Tuesday, November 3

Grab early Black Friday deals on Bose headphones, Fire TV Sticks, and more

Grab early Black Friday deals on Bose headphones, Fire TV Sticks, and more

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

Today's Dealmaster is headlined by a few good leftover deals from the early Black Friday sales we highlighted last week. Though we're still weeks away from Black Friday (and Cyber Monday) itself, it seems apparent that many retailers plan to make a fair amount of their advertised discounts available in the weeks leading up to the event. Not everything in our roundup below has been explicitly marketed as a Black Friday deal, but there are still a handful of excellent discounts available today that should match the prices we'll see on Black Friday proper.

Among the most noteworthy of these offers is Bose's QuietComfort 35 II for $199, which matches Best Buy's advertised Black Friday deal. This ties the all-time lowest price for the wireless noise-canceling headphones and comes in about $100 below its typical street price online. Though it's now a few years old, the QC 35 II remains supremely comfortable to wear for hours at a time, with a pleasantly balanced sound and noise cancellation that still ranks among the strongest you can buy. The trade-offs: you have to deal with microUSB charging instead of USB-C, the audio profile and noise-canceling effect aren't as customizable as they are on other pairs like Sony's WH-1000XM4, and you lose out on some advanced features like an ambient sound mode. But while we think the XM4 is a better option overall—we expect it to drop to $278 on Black Friday—the QC 35 II is an excellent value at this deal price.

Elsewhere, a number of Amazon's Fire TV and Echo devices are down to advertised Black Friday prices, including Amazon's Fire TV Stick 4K for $30. Although we saw this media streamer drop to $25 during Black Friday last year, today's deal ties the lowest price we've seen in the year since and matches its going rate during Amazon Prime Day. In any event, we still recommend the Fire TV Stick 4K for those looking to stream 4K HDR video on the cheap: it runs and loads apps quickly, it has robust voice-search functionality through Alexa, and it supports Dolby Vision HDR. Roku's Streaming Stick+ does 4K with a tidier-but-blander user interface, and Google's latest Chromecast has fewer holes in its app library, but it's possible to rectify the latter with a couple easy steps.

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