Best Deals on Tech Products Right Now

The Amazfit GTR 3 doesn’t have all the bells and whistles you find in some higher-end smartwatches, but you get the basic health metrics—step counting, heart rate monitoring, and sleep tracking—and you’ll be able to receive alerts from your phone (Android or Apple). The 1.4-inch color display looks sleek and the claimed battery life is an impressive 21 days.

The Pixel Watch 2 is a sleek, high-performing smartwatch that pairs with Android phones. It has a suite of handy health and fitness features—including sleep, step, and heart rate tracking—and sensors that can detect irregular heart rhythms and skin temperature variations, according to the manufacturer. The model can also receive and respond to calls and texts if connected to WiFi and allow you to be hands-free at checkout with tap-to-pay technology. It’s also nice to look at, with a round, 1.2-inch display that our testers find durable and easy to read in low and bright light.

The JBL Xtreme 3 is one hefty hunk of speaker, a tiny bit bigger and a little lighter than its predecessor, the Xtreme 2. In any case, you might be surprised at how large it is when you see it in person. The Xtreme 3 sounds slightly better than its predecessor, too, although it’s very close in overall character. The model can play loud enough to fill a medium-sized to large room. The Xtreme 3 features an internal power bank that can charge other devices and JBL says the speaker is both dustproof and water-resistant to 3 meters, but CR doesn’t test those claims.

The JBL Flip 6 is very similar to the Flip 5 and the Flip 4 before that, and that’s a good thing. This speaker is a under-the-radar classic: It sounds good as long as you don’t play it too loud and it’s small enough to slip into a bag or even the water bottle pocket on a backpack. JBL claims it has the same up-to-12-hour battery life as the Flip 5, too, plus an IPX67 water-resistance rating, which means it can survive a dunking. It’s also dust-resistant.

The JBL Pulse 4 has a transparent dome that covers an array of LED lights, so you can watch it as well as listen. You can adjust the model’s colors or make the LEDs pulse to the music, so you can pump up the light show on Saturday night or tone it down to accent lamp levels after the guests have gone home. The sound quality is more than adequate, with solid but slightly boomy bass, a clear midrange that doesn’t distort vocals, and enough volume to fill a midsized room. That said, you’re paying a lot for the Pulse 4’s visual effects, so you might consider buying the Flip 5 instead and having enough money left over for a nice lamp.

Apple’s entry-level iPad is just $22 more than we saw on Prime Day. It still provides the most bang for your buck, especially when you factor in the number of high-quality apps and services available for the iPad operating system. The model has a 10.9-inch display and 64GB of storage and it records HD video. In our testing, the device delivers enough battery life for a cross-country flight or a day on the go.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S8+ is a workhorse, earning a spot among the top non-Apple tablets CR has tested. It’s a great option if you want a tablet with a large 12.4-inch screen. It does have a shorter battery life than most, at just 7.3 hours for web browsing. It also has expandable storage with a built-in micro SD reader, and it gets high scores for performance, convenience, and versatility.

The TP-Link Kasa Cam Outdoor KC420WS provides impeccable video quality, speedy alerts, and strong data security in our tests. Its many features include two-way audio, voice and app control via Amazon Alexa and Google Home/Assistant, monitoring zones, person alerts, a built-in siren, color night vision, and local video storage when you insert a microSD card (not included). 

Interested in a smart lock but don’t like hubs and dongles? The August WiFi Smart Lock is one of a growing number of smart locks that connect directly to WiFi, with no hub needed. It’s also a retrofit model, meaning it replaces only the interior side of your deadbolt, so you can keep your existing keys. It performs quite well in our tests, including those for ease of remote access and convenience. Features include auto-locking and unlocking, voice and app control (via Amazon Alexa, Apple Home/Siri, Google Home/Assistant, and Samsung SmartThings), access logs, electronic keys, and a door sensor. Amazon just took $13 off its already on-sale price.

The Arlo Comprehensive Smart Home Security System is one of the newer entrants to the DIY alarm system market and its hardware is unusual compared to that of other systems. Instead of offering a variety of sensors, it uses one with eight different functions. That includes detecting motion, opening/closing of doors and windows, water leaks, tilting of garage doors and windows, freezing temperatures, ambient light changes, and the sounds of smoke and CO alarms going off. Even the keypad sensor hub can detect motion and smoke/CO alarm sounds. In our tests, the Arlo system receives strong scores for security essentials, data security, ease of setup, ease of use, and motion detection. You can monitor the system yourself or pay a subscription fee for professional monitoring. The seven-piece Arlo starter kit is also on sale for about 35 percent off the list price.

The Rachio 38ZULW-C is a solid sprinkler controller that’s easy to connect to WiFi and highly responsive to local forecasts. It lost a few points in our tests because the wiring instructions are unclear, and it lacks a backup battery and weatherproof casing. (A weatherproof enclosure is sold separately for $30.) In addition to app controls, the model features manual controls and voice control via Amazon Alexa, Google Home/Assistant, and Samsung SmartThings. It works with up to eight sprinkler zones; four-zone and 16-zone versions are also available.

If you want a MacBook Air, it’s hard to top this deal. The model doesn’t have the M3 chip found in Apple’s latest version, but it still combines fast performance with great battery life and a great display. This one has solid specs, too: 8GB of memory and a 256GB solid-state drive.

