Just the Best: MacStories' Black Friday Picks

Black Friday deals started very early this year, and we’ve covered a lot of ground on the MacStories Deals Mastodon and Bluesky accounts since publishing our Early Black Friday Picks. A lot of those deals are ongoing, so it’s worth revisiting that story as you start your holiday shopping in earnest.

However, today, I wanted to hit the highlights of what we’ve covered over the past week on MacStories Deals and add some new deals to the mix that you probably haven’t seen yet, so buckle up, it’s time to go shopping.

MacStories Pixel Icons

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Visit our dedicated MacStories Pixel page today to preview all three icon sets and purchase them for 40% off until Monday, December 1.

Apple Hardware

There are a lot of Black Friday deals on Apple hardware, but most of them are good, not great. I’m picky, so I’m only going to focus on just the great deals.

One of the best deals on Apple hardware during Black Friday is the M4 13” MacBook Air with 16GB of memory and 256GB of storage. If you want more memory or storage than that, you’ll have to settle for a smaller percentage discount, but even with more memory and more storage, you’re still doing better than any other deal this year. The 15” M4 MacBook Air with 16GB of memory and a 256GB SSD is a good deal, too.

Among the many iPad deals, the best is on the 128GB iPad mini with an A17 Pro chip. I’ve had a mini since they were released and love it. The size makes it an excellent reading and video-watching device.

AirPods 4 are also heavily discounted for Black Friday. Apple’s most affordable wireless earbuds come with active noise cancellation and without. The model with no active noise cancellation slightly edges out the model with ANC as far as the discounts are concerned, but both models are a bargain.

However, the very best deals available from Apple in terms of the percentage discount are a 4-pack of AirTags and the Apple Pencil Pro. If you need either, now is the perfect time to buy them.

Smart Home

The holiday season is a great time to catch up on projects and start new ones. For me, that’s often tuning up my smart home setup and setting up some new devices thanks to Black Friday sales. Here are the best ones I’ve seen:

Aqara already makes some of the most affordable smart home devices out there, so you really can’t go wrong with their Black Friday deals. One of my favorites is the FP2 Presence Sensor. It’s far more sophisticated than a simple motion sensor. To start with, it can tell when you’ve left a room, which motion sensors can’t do. I’ve used an FP2 Sensor in my office to control lighting for a couple of years, wrote about it for Club members, and have been really happy with it.

Other great deals from Aqara include its U100 Smart Lock that works with Apple Home Key and HomeKit, the Aqara M3 Home Hub that I recently set up at home and love, and 4MP Camera Hub G5 Pro, an outdoor HomeKit camera that I reviewed earlier this year.

My Aqara 4MP Camera Hub G5 Pro is paired with an Ecobee Smart Video Doorbell, which is also on sale for Black Friday. I’ve used various Ecobee smart home products for years and have never been disappointed. The same goes for its smart doorbell. I’ve had it installed for over a year, and it’s been reliable despite facing the sun on some very hot summer days.

Black Friday is also a great time to buy a robot vacuum and mop. There are lots of deals, but the model I’ve tested for the past couple of months and love is the Narwal Freo X10 Pro. It handles vacuuming and mopping, navigating via LiDAR and does an excellent job compared to other robot vacuums I’ve tried. I’ll be reviewing the Freo X10 Pro about it soon, but now’s the time to get it at a steep discount.

Batteries and Chargers

I’ve had the first generation Anker SOLIX C1000 battery since August, and it’s a great backup system in the event the power goes out. In fact, its 1,024Wh capacity is enough to keep my entire Mac setup running for around seven hours. It’s big and heavy, but with five standard U.S. wall outlets, two 140W USB-C ports, a 123W USB-A, and a 15W USB-C port, the C1000 is a versatile backup battery.

One of the early Black Friday deals I picked up for myself was Anker’s SOLIX C300. It’s deeply discounted and strikes a great balance between energy storage and size storing 288Wh of energy (which is the equivalent of nine 10,000mAh battery packs) in a package that’s just under 8 inches tall and 5 inches wide and deep. We have variable rate pricing on electricity where I live, so I’ve been charging the C300 when electricity is cheap and charging all my devices when it’s not. The capacity is enough to charge my MacBook Pro and have plenty left over for my iPhone, and anything else that needs a charge. It has a light and a car charger, too.

