Prime Day Tech Deals Live Blog: Breaking Savings on SSDs, CPUs, GPUs and More

We’re on the cusp of AMD’s launch of its new Zen 5 processors, so there’s never been a better time to score a deal on the company’s current lineup. The potent Ryzen 5 7600X is now on sale for an all-time low of $174 for Prime Day 2024, a savings of $35 over its regular pricing. 

The sale is just the icing on the cake, though—the Ryzen 5 7600X was already a stellar deal at its price point, taking the lead in our list of the best CPUs for gaming in the value category. The Ryzen 5 7600X competes with the $199 Core i5-14400, more affordable B650 AM5 motherboards, and receding DDR5 pricing combiner to make this chip the go-to model in the value segment. 

The Ryzen 5 7600X’s six cores run at a 4.7 GHz base and 5.3 GHz boost and are fed by 32MB of speedy L3 cache. The chip supports all the standards we expect from a modern processor, including DDR5, PCIe 5.0, and the latest USB connectivity interfaces. AMD has also added integrated graphics for a basic display out, which is a plus if you need to troubleshoot.   

You can fully overclock the 7600X’s CPU cores for a decent increase in performance. In contrast, Intel’s competing chips in this price range aren’t overclockable.

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Above, you can see our latest in-depth benchmarking of this chip. The Ryzen 5 7600X easily outperforms competing chips in its older, higher price range. Now, at $174, this chip represents a stellar gaming value. 

The Ryzen 5 7600X doesn’t come with a cooler, but there’s a wide selection of affordable tower air coolers and AIOs to keep the chip comfortably cool. You’ll need a new AM5 motherboard, and the AM5 platform provides forward compatibility with future Ryzen processors — a boon if you plan to upgrade in the future. 

This class of chip is best with a B-series board, but do your research before you pull the trigger —some of the bargain-basement options don’t provide robust enough power circuitry to upgrade to higher-tier processors in the future. If you’re looking for other options, check out our list of best Amazon Prime Day CPU deals for more savings. 

HyperX Cloud III Wired Gaming Headset Now Just $66

The HyperX Cloud III gaming headset is, hands-down, the most comfortable headset I’ve ever worn — and I’m very picky about headsets (I prefer to listen to everything over speakers, but the rest of my household prefers that I don’t). This wired gaming headset is not only comfortable and well-made, it’s very budget-friendly — and now you can get it for even cheaper because it’s just $66.49 at Amazon, down from $99.99 — a 30% discount. 

The Cloud III has re-engineered 53mm dynamic drivers with a frequency response range of 10 – 21,000 Hz, which is slightly wider than the average gaming headset (20 – 20,000 Hz). It has a great bass response, slightly restrained mids, and bright (maybe too bright) highs — it’s a surprisingly balanced sound profile for a gaming headset.

The Cloud III also features a detachable 10mm boom microphone with a cardioid polar pattern and an internal mesh pop filter. The mic sounds fine — it’s not the best, but it’s not terrible. Of course, with the money you’re saving on the Cloud III, you can always pick up the Logitech G Yeti Orb for $47.49 at Amazon (down from $59.99).

Read our full review of the HyperX Cloud III here

— Sarah

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 is a stout GPU that holds a spot on our list of best graphics cards, and today its on sale for $499 for Amazon Prime Day 2024. That’s a welcome sight after several years without any meaningful GPU deals on Prime Day. You’ll need to use the code FANDUA5762 to bring it down to its new, lower price.

The Gigabyte RTX 4070 Gaming OC is no slouch — this custom card has three RGB fans and a beefy cooler that provides extra cooling for long gaming sessions. The card also comes with a factory overclock to 2565 MHz, a 90 MHz improvement over the standard configuration. 

This Nvidia RTX 4070 card comes bristling with 12GB of GDDR6X memory running at 21 Gbps across a 192-bit memory interface. As you can see in our GPU benchmark hierarchy, the Gigabyte RTX 4070 Gaming OC beats the Radeon RX 7800 XT by more than 20% in our ray tracing benchmarks, though the AMD card is still about 10% faster in standard rasterization benchmarks. 

At its deal price of $499, the RTX 4070 is hard to beat, particularly when you factor in the power of DLSS and Nvidia’s other features. If you’re looking to upgrade to a new GPU, this will probably be one of very, very few GPU deals as we work through Prime Day.

