Apple’s iPad mini is $100 off, plus the rest of the week’s best tech deals

As the first week of May comes to a close, a number of our favorite gadgets remain on sale, with some at record-low prices. Apple’s latest iPad mini is the cheapest we’ve seen it at $400, while most AirPods have been discounted. Also, a bunch of Kindles are on sale at Amazon and you can still pick up a Roomba from iRobot for hundreds of dollars less than usual. Here are the best tech deals this week that you can still get today.

iPad mini

Apple iPad mini 2021
Valentina Palladino / Engadget

Apple’s latest iPad mini is $100 off right now and down to $400, which is the lowest we’ve seen it. We still consider it to be the best small tablet. you can get, and the 2021 version earned a score of 89 from us for its modern design, solid performance, improved front cameras and USB-C charging.

Buy iPad mini at Amazon – $400

AirPods Pro

Apple’s AirPods Pro are back on sale for $175, which is 30 percent off their normal price. We gave them a score of 87 for their improved fit, good audio quality and solid ANC.

Buy AirPods Pro at Amazon – $175

AirPods (2nd gen)

Apple AirPods with wireless charging case
Engadget

If you still prefer the original design to Apple’s AirPods, you can grab the second-gen earbuds for $100 right now. That’s 37 percent off their normal rate and only $10 more than their record-low price. We gave them a score of 84 for their improved wireless performance and solid battery life.

Buy AirPods (2nd gen) at Amazon – $100

AirPods Max

Apple AirPods Max
Engadget

The high-end AirPods Max are $100 off and back down to $449. While not an all-time low, it’s close to the best price we’ve seen. We gave the cans a score of 84 for their excellent sound quality, good ANC and handy onboard controls.

Buy AirPods Max at Amazon – $449

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Animal Crossing
Nintendo

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is cheaper than ever right now at $40. That’s $20 off its normal price and the lowest we’ve seen it. Nintendo’s first-party games rarely go on sale like this, so if you haven’t picked up the cozy title yet, now’s the time to do so.

Buy Animal Crossing at Amazon – $40

Elden Ring

'Elden Ring' for PlayStation falls to $50, plus other video game deals
FromSoftware

Both the PS5 and PS4 versions of Elden Ring are still $10 off and down to $50 — a pretty good discount for a popular new title. The game has been widely acclaimed since it came out, despite some performance issues that have now been resolved. You could easily get lost in its open world, intriguing story and challenging gameplay.

Buy Elden Ring (PS5) at Amazon – $50Buy Elden Ring (PS4) at Amazon – $50

Samsung Galaxy Watch 4

Both the 40mm Galaxy Watch 4 models are $76 off and down to a new record low of $174. We gave the Galaxy Watch 4 a score of 85 for its bright, crisp display, comprehensive head tracking and improved third-party app support.

Buy Galaxy Watch 4 at Amazon – $174

Kindle Paperwhite

Amazon's Kindle Paperwhite returns to an all-time low in new sale
Engadget

Amazon’s latest Kindle Paperwhite is 25 percent off and down to an all-time low of $105. It has a number of improvements over the previous model, including a larger screen with more front lights, an adjustable warm light and USB-C charging. Also, the standard Kindle is down to $55 and the Kindle Oasis is on sale for $200.

Buy Kindle Paperwhite at Amazon – $105Buy Kindle at Amazon – $55Buy Kindle Oasis at Amazon – $200

Echo Show 8

Amazon Echo Show 8
Engadget

Amazon’s Echo Show 8 is back down to an all-time low of $90 right now, while the tiny Echo Dot is on sale for only $28. The Show 8 is one of our favorite smart displays and we gave it a score of 87 for its minimalist design, lovely screen and good sound quality. These deals are part of a larger Amazon device sale that may have some good gift options if you’re still on the hunt for a Mother’s Day gift.

Buy Echo Show 8 at Amazon – $90Buy Echo Dot at Amazon – $28Shop Amazon device deals

LastPass Premium

LastPass password manager app
LastPass

Through May 9th, new and free LastPass users can upgrade to a paid account and save 20 percent. That will bring a Premium membership down to around $29 annually instead of the usual $36, while Families would cost about $38 annually and Business down to $58 per user each year.

Subscribe to LastPass

Samsung 2022 Frame TVs

Samsung The Frame TV 2022
Sam Rutherford/Engadget

Samsung’s latest Frame smart TVs have been discounted on Amazon, so you can grab the 55-inch model for $1,297, which is $200 less than usual. A few size options are on sale, so you can choose the one that fits best in your home. It’s rare to see sales on the latest TV models, and these new Frames have a new matte finish that helps reduce reflections, so they will hopefully blend even more into your home when you have them on Art Mode.

Shop Samsung 2022 The Frame TVs

Roomba 694

iRobot’s affordable Roomba 694 is still on sale for $180 right now, which is a record low. This is one of our favorite budget-friendly robot vacuums thanks to its easy to use mobile app, good cleaning power and sleek design.

