The PlayStation 5 is $50 off, plus the rest of the week’s best tech deals

Both versions of the PlayStation 5 are $50 off, which means the standard “slim” model is down to $449 and the disc-less variant is available for $399. These prices are available at several retailers, including Amazon, Walmart, Target and Sony’s own PlayStation Direct store. They aren’t the best deals we’ve ever seen — Sony once bundled the console with a copy of Spider-Man 2 for the same price — and rumors of an upcoming “PS5 Pro” have persisted for the past few months. But steeper discounts for the device have been pretty rare, so this is a fine time to take the plunge if you’ve been waiting for a sale. Like most of the other PlayStation-related deals we highlight below, Sony says these offers will be available through August 5.

If you already own a PS5, meanwhile, Sony’s official console side plates are $10 off via PlayStation Direct as well. That drops the black cover set to $45 and the red, blue and silver finishes down to $50. Each price matches an all-time low. Nobody needs one of these things, of course, but any sort of savings should be welcome if you’d like to shake up your PS5’s vibe. 

Sticking with PlayStation hardware, Sony’s PlayStation VR2 headset is still on sale for $350 at several retailers, while a bundle that includes the adventure game Horizon Call of the Mountain is down to $400. Those are both $200 discounts and the lowest prices we’ve seen.

To be clear, the PSVR2 is far from an essential purchase. The actual hardware is great, but it’s not backwards-compatible with games made for the original PSVR, and its current library is relatively anemic, without a real killer app. A recent Android Central report suggests we won’t see many more first-party games in the future, either. The Meta Quest 3 remains a better buy for most people in the market for a general-purpose VR headset.

Instead, we’re mainly highlighting the PSVR2 because Sony plans to make it compatible with gaming PCs next week. You’ll need to buy a separate $60 adapter to make that work, but it should open the device up to a much wider range of actually decent games, provided your PC can run them. The Quest 3 currently costs $500, so if you’re looking to save some cash and mainly want a headset for VR gaming on PC, this should end up being an OK deal. We gave the PSVR2 a review score of 84 last year.

Naturally, Sony’s sale also covers a number of PS4 and PS5 games we recommend. There are too many discounts for us to list everything here, but some highlights include the aforementioned Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 for a low of $50 (a $20 discount), the mammoth RPG Baldur’s Gate III for $56 ($14 off), the challenging roguelike Returnal and the Demon’s Souls remake for $30 each ($40 off MSRP) and the recent remaster of The Last of Us Part II for $40 ($20 off). These discounts are spread out across third-party retailers and Sony’s digital store. We’ve seen most of them before, but they’re about as low as each game goes outside of Black Friday, so it’s not the worst time to take advantage if you’re looking for something new to sink into during the slow summer months.

Apple’s second-gen AirPods are back down to $70 at Amazon, Walmart and Best Buy, matching their lowest price to date. The pair has typically retailed between $80 and $90 over the past few months, though they (egregiously) cost $129 from Apple directly. Can we heartily recommend these wireless earbuds in 2024? No, there are better options available for less, and Apple is expected to introduce new models by the end of the year. Still, we realize that a whole lot of people like how easily AirPods work with other Apple devices, and we know that some prefer this kind of open-back design, which doesn’t dig into the ear canal. If you’re absolutely dead set on a pair of Apple earbuds, this price is at least a little easier to stomach.

The white version of the Beats Fit Pro is down to $140 at Amazon subsidiary Woot, which is the lowest price we’ve seen and about $40 less than the earphones’ average street price in recent months. It’s also $10 below the price we saw during Amazon’s Prime Day sale last month.

The Fit Pro is the top pick in our guide to the best wireless earbuds for running, as it puts many of the AirPods’ Apple-friendly conveniences in a more gym-friendly design with stabilizing wings. You don’t get all the same features — there’s no Adaptive Audio mode, for one — and its ANC and battery life aren’t class-leading by any means. There’s no multi-device connectivity or wireless charging, either. But its punchy sound should play well on the treadmill, and its physical control buttons are a bit more reliable than most touch controls. We gave the Fit Pro a score of 87 in 2021.

The Twelve South AirFly Duo is a tiny transmitter that lets you connect your wireless headphones to devices with a 3.5mm jack but no built-in Bluetooth, such as a plane’s in-flight entertainment system. You can pair two headphones to the dongle simultaneously, and Twelve South rates its battery life at more than 20 hours. We’ve recommended it in past gift guides. Right now the device is on sale for $30 at Amazon and Best Buy, which is a $15 discount and the lowest price we’ve seen.

The stylish 8BitDo Retro Mechanical Keyboard is on sale for a new low of $60 at Woot. That’s about $35 off its average street price in recent months. This price applies to the “Fami” edition of the wireless keyboard, which is designed to resemble Nintendo’s old Famicom console. Another model that looks more like the NES is also on sale for $10 more.

