Technology - Google News

The best Cyber Week deals on headphones, video games, and more - The Verge
The Snapdragon 888 is Qualcomm's latest premium CPU for smartphones - Engadget
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti review: faster than 2080 Super, easily beats 1080 Ti - Eurogamer.net

The best Cyber Week deals on headphones, video games, and more - The Verge

Posted: 01 Dec 2020 06:10 AM PST

Cyber Monday may be a thing of the past, but some of its best deals are still happening. Many retailers will keep some of them going a little longer this week, now dubbed "Cyber Week." Between now and the winter holidays, you can expect the non-stop barrage of deals to slow down a bit. However, in an effort to keep you coming back to snag those last-minute gifts, some stores may reintroduce this year's best deals at a moment's notice.

Below, you'll find a few good deals on wireless noise-canceling headphones, earbuds, video games, and more. If you like where a price is at, it may be a good idea to make a purchase now, as these deals could end any moment.

We'll be doing our best to keep this post updated during Cyber Week, including adding new deals when they arrive, and striking through expired deals. And if you've been around these parts before and are just looking for what's new, you'll find those deals at the top of the post.

Latest Deals

The Nintendo Switch console that includes yellow and blue Joy-Con controllers, along with Fortnite and 2,000 V-Bucks is available at Amazon for $300.

AirPods Pro are back down to $190 at Woot, matching the deal we saw just before Black Friday. Woot guarantees that your order will arrive before Christmas on December 25th.

If you missed Woot's incredible deal on the Galaxy Buds Live, don't worry, B&H Photo has the wireless earbuds on sale for $120 in black and bronze. It is not the lowest we have seen these bean-shaped earbuds for, but still an incredible deal. Amazon also has the Galaxy Buds Live on sale starting at $129, and Best Buy has the earbuds for $130.
Yakuza: Like a Dragon rereleased earlier this month and during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the game was marked down to $40 on PS4 and Xbox, the latter providing you a free copy on Xbox One and the Xbox Series X / S if you own one of Microsoft's next-gen consoles.

The best Cyber Week deals on headphones

Sony's WH-XB900N noise-canceling headphones are ~~$118~~ $148 at Amazon and Best Buy (usually $248)
Even more affordable yet, the Sony WH-CH710N noise-canceling headphones are just ~~$88~~ $98 at Amazon and Best Buy (usually $200)

The Sennheiser Momentum Wireless noise-canceling headphones are $350 at Amazon and Best Buy, knocking $50 off the normal price
Shure's Aonic 50 noise-canceling headphones are $300 at Amazon ~~and~~ ~~Best Buy~~ — a whole $100 off their usual price

Jabra's previous-generation Elite 65t are still a great starter set of wireless earbuds, and they're pretty cheap at Amazon ~~and~~ ~~Best Buy~~. Normally $120, they're $70.

Apple's AirPods with a wireless charging case costs $140, which is officially the lowest price. These have been selling for $150 throughout Black Friday, but this early Cyber Monday deal is live now at Amazon.

You can snag a set of Amazon Echo Buds, which also sound good and have Bose noise reduction technology. They cost $80, down from $130, and you'll get a six-month subscription to Amazon Music Unlimited.

The Galaxy Buds Plus dropped another $10 at Amazon, down to $100 from their original $150 price. Other retailers have joined Amazon at $100.

Also at $80 are 1More's ColorBuds, a solid set of wireless earbuds that pop with color. These are normally $100, and you can get this deal through 1More

The best Cyber Week deals on streaming services

For new and returning customers (who haven't subscribed in the last three months and who haven't taken advantage of last year's promo), you can get on Hulu's ad-supported streaming plan for just $1.99 per month for a full year. After that, your monthly rate goes back up to $5.99. This deal was supposed to end earlier this morning, but the landing page is still up for the promotion.

1Password is offering an exclusive offer to readers of The Verge until Thursday, December 3rd. You can save 50 percent each month on the cost of a family subscription (up to five people, and not restricted to a single household) to 1Password's services, costing $2.50 per month for up to one year. After that year is up, you'll be charged the regular $5 per month rate.

The best Cyber Week deals on TVs

The best Cyber Week deals on laptops

The Acer Aspire 5 is a solid budget laptop with an 11th Gen Core i5-1135G7 processor, 8GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. It costs $550 at Newegg, down from $650.

