Gadgetory

alright folks let's review since the last time we got together a year ago since then your investments of tanked you probably haven't had a raise of any kind and I bet half the stores you shopped at last holiday season now have plywood in front of them clearly we need some new strategies for buying the right tech at the right price in the right places I'm Brian Cooley and this is the kickoff of this year's CNET holiday best deals 2018 show we're here in San Francisco we being myself and my colleague Lexi savita's here and holding down the the headquarter hello Lexi hi Ryan here we are ready your festive lead rested in holiday red it's perfect and green behind you that's ideal and for the next 60 minutes or so it's gonna be the two of us but not just the two of us we're also gonna bring in our favorite most trusted CNN editors from around the horn as well we definitely have we've got a few special guests joining us live on the line first up we have mr. cheapskate himself the man with all of the deals live from Detroit Michigan mr. Rick brewer hi Rick it's so good to have you on the line and of course from our New York studios we have the man with the TV reviewing know how the guru of all things television mr. David Katz Maya and we have I like it we can just continue doing the salutes for a little while I enjoy that very nice work and we have our laptop guru mr. Dan Ackerman of course hi Dan Dan's got the liquor behind him so he's easy to spot he's my friend we were also supposed to have mr. Scott Stein our phone and tablet expert on the line he is unfortunately being waylaid by the snow in New York so we won't have Scott today but I think Dan you and I think we can cover some of his picks right I think we're gonna do a good job and it Scott throwing his back out shelfing snow is what happens when everybody you work with is 100 years old I I told him I said couldn't you have done that virtually with some VR gear pick up a shovel who does that okay so it's not just the bunch of us the jolly Neapolitans it's also gonna be you that's the most important part of this show so let's get to it I want you to call now triple 8 900 see net triple 8 902 638 or join us via Twitter just use the hashtag seen that live tweet your question will see it show up in the feed Lexi's watching the Twitter stream right now to make sure we catch all those questions as they come in don't be shy we're trying to save you money and get you the right tech we're here for you not to hear ourselves talk we talk tech everyday this is to bring you in the mix make sure you get the right thing and make sure you don't buy like the next 3d TV or something wonky like that so let's get to it in fact anyone who does call us or tweet on the hashtag CNET live today goes in the running to win a whole bevy of prizes like just take a look at some of the things that we have in store for you here we've got Bluetooth speakers we got dash cams we have drones like so much stuff so you go in the running to win one of those things but that's not all there is one other big surprise that you can win now you can need to go to add cnet.com forward slash HP giveaway and it gives away that we're giving away an HP spectre x360 laptop so if you want to win that that is a separate entry you need to go to that website and enter so cnet.com slash and you have until november 30 to get your entries in so you can call us you can tweet us right now and then after the show head along and enter at that link that's a nice machine really nice machine great one to give or to get or just to keep for yourself now let's get down to business let's face it we all want great deals we can find the tech in a lot of places but finding it at the best price is so critical these days so let's bring in the cheapest person we know and I say that in a loving caring way Rick broil has been tracking and posting Black Friday and Cyber Monday not for a day or two not for a week not since Halloween you've been on this since like midsummer tracking the holiday buys is that right Rick no I told you the cheapest guy I know in a caring way wins that TIE fighter drone back there I've got the x-wing so let's stop all right so give us a couple ideas just a teaser we're gonna come into you throughout the day as we go to categories here throughout the hour any couple things that are bad that are bubbling up in your mind right now in terms of the trends that are happening with this year's deals deals go this year and I've actually got a TV deal coming up very shortly to share with everybody but everywhere I look I feel like I'm seeing just like unbeatable prices on some TVs high-end and low-end alike so if you're you know gearing up for the Superbowl or whatever it is this might be the time to grab that big screen okay good good that's always a big winner because it's a it's a good gift for the family I mean TVs are a perennial when it comes with what's going on around the holiday shopping thing and do we also have another special deal you've got going on here with an LG OLED and an echo yes probably one of your favorites the LG OLED TVs are widely regarded I think is some of the best on the market right now and we've got a pretty sweet deal going this