Logitech’s Budget-Friendly Yeti Orb is Now Even Cheaper

It’s time to stop talking to your teammates, friends, and colleagues through the built-in mic on your laptop — even a great gaming headset mic can’t compete with the quality of a standalone USB mic. Don’t worry, you don’t have to spend a lot to up your audio game: Logitech’s Yeti Orb was a very reasonably priced $59.99 at launch, and now it’s just $47.49 (21% off) at Amazon for Prime Day.

The Yeti Orb is a simple, easy-to-use USB microphone with a condenser capsule and a single (cardioid) polar pattern. It comes with a sturdy tripod desktop stand and two mounting attachment points, so you can mount it at an angle on the tripod stand or on a different mount, such as a boom arm. It has no on-device controls, but it does have a handy light-up logo that changes colors when the mic is recording — it’s always good to know when your mic is recording. 

It records audio at 24-bit / 48 kHz and has a frequency response range of 70 – 20,000 Hz. That’s not quite as wide as you’ll find on some other USB mics, but the Yeti Orb performed very well in our hands-on testing: voices sounded warm and full, especially when we were close to the mic. The only real downside to this mic is that its desktop stand, while sturdy, is fixed-height — so you may need to invest in something a little taller to get the best experience. It also comes with Logitech’s G Hub and Blue Vo!ce software, which offers some EQ and noise cancellation tweaks to make your voice sound even better. 

Read our full review of the Yeti Orb here

— Sarah

A strong RTX 4060 laptop is on sale for $849

It’s often hard to find an Nvidia xx60-level GPU in a gaming laptop under $1,000. That’s why the Acer Nitro V 15 caught our eye over at Best Buy for $849.99 (down from $1,099.99). The laptop has a 13th Gen Intel Core i7-13620H and an Nvidia RTX 4060, along with 16GB of DDR5 RAM and 512GB of storage. 

The display is a 15.6-inch, 1080p screen with a 144 Hz refresh rate. The RTX 4060 should be able to push some esports games to that frame rate, which might make this affordable notebook popular among competitive gamers on a budget.

The 16GB of RAM is nothing to shake a stick at — it’s surprising to see that below $1,000 without a sale. While you could always upgrade later, there’s nothing like having it out of the box. 512GB isn’t the largest SSD for a gaming rig, but you can open the machine and add more storage down the line.

This is among the cheapest gaming laptops we’ve seen with this GPU during this Prime Day and its adjacent sales. The Nitro line isn’t known for being fanciful, but at this price, the specs are pretty solid and should be able to play most games at high settings.

— Andrew E. Freedman

Alienware’s 34-inch QD-OLED Monitor Now $699 (All-Time Low)

Whoa! If you want to game with gorgeous color, it’s hard to find a better monitor than Alienware’s AW3423DWF. The 34-inch, curved display uses QD-OLED technology to provide vibrant colors and contrast levels s high that our instruments could not measure them. 

It operates at 165 Hz, fast enough for smooth gaming, and has a 21:9 aspect ratio with a resolution of 3440 x 1440. When we reviewed the AW3423DWF, we gave it 5 stars, our highest rating, because of its stunning images, smooth motion and wide color gamut.

Normally, this monitor goes for $899 (and it has a $999 MSRP). But today, Dell has it for $699, its lowest price ever.

If you can afford that $699, you’ll be hard pressed to find a better monitor. Sure, there are screens that can do higher refresh rates, but the image quality here is spectacular.

The subtle Alienware m16 R2 is $550 off at Best Buy

We’ve seen a major trend in gaming laptops this year when it comes to design. Specifically, there have been plenty of laptop manufacturers making subdued machines that don’t advertise that they’re all about gaming.

One of those machines, the Alienware m16 R2, is down to $1,299.99 at Best Buy (was $1,849.99)

In our review of this exact configuration, we praised Alienware’s comfortable keyboard, strong build quality, and variety of ports. We found the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H and Nvidia RTX 4070 offered competent gaming performance.

The system features a “Stealth Mode” that you activate with Fn + F2, which shuts off any RGB lighting and replaces it with a soft white, and also sets the fans to be quieter while you work.

With change you save on the sale, you could use it to upgrade the laptop. The M16 R2 has two M.2 PCIe slots, two DDR5-5600 SODIMM slots, as well as a serviceable wireless card and battery.

