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Amazon is not the only retailer that piles in on Cyber Monday. Far from it. But it is perhaps the most aggressive in its price matching, bullying its way to sales supremacy and batting away any retail pretenders after its crown. You'll also find a few discounts at Amazon you won't get elsewhere. And not just because Amazon stocks just about everything, including pillows that emulate a giant loaf of bread (not part of the sales, sadly.)
And Amazon makes stuff. There are all those Echo speakers, the wonderful Kindle e-readers, an army of Black Mirror adjacent smart home cameras, and now even TVs. You'll find some of these below, alongside a bunch of deals that are either among the best or the most popular. For the whole kaboodle of retailers, check out our main UK page of the best Cyber Monday deals for 2023.
This simple but attractive wireless speaker was crowned “best overall” in our group test earlier this year. It’s an 18.4cm-tall Bluetooth column that uses two active drivers and two passive radiators to provide a surprisingly full-bodied representation of your favorite music. Its battery lasts up to 15 hours, the IP67 water resistance can handle full submersion and it even floats.
Buying this is a clear sign you have more money than sense or no sense at all. But it is undeniably neat. It’s a voice-controller Optimus Prime that, yes, actually transforms from the iconic truck into its 41cm tall robot form. Responds to 39 different commands and has 27 motors that make it move. A wild, nerdy indulgence.
If you’re considering the AirPods Pro, you should also consider the Fit Pro, labeled “best earbuds” in our headphones group test. They connect beautifully with iPhones thanks to their Apple H1 chip, have active noise cancellation, and far better-balanced sound than you might guess from a pair of Beats earphones.
£40 for a Tamagotchi? That’s right, but this is a next-gen version with a color screen and more involved play because it has a built-in camera. We can’t guarantee your kids will love this thing as much as you did the original back in the late 90s. But if you’re just here for nostalgia, the classic version is also available for around £15.
The fairly affordable pricing of these Anker earphones won them a runner-up award in our best headphones group test, pitted against some much more expensive pairs. They have active noise cancellation built in, the battery lasts up to 10 hours. Factor in the case battery and you can keep listening for 50 hours without needing a recharge. Impressive.
It may sound pricey for a non-Pro iPad, but this tablet has had a storage upgrade, to 256GB from the Air's base 64GB. It’s also the generation of iPad Air with an Apple M1 processor, as seen in older-series MacBooks. Apple has not upgraded its tablet line to the newer processors yet. It isn’t expected to do so until next year. It's the current model, and therefore not a discount based on shelf-clearing.
The Google Pixel 7 is old news. It’s redundant. But the cheaper Pixel 7a? That’s still a current model, as the Pixel 8A isn’t expected until 2024. It just missed out on a WIRED Recommends badge at review, thanks to its so-so battery life, but still came away with an entirely respectable score (8/10). The performance is excellent, it’s highly water resistant and has a great camera, just like the pricier Pixel phones.
Reductions on AirPods Pro earphones are never that dramatic. However, we do think this Cyber Monday deal is good enough to tip many over from not owning a pair to owning one. And much as we’d love to poke a hole in Apple’s work—as we could do with some earlier AirPods—the AirPods Pro are really rather good. Their tuning is great, balancing faithful tonality with mainstream sonic appeal, and the active noise cancellation is super-effective.
This must be among the very best Xbox Series bargains of all time. Microsoft’s full-bore power console for less than the cost of a lower-mid-range graphics card. It’s a dazzler of a deal. You can spend £10 more to get the Forza Horizon 5 bundle with Hot Wheels expansion, a package that would be red hot were the game not included with Xbox Game Pass. That’s Microsoft’s Netflix for games-style service. Alternatively, there’s a Diablo IV bundle for £390.
Sony’s latest flagship street headphones. The Sony WH-1000XM5 provides excellent sound and active noise cancellation, which earned them a WIRED Recommends badge and a 9/10 score back in 2022. If you find the cost too steep, you can also pick up the previous WH-1000XM4 for £198. They are quite similar, and both have a bass-boosted sound, which can work well when out in town.
This is a great monitor for work, at a big discount. It’s a 1440p screen with excellent viewing angles, solid color and a USB-C connector for easy pairing with today’s laptops. The 4K version is also available from Dell for £225.
Like the best gear from Hisense, this 55-inch TV offers an awful lot for not that much money. It has a high 144Hz refresh rate panel with VRR. Advanced local dimming makes the contrast and black levels appear excellent for an LCD TV. And it’s a miniLED set with Quantum Dot tech, unusually advanced for £680.
Get started on your New Year’s resolutions early with a smart scale that analyses your body composition as well as your weight. Muscle mass, fat percentage, and the dreaded BMI: all here. Powered using AAAs. Batteries included, motivation is not.
Christmas entertainment sorted. This LEGO set depicts the Hogwarts Castle and its surroundings and is comprised of 2,660 bricks. Build time is estimated at around eight hours, and you can pay £150 for this today directly from LEGO. Kids will need help with this one, and it’s recommended for builders aged 18+.
Once upon a time, this laptop would have cost more than £1500. It’s a top-spec model with 16GB RAM, a 1TB SSD, and an Intel i7-1195G7 processor. That CPU is old, but it’s roughly on par with the latest-generation Core i5 made for slim and light laptops. The real appeal here is, of course, the mad dual-screen design. It’s surprisingly usable, with a good keyboard and touchpad built-in.
