If you’re feeling the stress of having procrastinated on your holiday shopping — and you missed out during Black Friday and Cyber Monday — we’ve got you. We’ve found a variety of gadgets on sale that make for great gifts, many of which will ship in time for the holidays. One of the standouts is the current promo on Sony’s noise-canceling WH-1000XM5 headphones, which are on sale with a free pair of wireless earbuds. Other deals you may have missed include steep discounts on Amazon’s latest entry-level Kindle and the new Echo Dot Max.
Sony’s last-gen WH-1000XM5 have consistently impressed us with their audio quality, active noise cancellation, and comfort. And right now, Amazon is offering them with a free pair of Sony’s WF-C700N earbuds for $248 ($152 off). The headphones have an updated design that includes a thinner headband, more memory foam in the ear pads, and repositioned mics that reduce wind noise when taking calls. These changes didn’t add much weight, and the headphones still get 30 hours of playtime with ANC enabled.
The XM5 sounded “more refined, detailed, and spacious” in our tests, but we noticed less oomph when listening to EDM or hip-hop tracks with a lot of bass. The headphones have eight microphones, four of which are for voice, and their excellent noise reduction on calls was immediately noticeable, even in louder environments. The $89.99 WF-C700N, meanwhile, are a midrange pair of noise-canceling earbuds with an IPX4 rating, up to seven and a half hours of battery life (with ANC enabled), and a slim design.
Amazon’s 11th-gen Kindle is our favorite budget-friendly e-reader, and you can pick up the ad-supported version for $89.99 ($20 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target. The entry-level ebook reader features a six-inch 300ppi E Ink display that won’t show glare from the sun like your phone or tablet. It has enough storage space to hold thousands of books, or dozens of audiobooks from Audible, the latter of which you can play via Bluetooth headphones or speakers.
The Kindle’s built-in battery lasts up to six weeks, depending on how long you read per day and how reliant you are on its backlight, and recharges over USB-C. It has the same screen resolution and storage as the step-up Kindle Paperwhite, but it’s not waterproof, which may matter if you like to read at the beach or in the bath.
Amazon’s last-minute “Super Saturday” sale is underway, though, we’d argue some of the better deals are actually some the lingering discounts we’re seeing on Amazon’s own devices, many of which have been effect for several weeks. Right now, for instance, you can grab the new Echo Dot Max at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target for $79.99 ($20 off), which is the best price we’ve seen on the smart speaker since it launched.
Despite the name, the Dot Max is less of a follow up to the Echo Dot as it is the fourth-gen Echo from 2020. It’s got a compact knit fabric design, simpler controls, a better processor, and more smart home sensors and radios than prior models (it offers support for Matter, Thread, and Zigbee protocols). It still sounds great for its size, though, and like prior models, it can function as an Wi-Fi extender if you’re looking buoy a Eero mesh network. It’s also one of the first devices to offer Amazon’s AI-powered Alexa Plus out of the box, which, while still very much a work in progress, is a step in the right direction.