— Andrew E. Freedman

iBuyPower TraceMesh Core i7-14700F and RTX 4060 Ti gaming desktop just $1,099

If you’re looking for a budget desktop gaming rig that won’t break the bank, there’s an excellent deal currently available for Amazon Prime Day from iBuyPower. The company’s TraceMesh desktop gaming PC (TMI7N46T01) is currently priced at $1,099.99, nearly 20 percent off its list price of $1,349.99. It’s also $50 less than the previous low for the computer.

At the heart of the TMI7N46T01 is a 14th-generation Core i7-14700F processor paired with 32GB of DDR5-5600 memory (2 x 16GB). Graphics duties are handled by a GeForce RTX 4060 Ti (8GB), and you’ll find a 1TB PCIe NVMe SSD to store all your games (luckily, there are plenty of expansion slots for additional storage). If your desk is a bit too far from your home’s router, the system includes built-in 802.11ac Wi-Fi.

RGB is in full effect with the TMI7N46T01, as you’ll find it on the triple intake fans on the enclosure, the single exhaust fan, and even the CPU fan. You’ll also find RGB on the included gaming keyboard and mouse. And you get a great look inside the case with the tempered glass side panel.

On the software side, the TMI7N46T01 comes preloaded with Windows 11 Home. In addition, iBuyPower claims that the system ships free of bloatware, which is a big plus. Not everyone wants to spend time decluttering their system with bloatware apps like McAfee and Norton Antivirus. 

This is a Lightning Deal on the TMI7N46T01, so a limited quantity is available. As of this writing, 49 percent of allocated units have been claimed, so act fast!

— Brandon Hill

The best controller for PC gaming is on sale

There’s basically no reason to pay full price for an Xbox controller — they go on sale for seemingly every holiday and sale event. And since it’s Prime Day, you can get it for its lowest price ever.

The Xbox Core Wireless gaming controller, the one designed for the Xbox Series X and Series S, is down to $44 on Amazon from $59.99, as long as you’re willing to get it in black or white as opposed to a series of fun colors.

Granted, some of the fun colors are on sale, too. For instance, the shock blue color is down to $48 (from $64.99), but there’s also an additional $3.01 coupon. The velocity green version is $49, with a $4.01 coupon. Basically every color has some kind of deal, just look out for clickable coupons.

So whether your joysticks are going, you need an extra for co-op play, or maybe you let your controllers get a little dirtier than you care to admit, now’s one of the best times of the year to grab an extra.

The Xbox controller is often considered the best controller for PC gaming because it works so well with Windows games. Most of them use the Xbox button layout by default, and the Xbox button works with Xbox Game Bar.

— Andrew E. Freedman

Gigabyte Aorus Radeon RX 6900 XT Xtreme Waterforce WB falls below $380 for Prime Day

If you’re looking for a fast, water-cooled graphics card but don’t want to spend the big bucks, we have an excellent option for you today (with a few caveats). The Gigabyte Aorus Radeon RX 6900 XT Xtreme Waterforce WB is currently on sale for a low price of $379.99 at Amazon for Prime Day, making it 40 percent below the typical asking price of $629.99. This is also a new low for the Aorus Radeon RX 6900 XT Xtreme Waterforce WB.

The Radeon RX 6900 XT debuted three years ago and has been a mainstay in AMD’s GPU lineup. While it’s an older GPU, its performance is roughly comparable to the more modern Radeon RX 7800 XT, albeit it uses slightly more power and isn’t as good for AI tasks. But for those who simply want to game and don’t care too much about running Stable Diffusion, the Radeon RX 6900 XT still deserves your attention. Also, the $379.99 price makes this deal about $120 cheaper than the current going rate for Radeon RX 7800 XT cards.

In this case, Gigabyte’s offering comes equipped with 16GB of GDDR6 memory, a boost clock of 2525 MHz, and a game clock of 2,375 MHz. This dual-slot card has two DisplayPort 1.4a ports and two HDMI 2.1 ports on the I/O plate, and Gigabyte recommends a 900W power supply to fuel this beast.

We mentioned the increased power consumption as one caveat for the Aorus Radeon RX 6900 XT Xtreme Waterforce WB, but the other to consider is that you’ll need a custom liquid loop for this card. This isn’t an all-in-one solution, so you’ll need to factor that added cost and setup/configuration into the equation when selecting this card.

But for the price, it’s definitely worth looking at, even with those considerations in mind.

