Tech
Smart Home Deals and Half-Off Tools at the Home Depot
Apparently, it’s always Friday at the Home Depot. Or at least, the Home Depot Black Friday deals have slipped all customary bounds of the calendar: Online deals started November 5 and will go all the way to December 3.
This includes some very steep discounts on flagship tool brands like Milwaukee, Ryobi, and DeWalt tools—by which I mean half-off and buy-one-get-one steep. Seemingly half the store is on sale. But here’s an early look at some of the best deals to look out for as Black Friday rings in early.
Discounts on Google Nest and Other Smart Home Devices
A couple of WIRED’s top-tested smart home devices from Google Nest have significant discounts at Home Depot right now, alongside discounts on a mess of smart home devices from Echo, Eufy, and others.
The newest Nest Learning Thermostat is a genuine blockbuster device in its category, and the Home Depot is selling it for the lowest price I can find at any retailer right now. The Nest is pretty on the eyes and has no trouble with disconnections or irregularities in the temperature readout, which are surprisingly common among smart home thermostats. It also offers a bunch of fun features, including a readout that changes depending on your proximity to the device. Even better, the Nest thermostat comes with an external temperature sensor that lets you prioritize the readings in a specific room (or part of a room). This allowed WIRED reviewer Nena Farrell to tune the device to her toddler’s bedroom to keep it from getting too stuffy. The larger screen size is also a noticeable upgrade from previous generations, she noted.
The Nest Cam Outdoor 2K requires a little installation, sure: You’ll need to screw in the mount and run a cable. But the cam offers 2K video quality and two-way audio, and doesn’t waste your time with a string of ambiguous notifications like a lot of outdoor cameras: It can accurately detect people, animals, and vehicles. The camera offers sharp video with a 152-degree field of view. It’s the wired outdoor cam that WIRED reviewer Simon Hill recommends above all others—but note that while notifications and live feed don’t require a subscription, you’ll need a $10- or $20-a-month subscription to access more advanced features that include detection of Familiar Faces and 30 to 60 days of video history. Anyway, it’s 20 percent off for Black Friday at the Home Depot, alongside sales on a whole host of other smart home devices.
Buy-One-Get-One Deals on DeWalt Tools
A few tools from home improvement staple DeWalt are on sale for buy-one-get-one at the moment. It’s a bit tough to sort out on the Home Depot’s site, but essentially you’ve got a mix and match of a few select DeWalt tools.
Buy one, and any of the other tools is free. This includes the 13-Inch Cordless String Trimmer ($139), the 20V Cordless Leaf Blower ($179), the 20V MAX XR Cordless Brushless Jigsaw ($239), and the 20V MAX Cordless Brushless Circular Saw ($229)
Aside from that BOGO deal, you can get a free DeWalt tool with the purchase of a battery, or a free DeWalt battery with the purchase of a tool, as detailed here. Or, kinda most of the rest of the DeWalt toolkit is on sale this month for somewhere between 20 percent and 50 percent off. It’s not the steepest discount on the list, but might I suggest WIRED’s absolute favorite drill and driver kit, on sale now for $50 off?
The Home Depot Milwaukee Tools for 50 Percent Off
During the Home Depot’s month-long Black Friday sale, you can also opt to go with buy-one-get-one or 50-percent-off deals on a number of Milwaukee tools. WIRED Reviewer Scott Gilbertson is already on record as loving the Milwaukee Tool ecosystem as a smart investment—to make use of Milwaukee’s excellent battery tech. He now owns dozens, from impact guns to circular saws and a drywall screw gun.
Anyway, the most essential tool in the kit, Milwaukee’s M18 Fuel Brushless Cordless Hex Impact Driver ($179), is on a buy-one-get-one sale alongside other select Milwaukee tools as part of a buy-one-get-one deal that also includes Milwaukee’s brushless cordless grinder ($229) and cordless personal inflator ($199). Other tools include free batteries with select tools, or vice versa.
It’s not always easy when browsing the general site to see which tools are on the BOGO deal, but click the button below and take note of the tools marked “Free With Purchase.”
Buy-One-Get-One Makita, Ryobi, and Ridgid Tools
Once you’ve bought into a tool ecosystem, it’s kinda part of your life now: You’ve chosen a battery pack that will power a whole world of powered implements. Different WIRED staffers have their own preferences. For WIRED reviewers Julian Chokkattu and Pete Cottell both, their personal world is Makita. And Makita is one of the brands with a killer buy-one-get-one at the moment: Just buy one of the Makita tools here and you can select either a free battery pack, or a freebie among seven other Makita tools in the $200 range.