is a 65 inch LG OLED TV that sells for 2,500 bucks just about everywhere through our exclusive dealing with daily steals we're saving $200 on that TV is literally the best deal on this model that you can find anywhere right now just for you yes you've seen that viewers that's big that is a great price it wasn't that long ago when we were excited that a TV like that was maybe list at 6,000 now with erosion in the market and then the special deal we've got this is coming down to like normal TV pricing OLED used to be so rarefied okay so thank you we're gonna convince you in a moment here Rick I want to set over to New York now and check-up with Dan Ackerman Dan's my man when it comes to laptops and while so many other tech devices get a lot of the limelight you know the new form factors of phones folding is suddenly on the on the horizon voice devices gotta have every one of God but you know the laptop keeps staying in there everybody still has a laptop been such a durable category everyone still needs one right so you know you're gonna have a home run if you give one where do you direct people big picture these days damn very quickly I was hoping that discount on that TV wasn't too because I just bought that one it's I I called the midlife crisis TV because every 40-something Brooklyn dad I know just bought that 65 inch LG OLED it's like a flat Porsche 911 killing everything I couldn't wait I had to have it I also have to have if I did not have a laptop and I was gonna go buy one I would consider the latest version of Apple's MacBook Air which has been pretty much the most popular laptop in the world for about ten years now you can't go anywhere coffee shops airport lounges college campuses and not see a whole bunch of airs but frankly they've been getting a little longer the tooth I don't have an old one with me right here but the screen was bad the keyboard was old it was really kind of bigger and heavier than a lot of newer laptops because they hadn't updated that design in six or seven years Oh Brian's bring me one right now let's take it let's take a look Oh in a classic an oldie but goodie but look at that it's got this big silver border here it's just not a modern feeling laptop anymore so what Apple did was they finally after years of everybody begging for it they got the new one right here this is the new MacBook Air looks kind of like the MacBook Pro it's got a much better screen than the old one obviously a new keyboard bigger touchpad it's thinner it's lighter there's just one cat's because there's always a catch no ports well okay there's two cats yeah ports hello oh you got a couple USB ports but it's also more expensive the MacBook Air was famously the $9.99 laptop and any college student could maybe save up for a couple months and get themselves a $9.99 MacBook Air that could last them you know through four years of college now it's 1199 and that what kind of hurts at $9.99 it would be a you know an instant must buy no questions asked at 11 you got a lot of competition but I still think they did a very nice job with this long-awaited refresh well look at least you have the headphone jack let's be honest we got that anyway let's switch tech to TVs now we've been relying on cats for around 15 years now for his no BS take on what TV to buy now David I want to kind of tap into the latest here what do you recommend so I'll start with the TV that really impressed me this year for being really inexpensive but still having a great picture we review a lot of TVs that are you know spectacular a high-end models we also review some that are kind of Junkers this Vizio e-series this year they kind of they really hit the sweet spot in terms of picture quality for the money not quite as good of a picture as my very favorite TV I'll tease that you know that's gonna be talked about a little bit later but this one is insanely inexpensive let me tell you for the 43 inch it's $310 right now the 65 is is 630 that's the 65 inch you see there on our video that's when I reviewed and it goes all the way up to 75 inches so this series has full array local dimming which is the feature in an LCD TV that really improves the image quality it's the thing where you know the the behind the screen there's these LEDs they can turn on and off depending on the brighter or dimmer parts of the picture and it is a truly a big improvement in image quality to have on these TVs and this is basically the cheapest TV on the market with that feature busy does a really good job of making that work really well this TV is also compatible with 4k HDR Dolby vision all that stuff for again a TV that starts at $310 so the Vizio e-series actually the the big sale started today coincidentally enough all around just look at Best Buy their prices are live right now for these prices there's good as they're gonna get for the buying season so you know again if you're looking you know you're a home theater guy you really want that picture quality to be as good as it can be for you know very little money start with the Vizio e-series okay now let's proved cheapskate approved with prices like that I thought I was hearing it wrong it's like how much alright so odds a Dan let's go to you for a tablet now