— Brandon Hill

This 200W charging station could change how you use your couch

One item I’d really like to buy this Prime Day is a new charging station for the living room. Right now, I have a great 6-port Anker charger that sits on a table next to my couch. Everyone from my kids to my mom to any guests we have over immediately comes and plugs their phone or tablet or smart watch in to charge.

However, the charging station I have, which itself is on sale for $19.99, only has USB Type-A ports and can only output 60W in total. That’s fine most of the time, but what if I want to use my laptop while I’m sitting on the couch? 

To charge most laptops, you need a USB-C port that can deliver at least 45W, preferably more.  Anker’s Prime charger fits the bill, providing four US Type-C ports, two of which can deliver a total of 100W together; the company claims that it can charge two 15-inch MacBook Pros to 50 percent at once in just 28 minutes. There are also two USB Type-A ports, allowing you to charge up to six devices simultaneously.

Right now at Amazon, it’s $55, reduced from $79.

There are cheaper alternatives from other brands on the market, but Anker is a highly-trusted brand and that makes me feel more confident about the product’s longevity. 

Get an entry-level gaming laptop for just $599

Gaming is an expensive hobby, even with entry-level computers. But over at Walmart, a 15.6-inch HP Victus is on sale for just $599, down from $979.

The laptop packs an AMD Ryzen 5 8645HS and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050, which should let you play most games at medium to high settings. You get a 1080p display with a 144 Hz refresh rate, 512GB of storage and 8GB of RAM. Unfortunately, that 8GB stick is single-channel, but you can upgrade that down the line.

It’s been a bit since we reviewed the Victus, but that single-channel RAM was one of our least favorite parts. But we reviewed it with a lesser GPU and found the performance to be good for the price, so this deal with an RTX 4050 should give you a bit of a boost.

The Victus is a bit of a crossover laptop, with a design meant to fit in at esports competitions, but also in coffee shops or schools. The full numberpad should be good for Excel spreadsheets when you’re not using the keys for macros in MMORPGs.

— Andrew E. Freedman

This Finirsi soldering iron kit is a red-hot deal at Amazon!

 The Fnirsi HS-01 soldering iron is always on my desk. It has been since I reviewed it last summer. I’ve got a Yihua 938BD+ soldering station ready to go, but for small fixes, the Fnirsi is always ready for action. Powered by USB C, of which this kit includes a wall wart, the Fnirsi takes nine seconds to heat up to 350 degrees Celsius! My Yihua soldering station takes a full minute to stabilize at this temperature!

The included tips cover precision soldering tasks with ease. You’ll be able to easily solder through hole components, and many surface mount too. If you need thermal mass, then the larger tips, including chisel tips provide the best means to get the heat into the largest of joints.

 The kit comes with a stand to securely rest the soldering iron, and when you are done you can contain the warm soldering iron tip in the aluminum cap. As I said at the start, this iron has been on my desk for a year. It has soldered hundreds of LEDs into a blinking LED “supercomputer” and was there when I broke a solder connection on a board.  

 This is a great soldering iron and challenges the Miniware TS-101 for the best soldering iron title. I class the Fnirsi Hs-01 as the best traveling soldering iron, the iron that you want in your EDC / bug out kit. The price of the kit is a little more than buying just the soldering iron, like I did, but you get the power supply, bits, stand and USB C cable, which all add up! 

TP-Link’s Archer BE800 Wi-Fi 7 router hits lowest price yet at $350

Wi-Fi 7 routers are all the rage these days, as they offer the fastest wireless speeds and added capacity for the dozens of devices in your home. The main problem with these early examples is that they’re prohibitively expensive, often ranging from $700 to over $2,000. Thankfully, today’s Prime Day discount on the TP-Link Archer BE800 takes it down to a price that puts it more in line with some high-end Wi-Fi 6E routers. The Archer BE800 has an MSRP of $599 but is currently on sale for $349.99 for Prime subscribers. To put that price into perspective, this is $100 less than the previous low for this router, putting it in contention among the best Wi-Fi routers.

The Archer BE800 is a tri-band router, offering 2.4 GHz (1,376 Mbps), 5 GHz (5,760 Mbps), and 6 GHz (11,520 Mbps) bands. The router incorporates eight internal antennas to ensure that coverage is spread evenly throughout your home or office. On the wired connectivity front, you’ll find two 10 GbE ports (one for WAN/LAN) and four 2.5 GbE ports. Wireless expansion is also on the table, as the Archer BE800 is EasyMesh compatible — you can link up with other compatible routers to form a mesh Wi-Fi network, further extending your wireless coverage.