WIRED has not tested all these tools, but Ryobi has a similar deal, on its affordable tool sets, with a BOGO deal on multiple tools and batteries, including an 18-volt, oscillating, sanding, and cutting multitool ($79) for wall and panel work, and an impact wrench ($99).
Ridgid has a similar deal, with a different product set. Ridgid tool bundles with batteries are up to 60 percent off, especially a cordless blower deal with a battery starter kit for more than half off.
Free Christmas Tree Delivery
I remember two things about Christmas-tree shopping as a kid, which was always the best and the worst day. Picking out the tree was, of course, plenty exciting. But then you had to load it. And you had to move it, after wrangling it into a pickup truck. Then you had to unload it, and get it into the house. By the time you’re clear of all that, you might as well just forget Christmas spirit.
Well, the internet is a many-splendored thing. The Home Depot is offering free delivery on Christmas trees during Black Friday, on anything from artificial trees (here’s the best-seller right now) to fresh-cut fir, which is already coming into stock but only from online-only vendors. (Or, if you’d rather, check out WIRED’s roundup of the best artificial Christmas trees, as tested by professionals.
Artificial trees or real ones show up at your doorstep at no additional charge, no pickup truck required. Because we already live in the future.
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Tech
6 Great After-Christmas Deals to Spend Your Gift Cards On
After-Christmas deals are an excellent way to redeem any gift cards or cash you got for Christmas. You can purchase something you actually want, and you can do it for less money than usual. I’ve scoured the Internet for truly good after-Christmas deals on the gear that we’ve hand-tested on the WIRED Reviews team. Many of these sales will end this weekend, so keep that in mind while you’re shopping. Find all the highlights below.
For more inspiration, check out some of our recently updated buying guides, including the Best Office Chairs, the Best Cheap Phones, and the Best Space Heaters.
WIRED Featured Deals:
Anker Laptop Power Bank for $88 ($47 off)
We love this beefy power bank. Its 25,000-mAh capacity is more than enough for fully charging your iPhone between 4 and 6 times, and it can deliver up to 165 watts to two devices meaning that you can charge your laptop, gaming console, or anything else you fancy. The built-in USB-C cable doubles as a carrying loop. There’s also a nifty display that’ll give you at-a-glance information on remaining battery, temperature, charging speeds, and more. It has pass-through charging support and only takes about two hours to fully recharge. This deal price matches what we saw on Black Friday.
Google Pixel 10 for $599 ($200 off)
There was an on-page coupon (PIXEL10) that had the best price we’ve tracked for any of the phones in the Google Pixel 10 lineup. That coupon is not available as of Saturday morning, but it may be back—clip it if you see it. This is still a good deal on the smartest Android phones you can buy, with fantastic cameras, snappy processors, gorgeous displays, and more AI integration than the average person needs. Check out our dedicated buying guide to figure out which Google Pixel 10 is right for you. If you’re in the market for an upgrade, now is a good time to buy considering that we’ve never seen any phone in this flagship lineup sell for less.
Bruvi BV-01 Brewer Bundle for $228 ($120 off)—Clip the Coupon
I’ve tested a lot of pod coffee makers, and the Bruvi BV-01 is my favorite. This deal price is the best we see outside of special events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The brewer is cute and looks great on a counter, with a large reservoir, an intuitive touchscreen display, and a built-in wastebin that collects used pods for you. The best part are the proprietary B-Pods, which are designed to biodegrade in a landfill. The bundle gets you the machine plus an assortment of bestselling coffee and espresso pods to get you started.
Fitbit Charge 6 for $100 ($60 off)
The Fitbit Charge 6 has been at the top of our fitness tracker buying guide since we first tested it. It’s attractive, affordable, accessible, and on sale for a match of the best deal we’ve seen. It’ll play well with iOS and Android, and it has a solid suite of features that’ll cover almost anyone’s needs—including skin temperature, heart rate readings, ECGs, activity and workout tracking, and more. The battery lasts for at least a week on a single charge. This deal comes with a six-month subscription to Fitbit Premium, which normally costs $10 per month.
Hydro Flask Standard Mouth Water Bottle for $30 ($10 off)
This budget-friendly deal gets you a steal on the best reusable water bottle. Hydro Flask bottles are durable, portable, and easy to cover in all the stickers you’ve been hoarding. The handle is flexible, the bottle is leakproof, and every component is dishwasher safe (though you may want to opt for hand-washing if you do end up plastering it in stickers). A few different colors are on sale at this price.
Beats Powerbeats Pro 2 for $200 ($50 off)
If hitting the gym is one of your New Year’s resolutions for 2026, the Beats Powerbeats Pro 2 are worth considering. They’re the best workout headphones we’ve tested thanks to their comfortable and ergonomic fit, noise cancelation, spatial audio, a heart rate monitor, and the fact that they play well with both iOS and Android phones. The sound is solid, the battery life is good, and they’re water-resistant. This deal price comes within $20 of the best we’ve seen. Every color—orange, lavender, grey, and black—is on sale.