uh you know rightly related to the notebook category a lot of folks are saying maybe it's time now that I move from a notebook to a tablet and try and make it do what the tablet or what the notebook has always done our we there or are they still two separate categories as you would advise a shopper easy answer they are two separate categories still occasionally people come around and say Oh a tablet that's just as good as a laptop it's the same thing they're really not appellee if it has this commercial with a little girl working on her her iPad and somebody comes by and goes oh what computer is that and she says what's the computer which fine but that being said sometimes you still want a tablet they're great for watching movies they're great for reading ebooks or comic books even there's a lot of things you could do with the tablet the basic iPad the new 2018 version of that is frankly the best all-around deal in this category because it does almost everything fancier things like the iPad pro do but it cost a heck of a lot less than they've done just enough updates to it to make it really worthwhile I think it's usually 329 I bet you'll be able to find it for 250 or so around Black Friday / holiday time at a whole bunch of different stores and the big addition this year is that it has added pen support so the Apple pencil that previously only worked with the iPad pro now works with the regular plain old nine point seven inch iPad which makes it a much more functional machine and if you want to do cool style of stuff and drawing and sketching you're all hooked up now okay so straight up iPad is a winner and with that pencil technology feels more modern than your just buying another tablet it's not just another iPad because those last for a long time and you go what am i yeah upgrade for the proper reason yep sounds good well let's jump into some of our viewer questions on CNET live hashtag and also on the phones we have a lot of people calling in which is fantastic thank you so much don't forget to tweet us CNET live and give us a call at eight eight eight nine hundred CNET let's cross to our first question now from Joseph from Ohio has a question for us about the Apple iMac hello Joseph welcome to CNET live viewer on the air what's your question yeah hello how are you guys today I'm doing the great thank you so what did you want to ask us about the iMac you had a very specific question I do would you recommend a process to buy an iMac even the the iMac has been updated this year in 2018 that's a great question let's throw that once again I think that's a good question Apple tends to follow their own schedule in terms of updating products the IMAX that's the all-in-one desktop computer with the big screen has not gotten a processor upgrade this year but they did last year so it's not really that far out of date if you want to do basic you know web surfing email watch movies not really playing games that's not really a marketing but you know basic Photoshop and things like that it's still find a sentence Jen Intel processors in there now are perfectly are perfectly good will they update it next year probably will it be a generation behind in processors by then probably if you want to go absolutely bonkers there's something called the iMac Pro which is you can tell the difference because it's in a darker space gray and cost like $5,000 and that's the super fancy version of the iMac from last December so that is very up to date it's got a different class of processor in it so if you're a super professional who is doing like you know 4k video editing and like professional professional level stuff like that you could get an iMac Pro but basic one I think they're fine they're not that out of date aren't processors so so brawny now Dan that unless you're really flexing them you're in good shape entirely correct and almost all of the advances in the last several years have really been more in battery life and efficiency than than raw power which again you don't really need because almost anything you do can also do on a Chromebook which is basically just a web browser sounds good well I hope that answer your question Joe so thank you so much for calling and you go in the running to win all of those amazing prizes make sure win enter the giveaway to win that HP laptop - thanks for calling thank you so much all right thank you so much that was Joseph calling there and another switch to the C net live hashtag we've got so many questions coming in let's take a look at a couple of them now let's take a look at this one from Thomas what is the best TV for under $400 with the best quality picture preferably good for gaming cats this one screams you all over what do you think that's a lot of I gotta say that TV that I just talked about the 43 inch of Vizio e-series would be the one that I choose you know again it's right in that price range oh it's $310 so look you save 90 bucks or you can step up to the 55 inch for 430 now gaming is one of these things where what you care about is input lag so that's the you know between the controller and the the screen you know reacting to that there's lag built into all TVs that they have fancy processing all the stuff it increases it