The best Cyber Week deals on smart speakers

Google's latest Nest Audio speakers are available as a duo for $170, knocking $20 off the usual price for buying two together. These can be paired for a stereo arrangement for music and podcasts, and at some point, you'll be able to use them as a home theater setup with Chromecast.

The best Cyber Week deals on smart displays

Google's Nest Hub smart displays are great if you like to watch YouTube, or have a big Google Photos library you want to show off on their screens. The smallest Nest Hub starts at $50, though only the larger Nest Hub Max can make video calls.

The best Cyber Week deals on phones

At the OnePlus site, you can get the standard OnePlus 8 for $200 off its usual price, costing $599. B&H Photo is actually offering a slightly bigger price cut of $230 off. This phone shares a few similarities to the 8 Pro, like the Snapdragon 865 processor, 12GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. Though, it doesn't have wireless charging and its camera array doesn't quite stack up as favorably. Also, it has a 90Hz refresh rate display compared to 120Hz on the 8 Pro, and the display itself is smaller (about 6.5 inches versus 6.8 inches).

Speaking of the OnePlus 8 Pro, Amazon recently knocked an extra $50 off the Black Friday sale price.

The Pixel 4A with 5G is $200 off when new customers purchase it through the Google Fi MVNO service, resulting in a $299 final price. If you're an existing Google Fi subscriber, you can upgrade to the 4A with 5G and get $150 off, knocking the price down to $349. Not bad, considering that's the same price as the standard Pixel 4A that doesn't have 5G support.

The rear of the iPhone 12 is glossy and it picks up both fingerprints and micro-scratches fairly easily. Use a case.

Until December 7th, Visible (owned by Verizon, operating on Verizon LTE) will give you a complimentary set of AirPods Pro with the purchase of any phone in the iPhone 12 series. The catch is that you'll need to buy the phone and port your number to a new line in the same transaction.

The best Cyber Week deals on streaming devices

The best Cyber Week deals on tablet accessories

The best Cyber Week gaming deals

FIFA 21 is ~~$27~~ $25 at GameStop (usually $60), the lowest it's been. If you buy the PS4 version and upgrade to the PS5, you will receive the next-gen version free of charge until FIFA 22 releases.
Madden NFL 21 is ~~$27~~ $25 at GameStop, the lowest price ever. If you buy the PS4 version and upgrade to the PS5, you will receive the next-gen version, free of charge until Madden 22 releases.
The Last of Us Part II is $30 at Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop, and Walmart (usually $60).

Ghost of Tsushima is $40 at Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop, and Walmart (usually $60)
NBA 2K21 is ~~$30~~ $25 (usually $60), the lowest price we've seen.
Watch Dogs Legion is ~~$30~~ $37 at Amazon and $40 at Walmart (usually $60). If you buy the Xbox One version and upgrade to that console's successor, you will receive the next-gen version free of charge.

The best Cyber Week deals on PC tech

For the first time, Brydge has discounted its W-Touch standalone trackpad for Windows 10. Normally $100, it's down to $70.
The W-Type wireless, full-sized Bluetooth keyboard is discounted by $20, bringing the price down to $40.
Samsung's 2TB 970 Evo Plus NVMe SSD is $250 at Newegg ~~and Best Buy~~, beating the lowest price by about $40. A PCIe 3.0 M.2 SSD like this will fit in only certain kinds of motherboards (so check before you buy).

For an even faster M.2 drive that's actually capable of delivering quicker read/write speeds for both PCIe 3.0 and motherboards with PCIe 4.0 support, Samsung's 500GB 980 Pro NVMe SSD is $120 (usually $150) at Amazon.

The best Cyber Monday deals on mesh Wi-Fi routers

Google's Nest Wifi mesh routers are steeply discounted, starting with the single unit that's $135 instead of $169 at Amazon and $139 at Best Buy.

The best Cyber Week deals on misc. tech

A number of retailers are selling the DJI Osmo Action for $199, a discount of about $50 from its regular price. The Osmo Action is similar to GoPro's line of action cameras, and comes with both front and rear facing screens.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

The Snapdragon 888 is Qualcomm's latest premium CPU for smartphones - Engadget

Posted: 01 Dec 2020 07:41 AM PST

Every December for the last few years, Qualcomm has unveiled its next-generation high-end CPU that ends up powering many flagship smartphones for the first half of the following year. Though 2020 might be different than previous years, the tech product cycle is not letting up. The company is announcing today that its latest premium mobile chipset is the Snapdragon 888, and it'll be in Xiaomi's upcoming Mi 11 flagship. Other companies like LG, OnePlus, Motorola, ASUS, Lenovo and Oppo have "provided their support for Snapdragon 888," Qualcomm said.