While this device didn’t make our guide to the best mechanical keyboards, we have recommended it in certain gift guides. The retro aesthetic is the main appeal, but its tenkeyless frame feels well-built and its hot-swappable Kailh Box White V2 switches are pleasant to type on. It also comes with a set of giant macro-programmable “Super Buttons,” which aren’t the most practical things but are still fun to whack. Just be aware that there’s no backlighting and the default switches are fairly noisy. If you want to add a touch of nostalgia to your desk, though, this is a decent deal.

Nintendo is running a promo that dishes out 1,000 My Nintendo Gold Points when you buy or renew a one-year Family membership to its Switch Online service. The deal applies to both the standard and Expansion Pack tiers, which cost $35 and $80, respectively. Just make sure you click the “opt-in” prompt on the offer’s landing page to receive the points.

As a refresher, Gold Points are a currency you can use to buy games and DLC on Nintendo’s digital store. The 1,000 points included here is equivalent to $10. Switch Online, meanwhile, gives access to online multiplayer, cloud saves and a library of retro NES, SNES and Game Boy games. The Expansion Pack tier throws in a selection of Nintendo 64, Game Boy Advance and Sega Genesis games, plus some DLC packs for titles like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Animal Crossing: New Horizons. You can still get an individual Switch Online membership for less, but the Family tier lets you split a subscription between eight separate accounts. 

A new Nintendo console is widely expected to arrive next year, but we expect that device to continue using Switch Online. If you were planning to tack on another year of service anyway, it’s hard to complain about a bonus $10. Nintendo says this offer will last through August 11.

The Google Pixel 8a is $100 off at Amazon and Best Buy, bringing the base 128GB model down to $399 and the 256GB version down to $459. Those are new lows for the unlocked models.

We call the Pixel 8a the best midrange Android phone in our guide to the best smartphones, and we gave it a review score of 90 back in May. It takes most of the headline features from last year’s Pixel 8 — excellent cameras, a crisp OLED display, clean software, seven years of software updates and the same Tensor G3 chip — and puts them in a slightly cheaper plastic frame with slower charging speeds. The Pixel 8 is on sale as well if you can spare another $100, though Google has already confirmed it’ll showcase new Pixel 9 phones in a couple of weeks. Still, if you’re on a tighter budget, the Pixel 8a should remain the year’s best value among Android phones.

Best Buy is selling a number of Amazon Echo devices for the same prices we saw during last month’s Prime Day sale. The Echo Show 8, for one, is $65 off and down to an all-time low of $85, while the latest Echo, Echo Dot and Echo Dot Kids are available for $55, $25 and $28, respectively. Best Buy says each of these discounts will end on August 4.

The Echo Show 8 is the top Alexa option in our guide to the best smart displays, as its 8-inch panel strikes the right balance between being spacious enough for streaming or video calls and being compact enough to fit on a kitchen counter or bedside table. The Dot and standard Echo, meanwhile, are both picks in our smart speaker buying guide. Alexa can still be awkward on either device, but it continues to be useful for basic voice requests and smart home control, while the speakers themselves offer decent sound for their respective prices.

The latest Fire HD 10 tablet is also down to a low of $75 at Best Buy and Target. That’s about $20 below the device’s usual price during past sales. 

The Fire HD 10 has the same issues of any Fire slate: There’s no Google Play store, so its app support is severely lacking typical Android tablet (let alone an iPad), and its UI strongly nudges you toward Amazon’s own apps and services. At this price, though, its 10.1-inch 1080p display is perfectly decent, and it runs well enough for basic web browsing, ebook reading and video streaming. Battery life checks in at more than 10 hours, and while this model only has 32GB of storage, you can expand that fairly easily with a microSD card. If you really can’t afford an iPad, it’s an alright value. 

We’ll note that the smaller Fire HD 8 is also on sale for $50, but that one is slower and has a worse display, so we aren’t as hot on it.

Best Buy has a version of the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 with a Ryzen 9 8945HS processor, an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 GPU, 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD on sale for $1,600. That’s $400 off ASUS’ list price and the best deal we’ve seen for this configuration, which also includes a 120Hz OLED display with G-Sync support.

We gave the ROG Zephyrus G14 a review score of 91 earlier this year, calling it “the 14-inch gaming laptop to beat.” Its unibody aluminum frame is unusually svelte for a gaming machine, it has plenty of ports, and that OLED panel is wonderfully vivid. You may need to tweak a few settings in certain titles, but this config is powerful enough to play many AAA games at its native resolution (2,880 x 1,800) and comfortably smooth if you drop to 1080p. The drawbacks are that its memory is soldered and it can get a bit toasty under load. Battery life, while fine for a gaming laptop, isn’t anything special either. But if you want a gaming-ready machine that’s neither an anchor nor an eyesore, this is the one we recommend.