Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
It’s a pretty good day for deals on Samsung displays (and other deals, too). Starting off, the Samsung 32-inch M8 Smart Monitor is on sale for $529.99 in white at Amazon and Best Buy or in any of its four airy colors direct from Samsung. This $170 discount is around the best price you can get for this unique monitor. It may not be the outright best at any one thing, but its 4K resolution and long list of features make it a convenient display for combining work and play on one screen. It’s kind of ideal for apartment living, where you may not have the room for a big TV and a monitor, especially if you work remotely and find yourself using your laptop for everything from Slack to Netflix.
The M8 has built-in speakers and a microphone, and it includes an attachable webcam with decent quality. Its software supports a bevy of built-in streaming apps, AirPlay support, and a handy remote control. I’m not saying you should glue yourself to your chair from morning till night, but this monitor can cover all the bases. Just remember to take the occasional walk outside, okay?
You can definitely buy a much better dedicated TV and purpose-built monitor, but if you don’t have the room or budget for both, the M8 is a fine compromise for handling both purposes. Read our review.
All right, now for a much larger Samsung display that demands to be shown off like art. Samsung’s latest version of its 55-inch Frame TV is on sale for $997.99 at Amazon or $999.99 at Target and Best Buy. That’s about $500 off this excellent TV that allows you to dress up your living space a little since you can display some artwork on its matte display while it’s not in use. The latest Frame uses an anti-glare screen that makes the available art pieces to display look much more convincing and less reflective than the previous generation. It can also be easily flush-mounted to a wall since all the ports are on a breakout box that easily tucks away out of sight.
The Frame supports 4K resolution at 120Hz, though its other specs are mostly in the “ok” department. For example, it lacks any local dimming. But if you care more about interior design than TV specs, this is probably your best bet, for now at least. Amazon’s new Fire TV Omni is clearly aiming at the same crowd. Read our eyes-on impressions.
You can get the latest ad-supported Kindle Paperwhite in used condition from Woot for just $84.99, which is about 40 percent cheaper than a new model currently sells for. This saves you $40, and it’s $10 cheaper than Amazon’s own refurbished model. Though, the one on sale at Woot is listed as being in “very good” condition and comes with a 90-day warranty, whereas the Amazon refurb includes a one-year warranty.
The 2021 Paperwhite is a great improvement over the generation that came before it, with a larger 6.8-inch display, adjustable color temperature, USB-C port, and a battery that lasts for weeks, even with frequent use. Here’s another reminder that this e-reader includes ads, which, thankfully, you have the option to remove later for $20 if you find yourself hating them. The upcoming Kindle Scribe, with its included stylus and much higher price, seems intriguing, but the Paperwhite is a great reading experience that doesn’t break the bank. Read our review.
There are all kinds of robot vacuums out there, but not all of them feature lidar, which is helpful in preventing your bot from bumping into your furniture and leaving marks over time. The Shark AI Ultra XL is on sale for $369.99 ($280 off) from Woot, sold through Amazon (Amazon owns Woot, so it’s safe to say this third-party seller isn’t sketchy, like some others). This discount is just $20 away from the Shark’s all-time low price, which we saw during the recent Amazon Prime Early Access Sale.
One of the coolest things about the Shark, aside from the aforementioned lidar, is that it’s sold with an auto-emptying station that it can dump trash into. That makes this sale price an exceptional value, as normally, you’d be looking at standalone bots without a dock in this range. Also, this dock doesn’t rely on disposable bags that you have to keep purchasing — you just empty it into the trash. Plus, the Shark has some excellent suction force, with the main tradeoff being it’s kind of loud and annoying to be in close proximity to while running. Read our robot vacuum buying guide.
Tuesdays aren’t much better than Mondays, so here are more deals:
A four-pack of GE CYNC Smart LED color-changing bulbs is $37.49 ($14.47 off) at Amazon as an exclusive sale for Prime members. Like most smart bulbs, you can set schedules and timers, and they’re compatible with Google Home and Amazon Alexa.
For a smart lighting deal that doesn’t require Prime, the 1,100-lumen Wyze RGB LED smart bulb is just $9.08 ($6.90 off) per bulb at Amazon. It’s also compatible with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.
When we reviewed the Asus ROG Strix Flare II Animate mechanical keyboard, our own Alice Newcome-Beill found the hot-swappable mechanical keyboard to be a little overpriced at its $219.99 asking price. But now you can get this board with dot matrix LEDs for $189.99 at Amazon. Extra points to anyone that gets the Verge logo running on that dot matrix panel.
There are a lot of USB-C dongles, but if you want one with a bunch of connectivity to sit under your laptop and offer rear-facing ports for a cleaner look, the IOGEAR USB-C eight-port low-profile docking station is $71.95 when you clip the on-page coupon to save $18. This hub has one USB-C port (for charging), three USB-A ports, SD / microSD card slots, HDMI-out, DisplayPort, Ethernet, and even VGA.