The weekend’s best deals: A bunch of Apple devices, Sony headphones, 4K TVs, and more
Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)
It's the weekend, and that means it's time to round up the week's best deals. As we anticipate, each weekend (and every day, really) in November brings with it a new round of discounts on popular big-ticket items, typically at their lowest prices of the year. Today that includes headphones from Sony, Beats, Jabra, and a deal on refurbished AirPods Max.
Sony has two great offers on its latest- and last-generation noise-canceling headphones. The frustratingly named but high-quality WH-1000XM5 ($348, $400) and WH-1000XM4 ($228, $348) are discounted to match the lowest prices we've tracked for either. Since Sony released the latest WH-1000XM5, it continues to sell the previous-generation WH-1000XM4 alongside it. When we tested the 5 versus the 4, we found it to improve slightly on just about every aspect of the previous-gen headphones. They're better for phone calls, a bit lighter, and can charge more quickly. They also can't fold up for storage like the 4. These aren't what we'd call paradigm-shifting leaps but, rather, moderate improvements, for the most part. Selling for over $100 less at its current price, the WH-1000XM4 remains a very well-reviewed, capable set of noise-canceling headphones that we couldn't fault you for picking up instead of the newer WH-1000XM5.
Apple's AirPods Max are our favorite noise-canceling headphones, though. And if you're comfortable buying refurbished, they're currently on discount for $355 ($475) from Woot, shaving off a couple hundred dollars from the MSRP. Woot's website states that these headphones have no visual scratches or blemishes and come with a 90-day warranty from Woot.