This budget laptop from Lenovo is now $70 less than it was recently, making it an exceptionally good deal right now. The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3i 15 laptop is an option for those seeking a balance between performance and portability. It delivers a balanced and satisfying experience overall, and its ergonomics are near top-level. The 15.6-inch display is very good. Specs include an Intel Core i5-1335U 1.3-gigahertz processor, 8 gigabytes of memory, and 256GB of storage; performance is adequate for everyday tasks. Its portability receives our highest rating.

The Sony LinkBuds have an unusual design. They’re made with a big hole in the sides so that they don’t seal off your ears, which lets you listen to your music while still hearing everything that’s going on around you. That’s useful for runners concerned with traffic or anyone who wants to use their headphones where it’s important to keep an ear on their surroundings. They also have a novel feature that lets you control the headphones by tapping on the side of your head (though you can just tap the earbuds themselves if you prefer). Our tests show that the Sony LinkBuds deliver great sound quality. And according to Sony, they have a 5.5-hour battery life, with the carrying case charger adding 12 hours’ worth of battery life.

The Sennheiser Momentum 3 is a stylish true wireless noise-canceling headphone that’s aimed at the high-end market. Both the cloth-covered charger and the earbuds themselves exude elegance, and the model delivers sound that’s satisfying if not quite state of the art, though it’s better than the previous Momentum 2. On the feature front, it’s sweat-resistant and compatible with both Apple’s Siri and Google Assistant.

These superb-sounding noise-canceling earbuds, now back to just about their best price, are a worthy successor to Sony’s popular WF-1000XM4 model. They’re smaller, lighter, and sleeker, and come packed with plenty of features, including variable noise cancellation, an ambient sound mode to actively pipe in audio from your surroundings, and Speak-to-Chat, which can automatically pause your music when you start talking. But most importantly, the sound quality of the XM5s is state-of-the-art for an earbud, and the noise cancellation is top-notch.

This 75-inch 4K Amazon Fire TV, part of the company’s step-up Omni series, offers very good overall picture quality, though less-than-impressive HDR. (It supports HDR10, HLG, and Dolby Vision.) Its main drawbacks are a limited peak brightness, and the lack of any local dimming feature to improve blacks and contrast. (It supports HDR10, HLG, and Dolby Vision.) As you’d imagine, it has Alexa built in for hands-free control and searches.

Right now this 50-inch, entry-level Fire TV set, is available only at Amazon and Best Buy, at the same price—which is quite low for a TV this size. We’re including it because it offers very decent overall picture quality, though it can’t really provide an HDR experience. A plus is the set’s better-than-average sound.

The 43-inch Amazon B09N6LRBTR is down to a new low price, beating the previous best by $10. It is a new Omni Series set that—unlike older, smaller Omni TVs—supports Dolby Vision HDR. This set does well in our tests, especially for 4K UHD picture quality, but like most of the Omni TVs we’ve tested, it lacks sufficient peak brightness to produce a compelling HDR experience. This model supports Amazon’s new “ambient” feature, which lets the TV display artwork and photos when you’re not watching TV programming.

This 65-inch set is in Roku’s new flagship Pro-series of QLED TVs for 2024, situated above the Plus models in the company’s TV lineup. (The company’s streaming platform has been built into TVs from other companies for several years, but Roku’s own sets were introduced just last year—and some perform very well.) Its high-end features include a 120-hertz panel, quantum dots, and Mini LED backlights—that’s a technology that can really improve contrast and black levels. This set supports both Dolby Vision IQ HDR and Dolby Atmos sound, a surround-sound technology. CR’s extensive lab testing shows that the TV provides very good overall picture quality and the best HDR performance we’ve seen from a Roku-made model. It also has very good sound quality (though a great soundbar can still help) and a wider-than-average viewing angle for an LCD-based set.

This 75-inch Q7-series set from TCL, a mid-tier QLED model from 2023, delivers very good overall picture quality, though only decent HDR and sound. It has a full-array LED backlight with local dimming, which helps improve blacks and contrast, and several gaming features, plus support for Dolby Vision and HDR10+ HDR and Dolby Atmos audio. Like most of the 2023 TCL sets we’ve tested, it uses the Google TV smart platform, with Google Assistant and Chromecast built in.

The Vizio M512e-K6 is an M-series Elevate 5.1.2-channel soundbar that delivers very good overall sound quality, so it’s a good choice for both music and movie soundtracks. It’s a 2022 model that, like other Elevate models, has an unusual design that features rotating drivers at each end of the enclosure that can swivel to project sound up toward the ceiling when listening to Dolby Atmos or DTS:X content.

Tech editor Chris Raymond has his finger on the pulse of all things tech, and he found the mesh router he uses in his own home at a discount during the sale.

"I bought this mesh router system back when I started working at home full-time, and it still makes me smile. It’s inexpensive (especially at this price), easy to set up (using the TP-Link mobile app), and effectively eliminates the WiFi dead spots in my modest-sized home. In fact, I even get a reliable signal on the backyard patio now."

This is a good deal for a mesh router three-pack from Nest that did well in our ratings, providing fast speeds even across long distances inside larger homes. There are useful features like automatic firmware updates and app-based management. It’s a WiFi 5 model, which, yes, is the older standard, but it should still provide years of reliable service.

This is a pretty good deal on one of the better-rated wireless routers that we’ve tested. The Asus ZenWiFi router uses the current WiFi standard known as WiFi 6, which improves performance relative to WiFi 5 as you add more and more devices to your WiFi network. Like many modern routers, it has a mobile app that you can use to set up and manage everything. And it has a feature known as QoS that helps ensure that, say, your Zoom calls stay rock solid even if someone else on the network is watching Netflix or playing Xbox.