a lot of guys have game mode now the game mode on the video that test was about 25 milliseconds which is really really short great input lag and of course the set looks really good with the full array local dimming so I'd go for the Vizio e-series 43 inch and save a bundle there 310 bucks so cats it sounds like one thing you want to do with whatever TV you buy is to find out if it does have a game mode that will basically take out a lot of the processing and make it a little more of a straight shot from your console to the display yeah and and a lot of the you know the TVs now if they're a little more expensive they have really good game modes in there because they have a lot more processing but the cheap TVs like this Vizio they don't have too much processing begin with so you know again they're not gonna let it build in that much input lag but all the manufacturers now are putting in game modes even with 4k HDR there's a whole different set of processing to bypass when you before Kay gaming so you know that's actually one of the newer advances in TVs and keep an eye on it cuz we test it here see it sounds good should we take one more yeah let's do it let's do one more cool sue from Minnesota has a great question about the iPhones hi sue you are on the air welcome to Cena hi hey I read the review on Instagram about the iPhone XR and wondering if that's still the best the best phone for an iPhone to get and then the second part of that is how do you figure out what the best network is oh this is a great question sue let's I guess let's tackle the first part of that so the 10r obviously is not quite the most expensive iphone that you can get that is the 10s and the 10s max and when it comes to performance let's chat a little bit about how it feels to use dan I want you to sort of chime in here with your thoughts too on the 10r versus the 10s what are your thoughts on kind of like how it feels to use both of the phones is there one that kind of suits better use case more than the other yeah these the 10 are or a lot of people call the XR and I'm not gonna correct him because you know wisdom of crowds and all that I feel like it's 90% as good as the full price 10s but it's less than 90% of the price so that makes a lot of sense to me it's got the design that looks like the other ones just the screen is not an OLED screen there we go LCDs not know it but the ultimate mainstream mainstream ability test of the 10r is that my mother just ordered one and she is is is very thrifty but likes good technology and and it's very cautious about what she buys so the fact that she called me up and said I'm about to hit by on a 10 are you know just making sure that's that's the right move and she had already decided that shows you that's the mainstream phone to get this year that's the value played that you're not gonna be disappointed with totally agree and Sue another thing to remember is that the ten are and the 10s actually share the same rear camera at least the wide-angle lens so the photo and video quality is gonna be pretty much exactly the same so you're getting a really good camera for a lot less as Dan said but I the question about the cellular connectivity is really interesting because I guess it really depends on where you live the big question about where you are in the US depends on you know what network is gonna suit your needs right yeah yeah the other thing that's hard about that sue is there are some things going on that are that are very hard for us to put into a review because they're localized and they're not even that obvious for us to unearth different carriers or the same carrier will use different radio waves in different metro areas based on what they've license from the government so they aren't is they aren't like on the same FM frequency in every city if you want to put it that way they use different frequencies in different cities and they also have different levels of coverage coverage matters to speed it's not just whether you have data or not a better coverage means you it will have more robust connectivity and that will allow greater bandwidth and that's what you're looking for in speed so start with a coverage map you can look at the coverage map of any major carrier go to their site just Google like Sprint or t-mobile or Verizon coverage map start with good coverage first coverage is your ground support for getting good speed although it doesn't exactly tell you that and then beyond that the most important things to talk to people who hopefully you know in your area who've all got each different carrier hopefully all on a modern phone because phones can slow you down and then say hey who's the great result in the one that swears the least for me has the best speed with its wireless wireless is always wanting in the real world 5g is looking to address that but you know I mean Verizon gets a lot of kudos for its speed that's that that's an old saw from way back but it's one that I've earned over the years I got to say in my experience okay well they're getting a lot of press these days with everybody I've talked to it so I'm just wondering if that's really true but t-mobile is also doing some Oh some really aggressive stuff with speed on