has integrated power loss immunity, which saves all of your work even when there's a power outage.

Jabra Elite 3

Billy Steele/Engadget

Jabra's Elite 3 wireless earbuds are on sale for $50, which is the best price we've seen. Considering these buds start out at less than $100, you won't find some advanced features on them like noise cancellation or wireless charging. However, they pack impressive sound quality for the price, along with a comfortable design, reliable onboard controls and good battery life.

Amazon Echo Show 5

Amazon

Amazon's Echo Show 5 is back on sale for $35 for Black Friday. This has been one of our favorite smart displays for quite some time, primarily because it acts as a great smart alarm clock. It has a 5-inch display that shows the date, time, weather conditions and more, plus it has a handy tap-to-snooze feature. And if you want it to wake you up visually, too, its sunrise alarm will slowly adjust the screen's brightness to wake you up more naturally.

Amazon Echo Dot

Amazon

The latest Echo Dot has dropped to $25, and that's the first real discount we've seen since the device came out a few months ago. Amazon added a bigger speaker inside this Echo Dot for improved sound, and it has a new built-in temperature sensor as well. That will come in handy if you have other smart home devices you control with Alexa because, if the temperature sensor reaches a certain level, you can program a routine to, say, start a fan to keep your environment precisely how you like it. The new Dot can also pair with an Eero WiFi system to add up to 1,000 extra square feet of coverage.

Kindle Paperwhite

Amazon

Amazon's Kindle Paperwhite has been discounted to $95 for Black Friday. While we consider the Signature Edition to be the best e-reader, period, the standard Paperwhite comes in at a close second. It has a 6.8-inch display with 17 front LEDs for better illumination, plus a water-resistant design, Audible support and a battery that can last weeks on a single charge.

Amazon Fire TV Stick Lite

Amazon

Amazon's most affordable streaming stick is on sale for only $15 right now, which is half off its usual price. This is a good option if you want to upgrade an old, "dumb" TV in your home into a smart one. The Fire TV Stick Lite provides access to Amazon's Fire TV OS, through which you can access services like Netflix, HBO Max, Disney+ and others. The TV Stick Lite supports FHD content, and you can use the included Voice Remote Lite to ask Alexa to show you the content you want to watch. If you want to upgrade a bit to Dolby Atmos, you can get the standard Fire TV Stick for only $5 more.

Blink Mini

Will Lipman Photography for Engadget

Amazon has brought back the two for $30 Blink Mini deal for Black Friday. This compact, wired security camera is only meant for indoor use and you'll have to keep it close to an outlet, but it shares all of the basic features with the larger Blink Indoor and Outdoor cameras. It record 1080p video and supports two-way audio, plus it'll send motion alerts to your phone and you can control it via Alexa voice commands.

Peloton Bike

Peloton

The original Peloton Bike is $300 off and down to $1,145 for Black Friday. If you're somehow unfamiliar, this is the company's first exercise bike that comes with a built-in screen for taking cycling classes as well as other strength, yoga and bootcamp routines. Also, one of the company's latest gadgets, the Peloton Guide, is on sale for $245, too.

Your Cyber Week Shopping Guide: Get the latest Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers by following @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribing to the Engadget Deals newsletter. Also, shop the top Black Friday and Cyber Monday Deals on Yahoo Life. Learn about Black Friday trends on In the Know, and our car experts at Autoblog are covering must-shop Black Friday and Cyber Monday auto deals.

Whether you live in the rapidly drying American West or are aboard the International Space Station for a six-month stint, having enough water to live on is a constant concern. As climate change continues to play havoc on the West’s aquifers, and as humanity pushes further into the solar system, the potable supply challenges we face today will only grow. In their efforts to ensure humanity has enough to drink, some of NASA’s cutting-edge in-orbit water recycling research is coming back down to Earth.

On Earth

In California, for example, the four billion gallons of wastewater generated daily from the state’s homes and businesses, storm drain and roof-connected runoff, makes its way through more than 100,000 miles of sewer lines where it — barring obstructionist fatbergs — eventually ends up at one of the state’s 900 wastewater treatment plants. How that water is processed depends on whether it’s destined for human consumption or non-potable uses like agricultural irrigation, wetland enhancement and groundwater replenishment.

The city of Los Angeles takes a multi-step approach to reclaiming its potable wastewater. Large solids are first strained from incoming fluids using mechanical screens at the treatment plant’s headworks. From there, the wastewater flows into a settling tank where most of the remaining solids are removed — sludged off to anaerobic digesters after sinking to the bottom of the pool. The water is then sent to secondary processing where it is aerated with nitrogen-fixing bacteria before being pushed into another settling, or clarifying, tank. Finally it’s filtered through a tertiary cleaning stage of cationic polymer filters where any remaining solids are removed. By 2035, LA plans to recycle all of its wastewater for potable reuse while Aurora, Colorado, and Atlanta, Georgia, have both already begun augmenting their drinking water supplies with potable reuse.