Although it won’t affect your wireless performance, the Archer BE800 includes a neat Wi-Fi panel on the front that uses a dot matrix array to display text, the current time, or even the weather. Over 3,000 customized graphics are available to showcase on the front of the Archer BE800.

The TP-Link Archer BE800 is an easy upgrade for your aging Wi-Fi 5 or Wi-Fi 6 network, and with the new low price of $349.99, it’s also easy to recommend. Depending on your location, you can even get free next-day

— Brandon Hill

$18 a Core: AMD’s 12-Core Ryzen 9 5900X Hits All-Time Low

If you want do more than your fair share of multitasking and productivity work, you will benefit from having more CPU cores. And few chips have more cores than AMD’s Ryzen 9 5900X, which comes with 12 cores, 24 threads and a maximum boost clock of 4.8 GHz. 

Now, the Ryzen 9 5900X is now just $224 at Amazon. For those doing the math, it’s just $18 a core or $9 a thread. That’s its lowest price ever in practical terms, though for a couple of hours yesterday it was $214 at Newegg (perhaps a pricing mistake?).

The catch, if you consider it one, is that the Ryzen 9 5900X is a last-gen CPU so it’s not as fast or advanced as the current-gen Ryzen 9 7900X, which these days goes for $329. However, the 5900X uses AM4-socketed motherboards and DDR4 RAM, both of which are cheaper than the current-gen alternatives.  

On our CPU hierarchy page, the Ryzen 9 5900X gets a 58.02% mark in multithreaded benchmarks (Ryzen 9 7950X is the standard at 100%). And, for single-threaded, it gets 71.5% (Core i9-13900KS is the leader there with 100%). 

It’s actually ahead of the current-gen Ryzen 7 7700X and Ryzen 7 7800X3D in multithreaded benchmarks, because it has more cores.

5 Cents Per GB for 4TB SSDs, 7 Cents for Samsung 990 Pro

If you’re buying a new SSD, 4TB is the ideal size, though never the cheapest. With 4TB, you’re set up to install tons of games, media files or even local AI models and you probably won’t have to even think about saving space for years. 

Today, for Prime Day, there are a number of 4TB SSDs on sale with prices as low as 5 cents per GB. Of those, our favorite is the Crucial P3 Plus. This PCIe Gen 4 drive boasts 5,000 MB/s read / write speeds along with 650K / 900K read / write IOPS. 

We have tested the 2TB capacity of the Crucial P3 Plus and found its performance middle-of-the-pack. However, it had excellent power efficiency, which makes it ideal for laptops. 

If you’re looking for more performance and are willing to pay for it, consider the Samsung 990 Pro (4TB) which is now on sale for 7 cents per GB. It boasts sequential read and write speeds of 7,450 and 6,900 MB/s, along with speedy TLC NAND Flash. 

On our tests, the Samsung 990 Pro creamed the competition, including leading 4TB drives from Lexar, Sabrent and Teamgroup. 

Our favorite screwdriver set, HOTO NEX 01 Pro is now $43 at Amazon

This screwdriver set has become the office gadget that many of us own. Whether building PC cases or your IKEA furniture, this screwdriver set has all the bits that you need. Charged via USB-C, the main body of the screwdriver resembles a gray flashlight (it even has LEDs are the end) and 4Nm torque, adjustable using the click-ring. A 1500mAh battery keeps the screwdriver ready for use, and the 1/4 inch hex shank is compatible with your existing 1/4 inch bits. For the money, this is a great screwdriver set that will take the strain out of PC building, and the occasional BILLY bookcase.

If you can grab the set in the plastic carry case, do it. It keeps all of the bits tidy, and looks great in your tool drawer.

Les Pounder

Our top-rated gaming monitor, Dell’s S3222DGM, drops to all-time low of $229

The Dell S3222DGM has long atop our list of the best gaming monitors and for good reason. It has an epic contrast ratio of 3718:1, sharp 2560 x 1440 resolution and smooth 165 Hz refresh rate.  

Now, the price of the Dell S3222DGM is at an all-time low of $229 at Best Buy. The monitor typically goes for $329 and the previous low price we’ve seen was $239 last Cyber Monday. 