Buy Roomba 694 at Amazon – $180

Roomba j7+

The Roomba j7+ robo-vac and the Roomba s9+ are both $200 off right now and down to $599 and $799, respectively. These are both advanced machines from iRobot, with the j7+ sporting a pet poop detection feature, while the s9+ has the strongest suction power of all of the company’s robot vacuums. Both also come with clean bases, so you won’t have to empty their dustbins manually after each cleaning job.

Buy Roomba j7+ at Amazon – $599Buy Roomba s9+ at Amazon – $799

Beats Fit Pro

The new Beats Fit Pro earbuds are $20 off and down to $180. That’s one of the best prices we’ve seen all year, and they earned a score of 87 from us for their comfortable fit, punchy bass, solid ANC and loads of handy features.

Buy Beats Fit Pro at Amazon – $180

Beats Studio Buds

The Beats Studio Buds are back down to a record low of $100. We gave them a score of 84 for their tiny, comfortable design, balanced sound and quick-pairing on both Android and iOS.

Buy Beats Studio Buds at Amazon – $100

Jabra Elite 4 Active

Jabra’s new Elite 4 Active earbuds are $20 off and down to $100, which is a new record low. The budget-friendly Elite 3 are also on sale and down to only $60. We gave the Elite 4 Active a score of 84 for their comfort fit, solid sound quality and customizable ANC, while the Elite 3 came in at 88 thanks to their good battery life, reliable onboard controls and comfortable fit.

Buy Elite 4 Active at Amazon – $100Buy Elite 3 at Amazon – $60

New tech deals

Anker Eufy RoboVac 11s

Anker’s Eufy RoboVac 11s is on sale for $150 thanks to a discounted price and an extra $50 coupon on the product page you can clip before adding the item to your cart. We consider it to be one of the best cheap robot vacuums you can buy due to its slim frame that helps it get under furniture, good suction power and included physical remote which lets you change cleaning modes, set schedules and more.

Buy Eufy RoboVac 11s at Amazon – $150

JBL Charge 5

JBL’s Charge 5 Bluetooth speaker is down to $150, which is only $20 more than its all-time low. This earned a spot in our portable Bluetooth speaker guide thanks to its bright sound, long battery life and USB-C port for charging.

Buy JBL Charge 5 at Amazon – $150

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

The Morning After: ‘Fortnite’ is back on iOS, kind of

Microsoft has partnered with Epic Games to make Fortnite playable, for free, on Xbox Cloud Gaming. No subscription required. So long as you have a Microsoft account in one of 26 streaming-enabled countries, you can play the battle royale title through the web browser on an iPhone, iPad, Android device or Windows PC.

The streaming version supports both controllers and touch. Creative mode is also free although you’ll need to pay if you want to fight AI villains in the Save the World campaign. Microsoft also said it would “look to bring” other free-to-play titles to Xbox Cloud Gaming.

It’s not the first workaround — NVIDIA has also allowed its cloud gaming subscribers to stream Fortnite on Apple devices. Microsoft, however, has a bigger audience of casual gamers, making this a bigger deal. It also sided with Epic when the company went toe-to-toe with Apple over App Store restrictions and costs.

— Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

The maker of TurboTax owes customers $141 million

It ‘cheated’ them out of free tax services.

TurboTax maker Intuit will pay $141 million “for deceiving millions of low-income Americans into paying for tax services that should have been free,” the New York Attorney General’s office wrote in a press release.

The company must refund nearly 4.4 million consumers who used TurboTax’s Free Edition between 2016 and 2018, then discovered they had to pay to file. Many didn’t realize they could have used the IRS Free File program available in a separate product, which costs nothing. Intuit released a statement expressing no regret and said the required ad changes would have little impact on its business.

Continue reading.

‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ says the quiet part out loud

It’s done with being subtle.

The long-awaited third live-action Star Trek series in recent years makes its debut on Paramount+. But, while Discovery carried the burden of being the first Star Trek show in 12 years and Picard saw the return of a beloved character after 17 years, Strange New Worlds appears to pitch itself, in many ways, as a return to the Star Trek of the past, beyond just more episodic storytelling.

Continue reading.

Lenovo’s new Slim series laptops feature updated AMD or Intel processors

There’s also a laptop that Lenovo claims is carbon neutral.

TMA
Engadget

Lenovo’s big spring laptop refresh includes a new generation of Slim clamshell laptops in the US (which confusingly share the Slim branding with older, unrelated models). These include the Slim 9i, the Slim 7i and Slim7i Pro X, the Slim 7i Carbon and the Slim 7. The last of those come with an AMD Ryzen 6000 Series processor rather than the Intel chips inside its sisters, while the Slim 9i claims to be carbon neutral.

Continue reading.

Starlink users can now take their internet terminal on the road

That connected ‘vanlife.’