their network as well so there are another good choice that a lot of folks often didn't think of because they are sort of you know in the second tier below Verizon and AT&T but a lot of good stuff coming out to mobile and of course AT&T has always had a good network so it's very local so ask people you know and look for good coverage on those maps yeah and any any point on the 5g network that's supposed to be coming out nothing to worry about you need to wait for your and current phone you're gonna buy to get tired and in about 18 months or two years then 5g will be really well debugged and out there there are no 5g phones on the market yet I don't think we'll see any to mid next year because the speck upon which they would design them internally isn't even approved yet that's expected in June of next year then the factories can start making them this is a 20/20 story so you're good on a 4G phone for now thank you thanks all right thank you we got going on here good good calls and thanks for getting on the Twitter with the questions that Twitter listen to me like I just got the Twitter like I'm a millennial but Twitter okay let's talk about headphones now you know headphones are a perennial group pretty low gift for a lot of people around the head of the holiday season because they come in a lot of different price points and everybody uses them at this point in history right so let's let's hear now from the guy with the Golden Ears first of all about about what the best things are to think about sound wise here David Carr Noi has has got to look here for some of the best headphones he's our guy who knows about listening like nobody else I'm David Carr for cnet.com and I've got a cute top holiday headphone picks for you let's start with the popular premium noise cancelling category or in the past Bose has dominated but this year I give the Editors Choice Award to the Sony Joh 1000 X mark 3 Sony tweaked the design of the mark 3 and it's now right there with the Bose in terms of comfort it delivers excellent sound and noise canceling is loaded with features and has strong battery life it's only downside is that well it's expensive at $350 Bose QuietComfort 35 - remains a good choice in this category but the Sony is just a little bit better right now my second pick is the Jabra elite active 65 t their set of truly wireless earphones to compete with Apple's air pods not only do they fit some people's ears more securely than the air pods but they also sound better because they have a noise isolating design that doesn't let sound leak in like the air pods open design does I'm also a fan of Plantronics do in your noise-cancelling neck band style headphone the backbeat go 410 they're little like boses quiet control 30 headphones but cost a lot less and can plug into in-flight entertainment systems with a headphone cord that connects to its USB charging port they're a good everyday headphone that features good sound and good noise cancelling moving on to my budget pick the trivet X free tune it may not be as comfortable as a bose or sony headphone but you'd be hard-pressed to find a better sounding or better built full-size of bluetooth headphone for $50 as far as sound goes it really does measure up to headphones that cost a lot more if none of those models sounds enticing I've got plenty of others to choose from in our full gift guide these days there's no shortage of headphones and we'll be covering all the best ones here at CNET thanks for watching always trust carnally on headphone results this guy is so thoughtful and so careful about headphone which is great because they're so subjective you need someone who really puts a lot of it has a lot of breadth of experience with them and karna is great at that now let's find you some deals now Rick headphones come in a wide range of prices from deep into the hundreds to like 50 cents those one lines ones they get free on the airline's they obviously are making those for like 10 cents and they can afford to give them away what do you got for some deals hopefully somewhere between those two poles this is an in-ear noise-isolating headphones earphones should say from one more and it's called the quad driver and as everybody knows quad means four and four is better than three or two or one so you got four drivers inside this little thing and this is a THX certified product so if you really love your ears like you want to treat your ears this is the thing to get these normally run $1.99 but as an exclusive for everybody who's watching today we have these at 129 and that is I think the lowest price I've seen on this product and you know as I said if you if you want to splurge a little bit and get something that's that's really special I like these a lot that's good to know I mean I gotta tell you I've always been underwhelmed by ear buds you know I'm looking for I'll see phrases about you know deep bass response and they rave about how rich and robust the sound is and they just never strike me that way they always sound thin but of course I use a lot of over the ear headphones so I'm I'm setting a high bar so I'd be curious I meant to try a pair of these sounds like they've got some some multi driver technology that might