Patience is a virtue and so is saving as smartphones old and new are slowly moving down the price ladder. Also, there are some bundles this week that include a free laptop, a free game, or just a gift card. Use the links below to jump to your region.
UK
The basic Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra (256GB storage) costs £1,250 at Samsung.com. It costs that much even on Amazon, but the retailer will include a Galaxy Chromebook Go for free. This is as simple as it gets, a 11.6″ laptop with an Intel Celeron N4500 (2 cores, 1.1GHz base, 2.8GHz boost), 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of eMMC storage It won’t blow your socks off, but it’s good enough for schoolwork.
A few weeks ago, the Pixel 7 Pro was down to £685, but the price isn’t stable and often climbs to over £700. Right now it’s just under that mark.
An older iPhone 13 can be had for £700, although for just £70 more you can get the new iPhone 14 instead. It’s not a massive upgrade, but you do get more graphics horsepower, 2GB more RAM and a few other improvements, so we think it’s worth it.
If you wanted a big iPhone but never wanted to pay the Pro Max money, the iPhone 14 Plus might be for you. It costs £100 more than the vanilla model, but there’s no equivalent model in the iPhone 13 series, so there’s no alternative cheaper option.
The PlayStation 5/God of War Ragnarok bundle is on offer with a small discount. You can have the disc version or the digital console version, the difference between them is £90. Either way, the game is a digital download.
Germany
The Xiaomi 13 Pro was launched with an MSRP of €1,300, now the price is starting to drop. It’s only down about €67, but that’s a start.
The Nothing Phone (1) is one of last year’s better mid-rangers, even if he’s starting to get long in the tooth. On the plus side, its price is also decreasing and you can get one for less than €400.
The Samsung Galaxy A54, on the other hand, is brand new. While its price is technically still €490, you can redeem a €75 voucher on Amazon to drop the actual price to more palatable levels. Note that the same voucher is also available for the 256GB model.
The Redmi Note 12 Pro+ hasn’t gotten a discount yet, so it costs the full amount of €500. If you can live without the 200MP main camera and 120W charging, last week’s Redmi Note 12 Pro offering is still on the table.
Moving on to budget devices, there’s the Galaxy M23. It has a large 6.6″ 120Hz LCD display with FHD+ resolution, as well as a large 5,000mAh battery with 25W charging. It has a 3.5mm jack and a microSD card. There’s not much to be excited about, but we can’t fault the phone either.
The Poco M5 and the M5 both cost €30 off. The S variant is more expensive as it comes with an AMOLED display (6.43″ 60Hz) instead of an IPS LCD (6.58″ 90Hz). It has a 64MP camera capable of recording 4K video (compared to 50MP 1080p cam), as well as an 8MP ultra-wide module (compared to none). Additionally, the 5,000mAh battery is faster to charge at 33W (versus 18W). These upgrades are worth the extra €30 if you ask us.
Going even lower, the Realme Narzo 50A Prime has a 6.6″ FHD+ display at 120Hz to rival the Poco M5. And its Unisoc T612 chipset packs a pair of A75 cores, though all A53 CPUs aren’t. rare in this price range.With a 50MP main camera (and not ultra wide angle), plus a 5,000mAh battery with 18W charging, it’s worth comparing it to the Poco.
Summer has arrived (at least in the northern hemisphere), so you might be planning a vacation. A comfortable pair of noise-cancelling headphones will make traveling more enjoyable, so you might want to check out the Bose QuietComfort SE.
United States of America
The Samsung Galaxy A54 began shipping on April 6 with an MSRP of $450. You can still get up to $250 in trade-in credit at Samsung.com, but if you don’t have anything to trade in, you might want to go through Amazon instead: the dealer will give you a $50 gift card.
Amazon tablets are on sale, and you can get the Fire HD 10 for $90. This is the 2021 model, so it comes with an octa-core CPU, 3GB of RAM, and 32GB of storage, but the real reason to buy this tablet is 10.1 inch 1080p display and support for all streaming services. It has stereo speakers and up to 12 hours of battery life to boot, so it’s an affordable portable entertainment machine.
The Fire 7 Kids tablet is down to $60. The main selling point here is the thick, durable shell that the slate comes in that allows it to survive playtime. There are also no ads (unlike other Fire tablets you don’t have to pay to remove them), and there are parental controls, age-based filters, and so on.
If you’re looking for a smartwatch, but want something rugged and with long battery life, check out Garmin Instinct. Note that this is the original model rather than the Instinct 2. It offers up to 14 days of battery life in smartwatch mode and up to 16 hours with GPS tracking (40 hours in Ultratrac mode). If you want more, there’s also the version with a solar panel, which extends the battery life if you spend a few hours a day in the sun.
Apple recently cut orders for M2 chips due to falling demand for laptops. We’ve seen comments from people who are happy with their M1 machines and have no reason to upgrade, so this could be one of the reasons. By the way, you can get a MacBook Air M1 (8/256GB) for $200 off (it’s $1,000 at Apple.com).
Nvidia just announced the GeForce RTX 4070, a $600 GPU comparable to the older RTX 3080. However, instead of this GPU you can get a PlayStation 5 disc edition with God of War Ragnarok and still have $90 left for other games. A year of PlayStation Plus Extra is worth $100, so that’s also an option.
India
The iQOO Neo 7 has been around since the beginning of March and its price has not budged from the ₹30,000 mark. That said, it’s still hard to get a Dimension 8200 at this price, for example the vivo V27 Pro (8/128GB) costs ₹37,000. The chipset promises to handle games at 90fps on the large 6.78-inch FHD+ display (which has a native 120Hz refresh rate), and the large 5,000mAh battery only takes 25 minutes to fully recharge using the adapter 120W (10 minutes at 50%).
The Redmi Note 12 is a 5G phone (with Snapdragon 4 Gen 1) for around ₹20,000. The 4/128GB model is less, the 6/128GB one costs exactly that (both with a ₹20,000 discount). The phone boasts a 6.67-inch 120Hz AMOLED display, 48+8+2MP camera, 5,000mAh battery with 33W charging, expandable memory, and 3.5mm jack.
The Samsung Galaxy M14 will launch in India next week, pre-orders open on Monday. Samsung is keeping the exact price under wraps, but it will be less than ₹14,000.
However, last year’s model is still around. That Exynos 850 isn’t ideal (certainly not as good as the 1330 in new), but the phones are quite similar other than that and the Galaxy M13 at under ₹10,000.
Realme Narzo 50i Prime and Redmi 12C are a pair of phones under ₹10,000. Since both have HD+ screens, they can’t compete with the M13. The Redmi’s higher price tag isn’t worth it, but the Narzo is a great budget option with a big 5,000mAh battery, expandable storage, and a headphone jack. The Redmi has these things too, plus a 50MP main camera (instead of 8MP), but it’s not worth the extra ₹2,000.
The OnePlus Nord Buds 2 went on sale this Tuesday. The buds add ANC over the original model, although if you take a look at our review, you’d be disappointed to find it’s pretty bad. However, these are on the cheaper side of the TWS buds.
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