TMA
Starlink

A new Starlink feature called Portability allows users to temporarily use Starlink when they’re away from home. In the US, Portability will cost $25 per month. That’s on top of the regular service fee, which SpaceX recently bumped up to $110 per month. The hardware now costs $599 for those without a pre-order.

There are some caveats: It’s not worth taking a terminal on a transatlantic trip. Starlink says the feature is only available when users are on the same continent as their registered service address. They’d also have to ship it…

Continue reading.

WhatsApp’s emoji reactions begin rolling out to everyone

After teasing the feature last month, WhatsApp has starting rolling out emoji reactions to all users around the world, it announced. In the coming days, you’ll be able to react with one of six emojis: Thumbs Up 👍, Red Heart ❤️, Face with Tears of Joy 😂, Face with Open Mouth 😮, Crying Face 😢, and Folded Hands 🙏. The messaging app also introduced two more features — 2GB file sharing and an increase in group members to 512 people. 

On top of the message reactions, WhatsApp will now allow you to send files a whopping 2GB in size, up 20 times from the previous 100MB limitation. That seems designed to support video files in particular “and we think [it] will be helpful for collaboration among small businesses and school groups,” the company said. It also introduced the ability to create group chats with up to 512 people, double the previous limit.  

The features will be rolling out over the next week across iOS, Android, macOS and Windows, so you many not see them tout de suite. That should be just the beginning as well, because WhatsApp has previously said that it plans to support reactions with all emoji and skin tones down the road.

Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 3 評測：音質依然，體驗提升

Momentum True Wireless 3， 展示著他們仍能保持初心之餘，還能再進一步的改進。小編在這回的評測體驗中，都能感覺到過去 MTW 系列的一些不足都已經被修正了，使其在高階市場的其他對手面前也有著更大競爭力。…

‘Fortnite’ is back on iOS for free via Xbox Cloud Gaming

NVIDIA isn’t the only one making it easier to play Fortnite on Apple devices. Microsoft has partnered with Epic Games to make Fortniteplayable for free on Xbox Cloud Gaming, no subscription required. So long as you have a Microsoft account in one of 26 streaming-enabled countries, you can play the battle royale title through the web browser on an iPhone, iPad, Android device or Windows PC.

The streaming version supports both controllers and touch. Creative mode is also free, although you’ll need to pay if you want to fight AI villains in the Save the World campaign. Fortnite might not be alone, either. Microsoft said it would “look to bring” other free-to-play titles to Xbox Cloud Gaming.

There’s no mystery behind Microsoft’s team-up. This could boost Xbox Cloud Gaming and drive sign-ups for Game Pass Ultimate, which offers a catalog of games you can stream on multiple platforms. Microsoft is also eager to spite Apple — the Windows creator has backed Epic’s antitrust battle, arguing that Apple is stifling competition through in-app payments and restrictions on cloud gaming apps. Free Fortnite gameplay could draw attention to Apple’s policies while softening the blow for Microsoft, Epic and gamers.

IK Multimedia’s latest mobile audio interface is designed for field recording

IK Multimedia has revealed its latest mobile audio interface, a field recorder called iRig Pro Quattro I/O. The device has 24-bit, 96kHz conversion and four microphone and instrument preamps, along with line-in ports. You’ll also get two balanced XLR outputs, 3.5mm stereo and headphone ports and MIDI in/out. There’s a built-in microphone as well.

There are physical control dials for the inputs, headphones and line out. IK Multimedia says there’s a standalone mixer mode and a built-in limiter. You’ll be able to take advantage of a safety mode as well. Inputs three and four can be used as safety channels, whereby they capture the same signals as the other two main inputs, but with a 12dB reduction “in case the sound source unexpectedly overloads the main channels,” the company said.

You can power the iRig Pro Quattro I/O with a USB cable, 9VDC adaptor or battery. IK Multimedia notes that it’ll work with a range of devices out of the box, and it’s MFi-certified for better compatibility with iPhone and iPad.

This isn’t a standalone device, however. It doesn’t have an SD card slot, so you’ll need to connect it to a mobile device or computer to actually record audio. As with the iRig Pre 2, you’ll be able to hook it up to a DSLR, which would likely help you capture better quality audio than what the camera can pick up by itself.

IK Multimedia iRig Pro Quattro I/O
IK Multimedia

Field recorders have been growing in popularity for on-the-go audio capture, with the likes of Zoom and Tascam making notable models over the years. Fans of IK Multimedia’s other gear might be pleased to learn about the iRig Pro Quattro I/O, but the lack of onboard storage might be a sticking point.

The iRig Pro Quattro I/O is available worldwide starting today. It costs $350/€350 and comes with batteries, USB and Lightning cables, a quarter-inch camera thread adaptor and software for Mac, PC, iPhone and iPad.

A deluxe version is also available for preorder. That model costs $450 and should ship at the end of June. If you opt for that, you’ll also receive two iRig stereo microphones, a windscreen, a carrying case and a 9V power supply unit.