really make them deliver some real breadth and depth of sound versus being kind of like a you know a better version of a cell phone call earbud all right thank you for that I know it is four four is better for is better than three and better than better than one I like that how we learned that that was good car no I just mentioned of course so you can find all of our CNET gifts at the CNET Holiday Gift Guide which is cnet-dot-com-slash-loaded Gift Guide really easy everything from 25 to 500 dollars and up we have a lot of inexpensive gifts we always make sure we cover off on that because these days the way electronics trends some of the best gifts are under $100 they're not cheap gifts they just happen to be cheap and that's what's so great about this sector plus all the current deals we can find that it's all updated day this is not something we published for the holiday and we're done every day we're putting up new deals and new price updates there again just search see net holiday gift guide or go to cnet-dot-com-slash-loaded gift guide but now let's get right back to taking some calls and some tweets Lexi you got to you got so many people on the line waiting so thank you so much for your patience we'll try and get to as many as we can let's cross though to Chadwick from Kansas City who has a question about the new iPad pro hello Chadwick hey guys how's it going live really good what's your question so you were talking about the iPad but apples now touting the new iPad pro and I was just trying to figure out is it really worth the extra money to go to the pro or was 2018 version you were recently talking about just as good to go with great question let's throw this one to Dan in New York I mean they're for different people they call it the pro because they're there saying oh professional artists and professional designers are gonna like this I mean frankly they did a really nice job redesigning the iPad pro this year because they've gotten rid of the the home button it's now all screen almost like an iPhone 10 so it's really arresting looking and I like that a lot and obviously the screen is great and it's more powerful but unless you're doing the types of things that really require that extra power that extra screen X resolution the access to high-end accessories like the really expensive keyboard you can get with it I still think that a regular 9.7 inch everyday iPad that again is going to be about two hundred and fifty dollars from a lot of places this holiday season is a better overall product for more people especially because if you just had stylus envy you can use the Apple pencil with it now so it still gets my vote that said the new pro is pretty sweet-looking I hope that helps you make you a decision a little bit more easily chadwick thank you so much for calling so much and you go in the running to win all of those amazing prizes so let's grab another call now I think we'll switch to Melissa from Miami so she is calling in and asking is there a headphone hello Melissa come in your unseen it live can you hear me hello Melissa she's in a snowstorm hi hello hi hi you're on CNET live you live on the air what's your question hi I have a question regarding the headphones you guys were talking about is there a preference functionality-wise and maybe comfort wise for a runner for someone who who runs marathons and who's training for one that's a great question I think the big thing I found when I am using headphones or earbuds for running I mean it depends are we talking headphones do you want that over a fill you want the earbuds obviously for me earbuds are much more preference than running I mean I guess great yeah so I mean with the thing is with earbuds is that it's really a question of the fit and how much of the sound isolation that you want to get in or out so say for example if you're running with something that's an in-ear earbud and it's isolating all of the sound it's probably not the best idea even though the music will sound amazing if you're not really hearing a lot of the external sound especially when you're running if you think about things like safety obviously I like to have a little bit more of an open design I find sort of say ones from Bose like the sound sport Wireless are quite good on that respect but then again if you want more of an isolation sound you might want to go for something like the Bates X record about those headphones have you tried those out for running or anything and found that they kind of had in it what's the sort of sound isolation like that yeah I actually don't care for a sound isolating earbud when I'm running because I find that I hear my footfalls like bum bum bum as I'm running and I don't care for that I was gonna mention the aftershocks I don't know if you've tried those at all there's the aftershocks Trek's in the aftershocks air and that is of course aftershocks with the less common zi spelling and not an S so those have exactly what you're talking about they're bone conduction and so they kind of rest right here and you can hear ambient noise as you're running but you also get a really good sound and they're not cheap and they rarely go on sale but that's what I like to run with I hope that helps