All of Amazon’s Fire series tablets are on sale this Black Friday. Pick one that suits your needs, but we suggest starting with the Amazon Fire HD 10. It’s cheap, has a big screen primed for movie streaming and the display is pretty bright for a budget tablet. The top-end Fire Max 11 is on sale too, but bear in mind these tablets use Amazon’s Appstore rather than Google Play, which has a more limited app selection. Amazon tablets are best at the basics.
The silver version of this machine is on a Cyber Monday deal at £500. But if you can stomach the equally dashing black, you can snag an extra £50 off. These are among the best mainstream coffee machines, but you need to be up for just a touch of manual exertion. The Barista Express does have a grinder, but it’s up to you to move the hopper to the brew section and slot it in to tamp down the grounds. However, it still involves minimal mess, and you get the illusory sense of being a barista.
Arcade1UP makes recreations of popular arcade machines. They were starting to seem a bit samey, but the new 2023 range features some with bespoke controls like this steering wheel cabinet of The Fast & Furious. It includes two arcade games of the series, the 2006 original and the follow-up The Fast & The Furious: Drift. If this is all a bit too modern for you, the vector-based graphics Star Wars arcade machine is available for £560.
The Ambeo range of soundbars from Sennheiser is hard to beat for simple audio quality. We rated the original Ambeo from 2019 highly at review. And, contrary to what you might guess, this Ambeo Plus is the slightly smaller, more affordable version. The original design is now known as the Ambeo Max, and costs twice as much even with a Cyber Monday discount. It's £1,800, down from £2,200. Both sound excellent but bear in mind these soundbars do not currently pair with rear satellite speakers, unlike the Sonos rivals, just optional subwoofers.
Save big with this premium De’Longhi bean-to-cup coffee machine. There are good deals to be had on more affordable models, but this one could save you a fortune on specialty coffees year-round because it makes speedy cold brew and iced drinks, as well as your favorite hot coffees. It boasts touchscreen control and cleans itself.
This Ninja air fryer family has become the “go-to” series for new air fryer buyers. It’s so popular the 9.5L version has sold out, but the mid-table 7.6L one is still available. However, for the best deal, you might want to ditch Amazon altogether and pick up the 9.5L Ninja for £10 more from Argos.
Logitech is a mouse master. Lots of its higher-end mice are for gamers, but the Master 2S takes the features of those models and puts them into a more mass-market design. We used one of these Master-series mice for more than a year. They’re dead comfy, and have more buttons than we ever thought to use. This is a Bluetooth mouse, so can be used with devices other than laptops and PCs too.
This is the budget version of the QuietComfort QC45. However, the difference boils down to having a soft case or a hard case. And given how carelessly we treat our headphones much of the time, case quality isn’t going to make a whole heap of a difference. We said the Bose QC45 were not all that competitive at review (7/10) but they deliver the goods at this price: sumptuous comfort, highly effective noise cancellation, and smooth, easygoing sound.
We had not pictured the Meta Quest 2 being one of the stars of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but it has become just that. It’s a better deal than it at first appears too. £50 Amazon credit is added to your account when you buy, the next best thing to paying just £200 for the headset itself. So, sure, while the recently-released Meta Quest 3 is better, it’s also a helluva lot more expensive at £480. Improvements include sharper-looking lenses, dual screens for fewer wasted pixels, and a much more powerful processor. There’s a lot of fun to be had with the older headset, mind.
This pair of Amazon-exclusive (the finish, not the entire line) headphones comes around just about every big sales period, bringing with it a waft of homely nostalgia. Why? These are wired, open-back hi-fi headphones. No active noise cancellation. No wireless. Absolutely no use at all on public transport. But we love headphones like this, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find something more comfortable, and better-sounding, at this price for late-night movies and gaming sessions.
Apple’s Pencil styluses for iPads are great, but their prices don’t half attach some thorns to an iPad purchase for folks who want to try out digital art. Black Friday doesn’t solve that problem, but it blunts those thorns a bit. You can get the first and second-generation Apple Pencils from Amazon at £30-40 off. Make sure you look up which Pencil model is supported by your tablet, as these things are not cross-generational.
Amazon now makes TVs. And there are two tiers of its line-up. The basic 4-series ones are a bit like the sets you might buy in the supermarket. Cheap TVs to fill a hole. The Omni line is much more special. These are QLED sets, with Samsung tech, which use VA panels to provide good contrast in dimly lit rooms. There’s even local dimming, very unusual in a sub-£500 TV. Amazon TVs come with the company’s Fire TV interface built-in too. Sure, it’s not as exciting as a fancy OLED or miniLED, but the picture quality is good and they are hundreds of pounds cheaper. Especially so during this sales period.
You can always expect Amazon's own-brand devices to go on sale during big events like Cyber Monday. But the classic Kindle e-reader is up there with our favorites. You can pick the basic £69 model if you like without missing out on too much, as it has a backlit screen these days. However, the Paperwhite marks a good level-up, with a higher-resolution E Ink display and excellent water resistance. The big-pocketed can also check out the Kindle Scribe, a giant note-taking e-reader with a stylus and a 10.2-inch screen.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
