The versatile Google Nest Mini smart speaker is on sale for just $18

The puck-like Nest Mini comes in four colors to match home decor and is wall mountable. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Early Black Friday deals are already landing, so it feels like a good time to start making your list and checking it twice for holiday shopping. How convenient for you that our main holiday gift guide is here and filled with great ideas for your perusal. Also, our budget-friendly guide for gifts under $25 just went up today (and there’s plenty more to come). But you can get an incredible stocking stuffer on a budget with today’s best deal.

The tiny but mighty second-gen Google Nest Mini is on sale for just $18 in all four colors at Walmart. This Google Assistant-powered smart speaker normally sells for $49 and typically gets discounted as low as $25, but $18 is a new low price. It’s easy to recommend one for anyone in your family who might want a compact wall-mountable speaker for playing some tunes or controlling Google Home-compatible smart devices with their voice.

It may not have the room-filling sound of the pricier Nest Audio, but at this price, you can justify buying a few to pop into a few rooms for a whole lot of voice-enabled convenience on tap. Google Assistant can tell you the weather, update you on some of the latest headlines, turn on or off your smart lights, and call up something to play on a Chromecast-connected TV. There are a host of other abilities to try if you become obsessed. Read our review.

Best Buy is offering a great deal on the 15.6-inch Asus TUF Dash gaming laptop, dropping the price from $1,499.99 to $999.99. That savings of $500 makes this midrange laptop an excellent bang for the buck in terms of performance on a modest budget. Spec-wise, it has an Nvidia RTX 3070 GPU, Intel’s Core i7-12650H CPU, 16GB of DDR5 RAM, and a 512GB SSD. Its 1080p display won’t be as pixel dense as a 1440p screen, but that lower resolution should help demanding games run faster on its 144Hz refresh rate screen.

This laptop weighs about 4.4 pounds, putting it on the lighter side when it comes to gaming laptops. If you’re considering making this your productivity machine in addition to your gaming rig, you should know its webcam is only 720p resolution, so don’t expect much.

If you’re in the market for a fitness-focused wearable, the Fitbit Charge 5 is on sale for $99.95 at Wellbots when you use code FITVERGE50 at checkout to save $50. That’s the lowest price we’ve seen on the Charge 5, and it’s running until November 28th.

The Charge 5 may not be the best option if you don’t like a wearable that relies on touch controls, but its color screen and this lower price may make it worthwhile. In terms of perks, it has a lengthy battery life that can survive up to seven days if you opt to not use the always-on display (around two days, if you do). In addition to the requisite fitness tracking, it offers extras, like heart rate, ECG, sleep tracking, and cycle tracking. It can satisfy the most basic of smartwatch needs, too, receiving phone notifications on Android. (It’s a bit more limited on iPhones.) Read our review.

Elsewhere in Fitbit deals land, you can get the newer Fitbit Versa 4 for $149.95 ($80 off) at Wellbots when you use the code FITVERGE80 at checkout. This one’s also running until November 28th, and it’s a pretty substantial savings on Fitbit’s latest model of the Versa. The last-gen Versa 3 was our pick for the best Fitbit for most people, and the Versa 4 doesn’t change a whole lot of the formula in this iteration.

The biggest change for the Versa 4 is its use of a physical button over the last gen’s concave, touch-sensitive “button.” Physical buttons on smartwatches and wearables are a good thing, especially for runners who want tactility to know for certain that a button has been pressed. The Versa 4 also supports voice assistants via either Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, making it a much more cohesive smartwatch experience instead of just another fitness tracker.

Some more hump day deals to stump for:

The newly released Bayonetta 3 for Nintendo Switch is on sale for $51.99 ($8 off) at Walmart. If you want to play it and save, here’s your chance. Read our review.
The iPhone may get USB-C next year, but it’s still Lightning for now. Woot has a small sale on Amazon Basics USB-A to Lightning cables in various colors, ranging from $3.99 for a one-foot cable to $8.99 for a two-pack of six-footers. Use code BUYCABLE at checkout for an additional $3 off through the month of November, or until it sells out.
The JBL Link Portable Wi-Fi / Bluetooth speaker is on sale for $79.99 (about $100 off) direct from JBL. This tiny waterproof speaker has Google Assistant support and comes with a charging cradle.

Apple’s 27-inch Studio Display is $100 off at Amazon, dropping the price of the 5K monitor to a still pricey but not as bad $1,499.99. But hey, if you have the excellent Mac Studio and want the matching monitor that also offers a great mic and speakers (its webcam isn’t as good as you might hope), you might as well save what you can. Read our review.