answer your question a little bit Melissa and good luck with the marathon thanks okay so uh let me reveal some of my picks for the person who's into giving gifts to the driver whether it's a driver who loves driving as a you know a sport as a as a passion or the person who spends a lot of time in their car just cuz they got a long damn commute first off I don't think you can go wrong this year with a dash cam in fact one of the gifts that we have in our giveaway the stack that we're seeing there behind us is going to include some van true dash cams you see one there in the red box that sort of hexagonal tube looking thing or here it is here in the box van true makes some really interesting dash cams the latest one which is one of those were giving away which is called the on dash T 2 includes microwave sensor technology so when the car is parked the camera is looking out to find motion it's a motion detector through glass and it'll start recording when some rat-bastard comes up to vandalize your car so that's pretty cool it doesn't just wait for a bump or a collision which a lot of dash cams do another one I want to show you here on my monitor is from Pioneer and it's called the nd DVR 100 this one is pretty basic it records in HD and it stamps the clips with GPS coordinates so you know where it was recorded not all dash cams do that it's about a hundred and eight bucks good price what I like about it is it's a name-brand pioneer even though they're close to bankruptcy right now but they're still a name-brand and it integrates nicely in your windshield as you can see if you look at the design of that it doesn't just hang down on some nasty suction cup it adheres to the glass kind of like a factory forward camera this is a very slick solution for the person who doesn't want a lot of dreck in their car now if you move away from dash cams again they're very affordable everyone's gonna use them that's my home run the other way to go is to look at giving someone a new car stereo or as we call them today a head unit there's one from Sony that is their newest one it's called the XA VA X 1000 it is carplay all the usual media choices no CD of course and this one is only three hundred dollars list I'm seeing it for about 250 or so Street if you want it to have carplay and android auto you go to one called the ax a VA X 200 and that one has both platforms and it lists at $500 again you'll find better Street prices or if you want to go check out something from Pioneer they are 1300 eniac his carplay only I bring up pioneer cuz Sony and my experience has had some buggy issues with phones staying connected to the head unit that I think is still frustrating although the latest unit should have worked that out and if you want on pioneer that has both carplay and android auto apple on android in other words you go to the 2300 NEX list on that only three $319 that might be the odds-on winner right there that's an amazon price i should say but still it's a really good price all of these fit into what's called a double den unit which is a very standard kind of a tall car stereo know that they require installation and that's gonna be some additional cost or some elbow grease if you or your recipient knows how to do it but that will utterly modernize an older car sounds good and i'll reveal what i am recommending very very shortly but before then Rick do you have any more deals to share with us oh you know I do let's talk about home security canary makes a really cool home security camera called the all-in-one and so more than just the usual video feed and motion detection this thing it also has an air quality sensor and a temperature sensor and a siren so it will actually function as an alarm so it's pretty cool and you can get the canary all in one and a year of monitoring service so it really is kind of the whole the whole deal the whole suite home security deal for 149 now normally that bundle would run you 268 bucks so this is a really great exclusive sounds good and now I know that you're asked this all of the time but let's be honest like is now the time that we should be buying or can we get these deals like any other time of the year like should we be panicking going the only time I can grab a great deal is now through Black Friday Cyber Monday into the rest of the holiday season or you know when else should I be looking oh you know I always tell people everyday is Black Friday there are deals to be had all year round there are some pretty good pretty special deals available this time of year but if you miss out don't panic you will find similar maybe not as good but similar deals all year round and of course at Cena comm slash cheapskate I give you those deals every single day of the year sounds good and I believe that you have a couple of extra shopping tips now for us I do you know I know a guy who knows all the things about saving money Black Friday Cyber Monday and all the rest of the year so take it away that guy hi everyone Rick the cheapskate broidy here to talk about everyone's favorite holiday no not Arbor Day I'm talking about Black Friday that's the day when all the stores have the best sales of the year and don't forget Cyber Monday the other day when all