Though its predecessor is the Snapdragon 865, Qualcomm's latest model number is a departure from sequential increments and an auspicious name in Chinese culture. The company didn't share many details about the Snapdragon 888's technical upgrades today, saying that it uses a third-generation X60 5G modem and a sixth-generation AI engine.

Qualcomm also said that the Snapdragon 888 features the third generation of its Elite Gaming platform, which delivers its "most significant upgrade in Qualcomm Adreno GPU performance." It also promised that the new chipset "will triple down on the future of computational photography and transform smartphones into professional quality cameras." Phones with the Snapdragon 888 will be able to capture photos at 2.7 gigapixels per second, the company said, which should translate to 120 photos that are 12-megapixels sharp per second. That's up to 35 percent faster than the last Snapdragon processor.

Gallery: Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 Tech Summit | 17 Photos

More details about the Snapdragon 888 will be unveiled tomorrow on the second day of Qualcomm's annual Tech Summit event, so be sure to come back for the full breakdown.

In this article: snapdragon, snapdragon 888, qualcomm, cpu, smartphone, mobile, 5G, news, gear

All products recommended by Engadget are selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti review: faster than 2080 Super, easily beats 1080 Ti - Eurogamer.net

Posted: 01 Dec 2020 06:02 AM PST

The rumours were true: the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti is a real graphics card, and we've been testing it for the past week. Nvidia promises RTX 2080 Super level performance in a smaller, cheaper and more efficient Ampere design, and - spoiler alert - that's exactly what our testing shows they've delivered.

For £370 in the UK, $400 in the US and around €399 in Europe, the 3060 Ti isn't quite in mainstream territory, but it's significantly faster than the RTX 2060 Super it replaces at the same price-point and AMD's competitive Big Navi architecture has yet to debut at anything below the $580/£530 price point of the RX 6800. If the Green Team is able to actually produce these cards in volume - and sell them to actual customers rather than bot farms - they could be onto a winner.

In terms of the specs and underlying architecture, the RTX 3060 Ti uses the same GA104 GPU as the RTX 3070, but with fewer CUDA cores - 4864 versus 5888. The card also operates at slightly slower clock speeds (1665MHz boost versus 1725MHz) to fit into a 20W lower TDP (200W vs 220W). The memory subsystems are unchanged however, with both cards sporting the same 8GB GDDR6 operating at 448GB/s. It's good to see 8GB of VRAM becoming the new standard, with all next-gen cards from both teams providing at least that much thus far.

This content is hosted on an external platform, which will only display it if you accept targeting cookies. Please enable cookies to view.

	RTX 3080	RTX 3070	RTX 3060 Ti	RTX 2060 Super	RTX 2060	GTX 1060
GPU	GA102	GA104	GA104	TU106	TU106	GP106
CUDA cores	8704	5888	4864	2176	1920	1280
VRAM	10GB GDDR6X	8GB GDDR6	8GB GDDR6	8GB GDDR6	6GB GDDR6	6GB GDDR5
Memory Bus	320-bit	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit	192-bit	192-bit
Bandwidth	760GB/s	448GB/s	448GB/s	448GB/s	336GB/s	192GB/s
Base Clock	1440MHz	1500MHz	1410MHz	1470MHz	1365MHz	1506MHz
Boost Clock	1710MHz	1725MHz	1665MHz	1650MHz	1680MHz	1709MHz
TDP	320W	220W	200W	175W	160W	120W
Die Size	628mm²	392mm²	392mm²	445mm²	445mm²	200mm²
Transistors	28B	17.4B	17.4B	10.8B	10.8B	4.4B

The comparison against older generation cards is more interesting. The 3060 Ti manages to more than double the number of graphics cores of the 2060 Super, in a smaller die that consumes only a tad more power. Looking further back, at the GTX 1060, and the multiplier is closer to 4x - with a corresponding increase to transistor count, courtesy of the shift from the 16nm with Pascal to 12nm with Turing and now 8nm with Ampere.

As well as improvements to compute performance, all of the usual features of Nvidia's Ampere architecture are present and correct, including next-generation ray tracing and tensor cores, so we can expect more noticeable performance uplifts in RT and AI accelerated workloads. We've covered Ampere in more detail in our earlier RTX 3070, 3080 and 3090 reviews, so let's move onto the card's physical design.