“There are additional benefits beyond a secure water supply. If you're not relying on importing water, that means there's more water for ecosystems in northern California or Colorado,” Stanford professor William Mitch, said in a recent Stanford Engineering post. “You're cleaning up the wastewater, and therefore you're not discharging wastewater and potential contaminants to California's beaches.”

Wastewater treatment plants in California face a number of challenges, the Water Education Foundation notes, including aging infrastructure; contamination from improperly disposed pharmaceuticals and pesticide runoff; population demands combined with reduced flows due to climate change-induced drought. However their ability to deliver pristine water actually outperforms nature.

“We expected that potable reuse waters would be cleaner, in some cases, than conventional drinking water due to the fact that much more extensive treatment is conducted for them,” Mitch argued in an October study in Nature Sustainability. “But we were surprised that in some cases the quality of the reuse water, particularly the reverse-osmosis-treated waters, was comparable to groundwater, which is traditionally considered the highest quality water.”

The solids pulled from wastewater are also heavily treated during recycling. The junk from the first stage is sent to local landfills, while the biological solids strained from the second and third stages are sent to anaerobic chambers where their decomposition generates biogas that can be burned for electrical production and converted to nitrogen-rich fertilizer for agricultural use.

New York, for example, produces 22,746 tons of wastewater sludge per day from its 1,200-plus statewide wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). However, less than a tenth of plants (116 specifically) actually use that sludge to produce biogas, per a 2021 report from the Rockefeller Institute for Government, and is “mainly utilized to fuel the facilities and for the combined heat and power generation of the WWTPs.”

Non-potable water can be treated even more directly and, in some cases, on-site. Wastewater, rainwater and greywater can all be reused for non-drinking uses like water the lobby plants and flushing toilets after being captured and treated in an Onsite non-potable water reuse system (ONWS).

EPA

“Increasing pressures on water resources have led to greater water scarcity and a growing demand for alternative water sources,” the Environmental Protection Agency points out. “Onsite non-potable water reuse is one solution that can help communities reclaim, recycle, and then reuse water for non-drinking water purposes.”

In Orbit

Aboard the ISS, astronauts have even less leeway in their water use on account of the station being a closed-loop system isolated in space. Also because SpaceX charges $2,500 per pound of cargo (after the first 440 pounds, for which it charges $1.1 million) to send into orbit on one of its rockets — and liquid water is heavy.

ESA

While the ISS does get the occasional shipment of water in the form of 90-pound duffle bag-shaped Contingency Water Containers to replace what’s invariably lost to space, its inhabitants rely on the complicated web of levers and tubes you see above and below to reclaim every dram of moisture possible and process it into potability. The station’s Water Processing Assembly can produce up to 36 gallons of drinkable water every day from the crew’s sweat, breath and urine. When it was installed in 2008, the station’s water delivery needs dropped by around 1,600 gallons, weighing 15,960 pounds. It works in conjunction with the Urine Processor Assembly (UPA), Oxygen Generation Assembly (OGA), Sabatier reactor (which recombines free oxygen and hydrogen split by the OGA back into water) and Regenerative Environmental Control and Life Support Systems (ECLSS) systems to maintain the station’s “water balance” and supply American astronauts with a minimum of 2.5 liters of water each day. Cosmonauts in the Russian segment of the ISS rely on a separate filtration system that only collects shower runoff and condensation and therefore require more regular water deliveries to keep their tanks topped off.

ESA

In 2017, NASA upgraded the WPA with a new reverse-osmosis filter in order to, “reduce the resupply mass of the WPA Multi-filtration Bed and improved catalyst for the WPA Catalytic Reactor to reduce the operational temperature and pressure,” the agency announced that year. “Though the WRS [water recovery system] has performed well since operations began in November 2008, several modifications have been identified to improve the overall system performance. These modifications aim to reduce resupply and improve overall system reliability, which is beneficial for the ongoing ISS mission as well as for future NASA manned missions.”

One such improvement is the upgraded Brine Processor Assembly (BPA) delivered in 2021, a filter that sieves more salt out of astronaut urine to produce more reclaimed water than its predecessor. But there is still a long way to go before we can securely transport crews through interplanetary space. NASA notes that the WPA that got delivered in 2008 was originally rated to recover 85 percent of the water in crew urine though its performance has since improved to 87 percent.

NASA

“To leave low-Earth orbit and enable long-duration exploration far from Earth, we need to close the water loop,” Caitlin Meyer, deputy project manager for Advanced Exploration Systems Life Support Systems at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, added. “Current urine water recovery systems utilize distillation, which produces a brine. The [BPA] will accept that water-containing effluent and extract the remaining water.”