When we reviewed the Dell S3222DGM in 2022, we were really impressed with its combination of vibrant images and tear-free gaming. “There is nothing better than a high-contrast VA panel, and the Dell S3222DGM is one of the best I’ve seen,” Contributing Editor Christian Eberle wrote. “It strikes a rare balance between gaming performance and image quality.”

According to our colorimeter, the Dell S3222DGM reproduces 122.6 percent of the sRGB gamut and 85.9 percent of the DCI-P3 gamut. 

The Dell S3222DGM also has excellent screen uniformity, lacking noticeable glow and bleed. 

For more savings, check out our Best Prime Day Monitor deals page.

— Avram Piltch

The SK hynix Platinum P41 2TB SSD, my main PC’s boot drive, is down to its lowest price this year

Back in January of 2023, I bought the 2TB SK hynix Platinum P41 SSD when it was on sale for $182, and it’s been running flawlessly as my main system’s boot drive ever since. Today, you can pick up that same drive on Amazon for Prime Day for just $128, the lowest price we’ve seen this year. 

While the P41 (and most SSDs) were more affordable late last year, this current sale price is the lowest we’ve seen for the 2TB model of this PCIe Gen4 SSD in 2024. While the drive has been around since 2022, it’s still one of the faster drives in its class. 

When we reviewed the 1TB version of the drive, we found that it was mostly faster than WD’s popular SN850, as well as other PCIe 4.0 drives of the time, and give it a score of 4.5 out of 5. Samsung’s 990 Pro is generally faster, but it also costs more, and you couldn’t tell the difference between the two drives in use, without looking at benchmark results. 

If you’re after a fast boot or game drive and you don’t want to pay a much higher price for a PCIe 5.0 SSD, the SK Hynix Platinum P41 is an excellent option. I’ve been using it for about 18 months now and have no plans to upgrade.

— Matt Safford

AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D drops to its lowest ever price on Amazon!

AMD’s Ryzen 7 5700X3D is a budget gaming powerhouse. For its price point, the 5700X3D has leading gaming performance, and low power consumption. Designed as a last “hurrah” for the aging AM4 platform (we’re writing this story on a 5600X based machine) the X3D based CPUs offer great gaming performance on a budget.

AMD’s $310 Ryzen 7 5800X3D remains the gold standard of gaming performance for the venerable AM4 platform. The Ryzen 7 5700X3D is basically a down-clocked Ryzen 7 5800X3D, losing 400 MHz off its base and boost frequencies. All other details remain unchanged, including the voluminous 96MB of game-boosting L3 cache.

As with AMD’s other X3D chips for AM4 motherboards, the Ryzen 7 5700X3D is based on the previous-gen Zen 3 architecture, so it isn’t quite as performant in productivity applications and won’t rank as high in our CPU benchmark hierarchy — you’ll be better off with the Ryzen 5 7600X if you’re interested in a better all-rounder. However, the Ryzen 7 5700X3D drops into affordable AM4 motherboards and has AMD’s 3D V-Cache tech, delivering more gaming performance than all similarly-priced alternatives.

Les Pounder – Paul Alcorn

2TB Samsung 990 Pro drops to its lowest price this year ($150)

Samsung’s 990 Pro, the fastest PCIe Gen 4 drive on the market, has been on sale for $299 in its 4TB capacity for days now. But now that it’s officially Prime Day, the 2TB model is also on sale for the same 7 cents per gigabyte, or just $149.99. That’s the lowest price we’ve seen since November of last year, when SSD prices started trending steadily upward. 

The Samsung 990 Pro is also excellent at sustaining strong write performance. If you’re writing continuously for several minutes on most drives, you’ll notice a huge performance drop as the the data fills up the high-speed cache and ends up using the slower TLC NAND Flash. We test sustained write speeds using Iometer for 15 minutes.

In our tests, the 4TB 990 Pro was able to maintain a speed of 6.2 GB/s for 75 seconds thanks to its generous 10GB of pSLC cache. Once the data spills over into the TLC, it operates at a — strong, compared to most drives — 1.6 GB/s. 

