You can buy Amazon’s entry-level smart speaker in a wide array of fun colors for just $5 shy of its all-time low. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge From helping me as a caregiver to cracking me up with fart jokes, Amazon’s budget-friendly smart speakers have added a lot of value to my life. That’s why I own one for almost every area of my home — and why I got excited when I saw Amazon is selling the Echo Pop for $22.99 with a free Kasa Smart Color Bulb. That equates to a savings of about $40, though you can also buy the standalone speaker for $22.99 at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target ..read more

OnePlus’ budget-friendly phone is on sale for only $20 more than it was during Black Friday. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge It can be easy to forget affordable champs like the OnePlus Nord N30 5G when you’ve got iPhone 15s and Galaxy S24s dominating store shelves and circulars. It’s our favorite budget smartphone under $300, and today, you can save even more on it. The budget smartphone is down to $249.99 for an unlocked model at Amazon, Best Buy, and direct from OnePlus, which is $50 off and only $20 more than its record low during Black Friday. The OnePlus Nord N30 5G plays in the s ..read more

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, arguably the best game in Nintendo’s iconic series, is down to just $39.99 through March 17th. | Image: Nintendo These days, it feels like every day is a recognized holiday of some sort, whether it be National Donut Day, National Dress Day, or some other made-up holiday designed to celebrate... well, something. And while March 10th — aka Mario Day — may not be formally recognized by the US government, it’s one of the ones we at The Verge look forward to most. That’s because it’s one of the best opportunities of the year to save big on games starring Nintendo’s mustachioed ..read more

The OnePlus Watch 2 sounds like a standard smartwatch. | Image: OnePlus OnePlus is making another run at a smartwatch with its Watch 2. The company claims in an announcement that the new watch will have up to 100 hours of battery life and said it will come in black and silver colors. It says it will share more at Mobile World Congress this Sunday, February 25th. The new watch has a stainless steel chassis and sapphire crystal watchface and will feature “meticulous health monitoring.” The 100-hour battery life claim requires what it’s calling “Smart Mode,” which presumably is just a weird way o ..read more

Time for Samsung and Google to make some room in the midrange. Choice is a beautiful thing. The OnePlus 12R has just arrived in the US, and not a moment too soon. It’s the first $500 smartphone we’ve seen in a while that gives the Samsung Galaxy A54 and Google Pixel 7A any serious competition. Each of these devices is a slightly different answer to the same questions: What’s absolutely essential in a phone? What do you keep when you can’t have it all? Maybe you can’t live without wireless charging, or you want thorough water resistance and a big screen, or you want a high-end processor so the ..read more

OnePlus’ no-frills flagship stands tall against the competition. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge With the impending launch of Samsung’s Galaxy S24 series, OnePlus surely hopes to hitch a ride on the buzz train as upgrade season begins. The newly announced OnePlus 12 arrives on February 6th, however, you can currently get a free storage upgrade if you place a preorder before then. Both Amazon and Best Buy are selling the 512GB model with 16GB of RAM in black or green for $799.99 ($100 off). You’ll note that the price tag is identical to the price of the lower-end, 256GB model, so there’s ..read more

While Samsung and Google were busy shipping AI features as fast as possible, OnePlus doubled down on the essentials. In 2024, there’s one thing conspicuously missing from the sales pitch for the OnePlus 12: AI. And you know what? That’s fine. Great, even, depending on what you want out of your phone. OnePlus’ flagship phone appears to be sitting out on the mobile tech trend of the year, which is even more obvious on the heels of Samsung’s Unpacked AI-palooza. The OnePlus 12 isn’t chasing the latest cutting-edge thing, it’s going back to the basics. And I think it gets them right — at least, a ..read more

The OnePlus 12 in green. | Image: OnePlus A little over a month and a half after its Chinese launch, OnePlus has officially announced pricing and a release date for its latest flagship in global markets. The OnePlus 12 will ship in the US on February 6th, starting at $799.99 (€949 / £849) for its most affordable model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. It’s one of a trio of devices OnePlus is launching today, with the other two being the lower-end OnePlus 12R and the OnePlus Buds 3 true wireless earbuds. You can check out my colleague Allison Johnson’s full review of the OnePlus 12 right h ..read more

Amazon’s new Echo Show 8 brings a faster chip, better speakers, and the most important update of all: widgets. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Happy Friday, folks! Well, now that Christmas is officially behind us, the deals are quickly drying up. Nonetheless, there are still a few deals worth busting out those newly minted gift cards for. Amazon’s latest Echo Show 8 has dropped to a new low, for example, while the Tile Mate has returned to its best price to date. There’s also a bunch of other stuff on sale right now, including a terrific pair of noise-canceling earbuds and OnePl ..read more

The OnePlus 12 in its three colors. | Image: OnePlus OnePlus has officially launched the OnePlus 12 in China, and its highest-specced model comes with more RAM than I had in my desktop gaming PC until very recently. Although the flagship smartphone’s base model comes with 12GB of RAM alongside 256GB of storage, opting for the highest-end version gets Chinese buyers 24GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. OnePlus is yet to confirm configurations when it launches internationally in “early 2024.” The phone’s RAM isn’t the only eye-catching spec. Charging speeds are also speedy, with support for 100W wire ..read more