As usual, we're testing the Founders Edition of the card, which comes with the same gorgeous industrial design and in the same compact dimensions as the RTX 3070. We have two axial fans in a 'flow-through' configuration, with the small, pennant-shaped motherboard design and miniature 12-pin power connector allowing the final third of the card to be wholly used for cooling. Even the I/O is arranged to maximise airflow, with a single row of display outputs (three DisplayPort 1.4, one HDMI 2.1) sitting beneath a 16x5 grid of ventilation cutouts.

As with other RTX 30-series cards, the 3060 Ti is a PCIe 4.0 device but works in PCIe 3.0 motherboards without any loss in performance in the vast majority of gaming workloads. Another invisible feature is the AV1 decode support, which should allow sites like Twitch and Netflix to up their resolution, frame-rate and bitrate substantially at a given bandwidth - or decrease bandwidth by up to 50 per cent while keeping these metrics the same. AV1 support isn't essential now, and is available on both AMD and Nvidia's new cards, but it could be a nice cherry on top for anyone choosing to upgrade once it hits the mainstream.

One of the biggest questions we had when testing the 3060 Ti - beyond its gaming performance, which we'll get to soon - surrounded its power efficiency. The RTX 3070 was substantially more efficient than its more powerful siblings, so is the 3060 Ti more efficient still?

To answer this question, we use Nvidia's Power Capture Analysis Tool, or PCAT. This is an interposer board that sits between the PCIe slot and the graphics card, as well as between the supplementary 8-pin power input used by the 3060 Ti and our power supply. This way, we can measure the number of watts drawn by the card itself, rather than the load of the full system which can vary naturally over time, and plot this power draw precisely against frame-rates to get a sense of how much power is being used to create each frame.

Joules Per Frame	RX 6800 XT	RX 6800	RTX 3080 FE	RTX 3070 FE	RTX 3060 Ti FE	RTX 2070 FE	RX 5700 XT
Death Stranding	2.933	2.644	3.349	2.915	3.064	3.651	3.846
Percentage Diff	110.9%	100%	126.6%	110.2%	115.9%	138.1%	145.5%

Joules Per Frame	RX 6800 XT	RX 6800	RTX 3080 FE	RTX 3070 FE	RTX 3060 Ti FE	RTX 2070 FE	RX 5700 XT
Gears 5	4.384	3.792	4.156	3.603	3.163	4.734	5.403
Percentage Diff	138.6%	119.9%	131.4%	113.9%	100%	149.7%	170.82%

In Death Stranding, the RTX 3060 Ti almost equals the RTX 3070, requiring 3.064 joules per frame to render our test scene compared to 2.915 joules per frame for the 3070. AMD's Big Navi graphics cards perform better in Death Stranding than Nvidia's Ampere, so we see an even better efficiency rating for the RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT. So the 3060 Ti does use less power than the 3070, but the decrease in performance is larger than the decrease in power usage - at least in this test.

Gears 5 is more hopeful, with the 3060 Ti setting a new record here of 3.163 joules per frame, with the 3070 requiring 14 per cent more power per frame and the RX 6800 requiring around 20 per cent more. Normally we'd expect cards in the same family to be arranged in the same order in each game, so it's unusual to see the 3060 Ti lead against the 3070 in one test and trail in another. However, retests bore out our initial results, allowing the 3060 Ti to claim the 'most efficient Ampere GPU' title in at least one game. It's worth looking back at the RTX 2070 FE as well, which requires 50 per cent more joules for each frame - Ampere and its shift to 8nm has really had solid results in terms of power efficiency.

With our brief power testing concluded, it's time to confirm the specifications of our test rig. You'll see a few new components here if you've not checked out our RTX 30-series reviews yet, but for those of you that are familiar there are no surprises here. We have a Core i9 10900K is locked to a 5GHz all-core frequency and cooled by a 240mm Alpacool Eisbaer Aurora AiO - which keeps the overclocked system at around 75C under full load.

The 10900K is backed by an Asus Maximus 12 Extreme Z490 motherboard and two 8GB sticks of G.Skill Trident Z Royal 3600MHz CL16. Our games are run from a capacious 2TB Samsung 970 Evo Plus NVMe drive provided by Box. The whole rig is powered by a 850W gold-rated Gamer Storm power supply.

With the stage set, let's begin the show with some gaming benchmarks.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Analysis