— Matt Safford, Stewart Bendle

The fastest flash drive is 30% off at Newegg: 1TB SK hynix Tube T31 drops to $70 

The SK hynix Tube T31 is the fastest flash drive we’ve tested, thanks largely to the fact that it’s actually a 2240 M.2 SSD on a stick. And Newegg is currently selling both the 512GB version and the 1TB model for 30% or more off their MSRP. You can pick up the smaller-capacity 512GB variant for $55, or the larger 1TB Tube T31 for $70. Naturally, we think most people should pay the extra $15 for twice the capacity 

When we tested the 1TB SK hynix Tube T31, it didn’t quite lead on every test, but in both the CrystalDiskMark Sequential test and our real-world 10Gb file transfer test, it was the fastest flash drive we’ve tested. It actually topped its 1000MBps claim in this synthetic test, though its read speed just over 800MBps in our real-world file transfer test. 

The primary downside of the Tube T31, especially at these sale prices, is that there is no 2TB model for those who need more capacity. It’s also bulky compared to most typical flash drives. So if you have few ports that are close together, say on a laptop, you might run into issues. It also only comes in USB Type-A form, so if you have a laptop or some other device that only has USB-C, you’ll have to get an adapter or look elsewhere.  

— Matt Safford

 Is this sub-$300 laptop actually a deal? 

At first, this laptop seems too good to be true:  It’s less than $300 with 16GB of DDR4 RAM and a 512GB SSD. It’s running Windows 11, has a fingerprint reader, and a full 1080p display. The Alder Lake-based Intel N95 might not be the most powerful processor, but it makes sense for the price.

It’s the T152 from Auusda, which appears to be a company with no website of its own (and has a logo in knockoff Comic Sans). Things get stranger from there. Many of the other specs are decidedly not modern, including a 6,000 mAh battery that the company claims lasts 3 hours on a charge. It’s using Bluetooth 4.2 and Wi-Fi 5. 

And then there’s some serious questions on pricing. On Newegg, it’s $293.99, which Auusda claims is 49% savings off of a $579.99 price tag. On Amazon, it’s $292.22, plus you can add a $70 coupon to bring it to $222.22. Using CamelCamelCamel, it seems the Amazon price is actually higher now than it was earlier in the month.

Reviews on Newegg are pretty mixed. People don’t complain about the price, but some suggest that the Wi-Fi cuts out and that drivers crash regularly. All of which is to say, don’t be blinded by a sale price. Shop smart and check out reviews first (and remember, we’ve got plenty of them!)

You can do better than 3 hours on a charge. I promise you. You deserve it.

— Andrew E. Freedman 

 OWC’s 14-Port Thunderbolt 3 Dock is a fantastic deal at $100 

Today’s thin, lightweight notebooks offer plenty of performance to handle your daily workloads. However, manufacturers often compromise on external ports to save space and make their designs as thin as possible. For users who need access to legacy ports or want to add multiple external monitors, an external dock is a perfect solution for port expansion.

OWC is selling its popular 14-port Thunderbolt Dock at a new low price of just $99.99, which is $39 below its regular sale price. 

At this price, we aren’t expecting Thunderbolt 4 speeds, and Thunderbolt 3 is likely sufficient for the needs of most general consumers. The port allotment is expansive and includes the following:

(1) Host Port – Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) up to 40 Gb/s (5000 MB/s)

(1) Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) Port

(1) USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C Port up to 10Gb/s (1250MB/s) 

(5) USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A Ports up to 600MB/s

(1) Mini DisplayPort Port

(1) Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) RJ-45 Port

(1) S/PDIF Digital Audio Output Port

(1) 3.5mm Stereo Audio Input/Output Combo Port

The OWC 14-port Thunderbolt Dock is designed for convenience, with four USB-A ports located on the back and a fifth on the front. The dock also features three USB ports, one on the front and two on the back, with one of the USB-C ports on the back serving as the host port that connects to your PC. The front of the dock is equipped with microSD and SD card slots, along with a 3.5mm headphone jack. On the back, you’ll find a S/PDIF Out, Gigabit ethernet, and a Mini DisplayPort connector for an external monitor. OWC states that the dock can support up to two 4K monitors (one USB-C, one DisplayPort) or a single 5K monitor.

It’s worth noting that the OWC 14-port Thunderbolt Dock’s USB-C host port delivers up to 85 watts of power to a connected laptop. This feature makes it more than capable of handling non-gaming laptops that support USB-C power delivery. Additionally, OWC assures that the 14-port dock is natively supported by both macOS and Windows operating systems, ensuring a seamless user experience.

— Brandon Hill