When the post-processed urine is then mixed with reclaimed condensation and runs through the WPA again, “our overall water recovery is about 93.5 percent,” Layne Carter, International Space Station Water Subsystem Manager at Marshall, said in 2021. To safely get to Mars, NASA figures it needs a reclamation rate of 98 percent or better.

But even if the ISS’s current state-of-the-art recycling technology isn’t quite enough to get us to Mars, it’s already making an impact planetside. For example, in the early 2000’s the Argonide company developed a “NanoCeram” nanofiber water filtration system with NASA small business funding support. The filter uses positively charged microscopic alumina fibers to remove virtually all contaminants without overly restricting flow rate, eventually spawning the Oas shower from Orbital Systems.

“The shower starts with less than a gallon of water and circulates it at a rate of three to four gallons per minute, more flow than most conventional showers provide,” NASA noted last July. “The system checks water quality 20 times per second, and the most highly polluted water, such as shampoo rinse, is jettisoned and replaced. The rest goes through the NanoCeram filter and then is bombarded with ultraviolet light before being recirculated.” According to the Swedish Institute for Communicable Disease Control, the resulting water is cleaner than tap.

Twitter's Brussels office is no more, according to reports, which could make it more difficult for the company to adhere to new European Union regulations regarding content moderation. The number of people employed at the office dropped from six to two after new owner Elon Musk cut the workforce in half. The remaining executives, Julia Mozer and Dario La Nasa, left Twitter last week, according to the Financial Times — just as Musk told employees to commit to his vision for a "hardcore" Twitter 2.0 or leave.

Mozer and La Nasa oversaw public policy for Twitter in Europe. They were in charge of efforts to make sure Twitter complies with the EU's disinformation code as well as the Digital Services Act. The DSA came into force last week and will apply to companies starting in February 2024. It gives EU governments more power over how platforms moderate content and when tech companies have to take down illegal content. Platforms will need to be transparent about the reasons for content moderation decisions. Affected users will have the right to challenge moderation decisions if their content is removed or access to it is restricted.

If Twitter fails to comply with the DSA's rules, it faces potentially heavy penalties. Regulators could fine Twitter up to six percent of its global turnover or even ban the platform. EU internal market commissioner Thierry Breton has warned Musk that Twitter needs to abide by the bloc's content regulations.

Twitter no longer has a communications department that can be asked for comment. Musk said early Thursday that the "general idea" is to limit moderation rules to "illegal content." Minutes earlier, he asked users to reply to him with "anything that Twitter needs to address" in terms of child exploitation on the platform. Regulations about which content is legal can vary significantly by jurisdiction (Germany has fairly strict social media edicts, for instance), and having fewer staff dedicated to ensuring Twitter plays by the rules could make it more difficult for the company to do so.

“I am concerned about the news of firing such a vast amount of staff of Twitter in Europe,” Věra Jourová, an EU vice president who is in charge of the bloc's disinformation code, told the Financial Times. “If you want to effectively detect and take action against disinformation and propaganda, this requires resources. Especially in the context of Russian disinformation warfare, I expect Twitter to fully respect the EU law and honor its commitments."

Meanwhile, several Democratic senators have asked the Federal Trade Commission to determine whether the company has broken consumer protection laws or violated a consent decree with the agency. Among other things, the latter requires Twitter to review new features for potential privacy issues. Earlier this month, it was reported that Twitter engineers have to "self-certify" that they're complying with FTC rules and other laws. The FTC recently said it's “tracking recent developments at Twitter with deep concern.”

If you want smart temperature controls without breaking the bank, you may want to look at the Amazon Smart Thermostat, on sale right now for $42. That's 30 percent off its retail price of $60, matching an all-time low. Considering the thermostat is much cheaper than its big-name competitors even when it isn't on sale, this Black Friday deal provides an unparalleled bang for your buck.

Amazon's thermostat lacks some bells and whistles. For example, it doesn't have a built-in microphone and speaker, or support remote sensors. It also doesn't work with Google Assistant or Apple HomeKit. But if Alexa is already your smart home platform of choice, Amazon's thermostat is a dirt-cheap option that works with most existing 24V HVACs (the most common for residential systems).

For an entry-level offering, it offers a surprisingly sleek and modern design. Its rounded-rectangle shape is similar to ecobee's offerings, while its color scheme mirrors Google Nest products.

Amazon partnered with Honeywell Home for the thermostat, which lets you create routines, set temperatures manually (including remotely), or lets Alexa handle it for you. Additionally, it's Energy Star-certified, and Amazon claims it can save you around $50 on your power bills each year. After signing up, Amazon will even send you an email with details about available rebates from local energy providers.

Installation should be easy, but Amazon includes a "check compatibility" tutorial on the product page that guides you through various details to ensure it will work. One crucial point to check is whether your existing thermostat setup has a C-Wire. If not, you'll want to choose the bundle that includes an adapter.

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