If that’s too much battery for you, Anker’s 27,650mAh Prime Power Bank, which is an excellent Black Friday deal option, too. The battery can output 250W total and has three ports: two USB-C and one USB-A. I’ve used this battery for a couple of years, and what I like most about it is that it comes with a magnetic base that charges at 170W, recharging it fully in around 37 minutes. The base has two USB-C and one USB-A port, so it can serve as a wall-powered charging hub, too.

If batteries aren’t your thing, UGREEN has some excellent deals on wall chargers ranging from the compact Nexode 200W GaN wall charger that outputs 200W total and has four USB-C and 1 USB-A port to the 500W Nexode charging station with five USB-C ports, a single USB-A port, and a single USB-C port output of up to 240W. In between is a 300W Nexode charging station with four USB-C ports and one USB-A port. All three are deeply discounted for Black Friday and are a great way to charge multiple devices simultaneously.

Headphones

In addition to the AirPods 4 that I mentioned above, there are other deals, including from Beats, which has great deals on the Beats Studio Pro, which I bought for myself as an early holiday gift, and Beats Solo 4 headphones. Sony’s ultra-popular WH-1000XM5 wireless noise-cancelling headphones, the Sennheiser MOMENTUM 4 wireless headphones, and the Bose QuietComfort Headphones are great bargains, too.

Wearables

Oura is new to Amazon, and the company is making a splash with a big discount on the Oura Ring 4, the latest version of the sleep and fitness tracking ring. If a smart watch isn’t your thing, the Oura Ring 4 is an excellent alternative way to get the benefits of heart rate and sleep tracking.

AR glasses continue to improve, allowing you to use your computer, watch TV and movies, and play games on a huge virtual display. One of the leaders among the companies developing AR glasses is XReal, whose glasses Federico and I have both used. For Black Friday, XReal is offering a great deal on the XReal One glasses and a smaller discount on the Pro model, both of which could make for a fun holiday season AR project.

Videogame Hardware and Accessories

I spend a lot of time researching the latest gaming hardware for NPC: Next Portable Console, and there are some great deals out there this year. One of the most exciting announcements in gaming this year is that Valve is releasing a Steam Machine early next year – a sort of more powerful Steam Deck designed to be connected to your TV.

One of the most intriguing aspects of Valve’s plans that we discuss on next week’s episode of NPC is that the beta version of its operating system, SteamOS, has already been adapted to run on some desktops. That means it’s already possible to configure a PC with specs that are as good or better than a Steam Machine today. If that’s your sort of thing, one of the most interesting options is the GMKtec AI Mini PC Ryzen Al Max+ 395, a mini PC with a footprint that’s similar to a Mac Studio, but shorter. With specs that beat what Valve has said about the Steam Machine, this mini PC is a great option for experimentation, which I’d pair with an ASUS ROG Swift 32” 4K OLED Gaming Monitor, one of the most highly-rated OLED gaming displays to be released this year. Both it and the GMKtec mini PC are heavily discounted for Black Friday.

You don’t see deals on the Sony PS5 console very often, but Amazon has a good deal right now on the slim edition with built-in drive. At this point in the current generation of consoles, Sony’s PS5 has an excellent catalog of games, making this an excellent Black Friday deal if you’ve been waiting for the best time to buy a PS5.

A lot of great controllers are on sale for Black Friday, too. Here are some of my favorites:

Sony DualSense
8BitDo’s Pro 3 Bluetooth Controller for Switch/Switch 2
8Bitdo Ultimate 2
GameSir G8 Plus

Miscellany

There are a lot of other excellent Black Friday deals this year worth considering:

That’s it for this year’s Black Friday roundup. Be sure to follow the MacStories Deals Mastodon and Bluesky accounts for any other bargains we discover this weekend and through Cyber Monday.

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Just the Best: MacStories’ Black Friday Picks