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Tech
Hyperkin’s Competitor Upgrades the Xbox Controller by Copying Sony’s Design
The most immediately striking difference is that Hyperkin’s product swaps the typical Xbox approach of asymmetric thumbsticks for the PlayStation’s horizontal layout. It also separates the D-pad (it’s one piece inside the pad, but splits its cardinal directions so each appears to be its own button), while the ABXY face buttons are spaced slightly further apart. Where the DualSense’s touchpad would sit, we have the Xbox home, menu, view, and share buttons, all blended in rather smartly. An LED ring around the home button just about echoes the lights running the periphery of the DualSense’s touchpad, although it’s really more of an inversion of the regular Xbox controller, where the home button itself lights up.
The Competitor’s thumbsticks come equipped with thumbcaps that mirror the PS5’s, an outer ring with a convex central point, but a pair of Xbox-standard concave caps are included. These easily pop on and off, and can be mixed and matched, if you were so (strangely) inclined.
There are two areas where this departs from both the standard Xbox and PlayStation controllers in terms of inputs. The first is the presence of two programmable rear buttons, M1 and M2. By default, these duplicate the input of the A and B buttons, but holding down the Mode button between them lets you remap them. There are also physical button locks to prevent their use entirely. The other is that while the Competitor boasts a 3.5-mm headphone jack like Microsoft’s official pad, it adds a built-in audio mute button, hidden in the black between the thumbsticks—a nice little upgrade.
Oddly Familiar
In use, the Competitor feels … well, a lot like a PS5 pad. The slightly wider grip fits in the hand comfortably, all inputs are accessible, and those symmetrical thumbsticks sit nicely in reach for all but the smallest hands. A microtextured underside provides a solid grip that, when coupled with its 232-gram weight, makes the Competitor feel particularly suited to longer play periods. It’s all very familiar if you’re already a multiformat gamer, to the extent that it sometimes slightly threw my muscle memory off, reaching a thumb out to do a PlayStation touchpad function and finding only the Xbox system buttons.
Photograph: Matt Kamen
Tech
In Cryptoland, Memecoin Fever Gives Way to a Stablecoin Boom
When US president Donald Trump launched his own meme cryptocurrency on January 17, days before his return to the White House, I was halfway up a Swiss alp, attending a crypto conference in the town of St. Moritz.
Memecoins, which typically have no purpose beyond financial speculation, were having a moment. The previous year, millions of new memecoins had flooded the market; a few, like Fartcoin, had rocketed to billion-dollar valuations. Pump.Fun, a platform for launching and trading memecoins, had become one of the fastest-growing crypto launchpad businesses ever. Now, the soon-to-be president was getting in on the act.
Over lunch on the second day of the conference, beneath the ornate stucco ceiling and golden chandeliers of the venue’s dining hall, I located a table designated for a conversation about memecoins. Whereas other tables were half full, the memecoin workshop was oversubscribed; latecomers pulled up chairs to create two full rows.
The discussion was led by Nagendra Bharatula, founder of investment firm G-20 Group. Bharatula had recently coauthored a paper arguing that memecoins, despite their juvenile spirit, had a place in professional investors’ portfolios. In the six months prior, a basket of 25 “bluechip memecoins”—an oxymoron if ever there was one—had outperformed bitcoin by 150 percent, he pointed out. Some of the attendees murmured their approval.
Since then, the shine has come off the memecoin market. The paper value of Trump’s coin, which climbed to a peak of $14 billion two days after its launch, has cratered to roughly $1 billion. Hundreds of thousands of small investors lost their shirts. Pump.Fun’s daily revenue, a proxy for the overall appetite for memecoin trading, is barely more than a tenth of what it was in January. The memecoin gold rush has spawned a raft of litigation.
Next up: the stablecoin. If memecoins are symbolic of reckless abandon and unflinching profiteering in cryptoland, stablecoins are a symbol of the industry’s search for purpose and respectability. Designed to hold a steady $1 valuation, stablecoins are pitched by proponents as a faster and cheaper way to make everyday payments and international money transfers.
In a year in which the US has declared itself open for crypto business, where previously crypto firms feared regulatory backlash under the Biden administration, stablecoins have supplanted memecoins as the coin à la mode—and punctured the mainstream.
Though stablecoins have been around since 2014, they have predominantly been used by crypto traders as a safe harbor during bouts of market volatility, not by regular people. The concept has also faced resistance from regulators skeptical of a new form of money; Diem, a stablecoin venture incubated at Meta, famously shuttered in 2022 in the face of broad-based opposition.
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