Black Friday Top Picks: tablets, laptops and smartwatches in the US

Happy Black Friday, everyone. Now let’s see what’s good. Note that we have smartphone deals in a separate post, here we will focus on the best tablet, laptop, smartwatch and other offers for the US market. Note that Black Friday sales will run for a whole week, leading up to the actual Black Friday (and there’s Cyber Monday after that, but all in due time).

Here are some shortcuts to jump straight to the section you care about:

• Tablets
• Smartwatches
• Smart rings
• Laptops
• Amazon tablets
• Amazon e-readers

Tablets

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra uses the same chip, but it’s paired with a larger 14.6” 120Hz OLED display and an 11,600mAh battery. Also note that we’ve linked the Wi-Fi versions below – if you want 5G connectivity on your tablet add $150 to the price. Finally, the 1TB variant of the Tab S11 Ultra is the only option for more than 12GB of RAM (it gets 16GB).

The large Ultra rarely gets discounted, but the small (well, the 11”) Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 gets price cuts a lot more often. It’s an IP68 rated tablet with full DeX support. It comes bundled with a stylus and you can get the optional keyboard, depending on the work you want to do with it. It’s powered by the Dimensity 9400+ chipset and storage is expandable via microSD.

There’s no Plus model this generation, but the Samsung Galaxy Tab S10+ is still a viable option with its Dimensity 9300+ chipset. It has a larger 12.4” display but is otherwise more of the same.

The OnePlus Pad 3 is an interesting alternative – this one uses the Snapdragon 8 Elite instead of a MediaTek chip and has a large 13.2” 144Hz display. Note that it is an IPS LCD and not an OLED. And it’s basically the same price as the Tab S10 FE models below, not the premium Tab S slates above.

Speaking of, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 FE and Tab S10 FE+ also use IPS LCDs – 10.9” and 13.1”, respectively (both 90Hz). The Exynos 1580 is a mid-range chip, however, not on the level of the Snapdragon 8 or Dimensity 9000 silicon.

The Galaxy Tab S10 Lite is the new affordable tablet from Samsung. It has a 10.9” LCD (90Hz, stylus included) and is powered by the older Exynos 1380.

We have nowhere else to put it, so here it goes – the Meta Quest 3S is down to $250 and that includes a free game. It’s not as capable as the Quest 3 (it’s a mix of Quest 2 and 3 hardware), but it’s a cheap entry into the world of VR. The Samsung Galaxy XR is available but not on sale, so it costs $1,800 – that’s a whole different segment. Steam’s own XR headset is still “coming soon”.

Smartwatches

The Google Pixel Watch 4 is one of the first smartwatches with satellite connectivity, but note that this option is available only on the LTE model. Still, if you want a backup option to call for help in case you have an emergency somewhere out in the wild, this one is an interesting pick. The only other smartwatch with satellite connectivity that we can think of is from Garmin – the fenix 8 Pro starts at $1,200.

The Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra only has LTE connectivity for now. It’s more outdoorsy than the Pixel with 100m/10ATM water resistance rating and a bigger 590mAh battery (vs. 455mAh).

The Ultra has that rugged look – the Galaxy Watch8 Classic is more stylish. It has a rotating bezel, however, the 1.34” display inside it is on the small side for a 46mm watch.

The vanilla Galaxy Watch8 is Samsung’s thinnest yet at 8.6mm. It is available in 40mm and 44mm variants with 1.34” and 1.47” displays, respectively (see what we mean about the Classic display?). The Watch8 models are rated for 50m/5ATM water resistance and have ECG and blood pressure sensors.

You can save some cash and go for the older Galaxy Watch7. It’s thicker at 9.7mm while having a slightly smaller battery (by 10mAh). It uses the same Exynos W1000 chipset, though, and it has similarly-sized screens too. And it’s a circle, not a squircle!

Smart rings

You can pair – or even replace to some extent – a smartwatch with a smart ring. The Samsung Galaxy Ring works with the Samsung Health app and does not require a subscription. The functionality of the Oura Ring 4 is pretty limited without a subscription, though.

Laptops

Apple released new MacBook Air laptops with the M4 chip earlier this year. Since then it has introduced the M5 (available only on MacBook Pros for now), but the Airs were never performance-oriented models, anyway. The good news is that now 16GB is the base RAM capacity, so you only need to worry about storage.

Alternatively, you can grab a Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360. It has a 16” OLED touchscreen, a 2,880 x 1,800px 120Hz panel that can be rotated into tablet mode. This is a Windows laptop, of course, that uses several Intel Core Ultra processors with NPUs that power Microsoft Copilot AI.

The Microsoft Surface Pro is a tablet-style device that can optionally be paired with a keyboard if you plan on typing more than using the stylus. It comes in two variants – an LCD one with the Snapdragon X Plus (10-core CPU) and an OLED one with the Snapdragon X Elite (12-core CPU).

Another Windows AI laptop is the Acer Aspire 16 – this one is powered by the Snapdragon X instead of an x86 chip. The Qualcomm-based laptops started at the high-end, but this is a fairly affordable model with a 16” 1,920 x 1,200px 120Hz LCD touchscreen.

Amazon Fire tablets

Here are Amazon’s already cheap not-quite-Android tablets and bargain bin prices. These have good quality screens and come in several sizes to match your needs – they are best for watching videos, scrolling through the web and maybe some light work or gaming. They are not particularly powerful, but the price reflects that. Just remember that there is no access to the Google Play Store out of the box (which can be fixed easily enough).

Additionally, there are Kids versions of some of these tablets. They disable ads and are built for young users – by that we mean that they ship with a sturdy case and have a 2-year worry-free warranty. They also come with a 1-year subscription to Amazon Kids+ – an all-you-can-eat service with free, curated content for kids (including Marvel TV shows).

You can install the Parent Dashboard app on your phone and set time limits and educational goals. You can enable or disable certain apps like YouTube and Spotify. A quick note about the Pro models: these come with a different set of permission defaults. For example, a Pro tablet can access the whole internet (with content filters in place), while the regular models can only open select sites. Of course, this is all subject to change via the parental control app.

Amazon Kindle e-readers

While you can read books on an LCD tablet, your eyes will thank you for going with an e-reader instead. Amazon has a wide variety, ranging from small and cheap to larger, more premium models.

The Amazon Kindle Colorsoft has an e-ink display capable of displaying colors. This is great for graphic novels or for viewing more complicated documents. It can be used in Black & White mode too (which increases the screen’s PPI).

The Amazon Kindle Scribe is large enough to read PDFs comfortably and comes with an included stylus. These are intended for work and creativity more so than reading books (though you can do that too). Note that there is a Colorsoft variant coming soon, but it didn’t launch in time for Black Friday.

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