the stores have the best sales of the year with prices already cut to the bone you can't possibly save even more money can you well you can and I'm here to tell you how when you buy something on Black Friday Cyber Monday or pretty much any other day of the year always loop in a cash back service like Ebates be frugal or top cashback these sites offer cash rebates at thousands of stores and you get those savings even if you're already using a cash back credit card it doesn't matter if you're buying an item that's on sale for the lowest price ever you'll save a percentage of the final purchase price it might be 2% 5% or even more but the more you shop the more it adds up it's easy to get swept up in all the Black Friday Cyber Monday hype because stores promised the best deals of the year but are they really you can find out by installing honey a free browser plug-in that can show you product price histories at stores like Amazon Best Buy Target and Walmart better still honey can automatically locate coupon codes for thousands of stores meaning you might be able to get an even better deal than you thought there's another browser add-on that I recommend and it's called price blink like honey it can find coupon codes for you while you shop but it will also compare prices at other stores so if you're shopping for say a SmartWatch at Amazon price blink will alert you if that same product is available for Less elsewhere price blink and honey also have wishlist features meaning if Black Friday and Cyber Monday aren't producing the price you want you can set up an alert and they'll notify you if and when a price drop occurs so there you go fellow cheapskates the tools you need to save even more money during these major shopping holidays seem smart I'm just gonna say that hey you know here's a tool I need to be better during the holidays and that is trust in all these different platforms you use them all you mentioned a couple there Ebates you mentioned price blink honey a couple others how do these sights first of all why and how do they do what they do I'm not a big believer in commercial altruism are they are they getting kickbacks from retailers or manufacturers are they selling my data to the Russians what are they doing Oh mention Russians come Commander broadsky so these sites make money basically by directing you to where you're going to shop so a cash back site you start at the cash back site you click through to Target or whatever the store is that site gets a little bit of a kind of referral commission for sending you there and they kind of share that commission with you and so that's how they make money that's how they're able to pass along these rebate savings to you that's the high-level overview of it I've used them for years successfully I don't get a lot of spam in my inbox I really think that if you want to save extra money cashback service is absolutely a must it's it's found money it's free money so I don't I don't have any privacy concerns or data concerns or spam concerns anything like that you have my blessing any more than being on the internet right okay let's get down to some more questions and and tweets Lexi what do you got queued up we got so many questions you can give us a call on eight hundred nine nine nine oh sorry nine hundred seen it eight eight eight nine hundred seen it and we are gonna go to Alan from Texas now Alan thanks for hanging on the line you were on CNET live you had a question about fines I do thank you for taking my call I want to know I've got an Apple iPhone 7 and I've got about a year paid off on it am I better off trading it in and getting an upgraded model but now carrying more payments or just letting this phone go out for about three and a half years and then starting over at that one that's a great question I think a lot of people are in a very similar predicament to you and when it comes to phone upgrades it sounds like you you know you have a couple of years left and how how is the seven treating you is it is it you are you feeling like you want an upgrade because the seven is still a pretty proficient phone in many in many respects especially if you upgrade to iOS 12 and you put all of those benefits there on so unless you want the you know the benefits of faster processor or a slightly better camera maybe it's not quite the time to upgrade for you but I don't know how is it feeling for you Oh phone's operating great it's fine and that's not my question my quandary is if the phone wasn't going well and it'd be a no-brainer to go ahead and switch but I think it's so I'm great what you don't know is what it's gonna do tomorrow right right that's a good point I mean the thing is though I mean we we obviously get really caught up in the latest and greatest and it's really easy to do that I feel like if the phone is still performing exactly as you want it to and you've got you know the latest operating system you're keeping it up-to-date and then maybe it's not quite worth updating I don't know coolly do you have you do you have Apple care on that phone I do yes so it doesn't matter you know in many respects what is coming up in the future in terms of a lot of things that are covered you're covered you're already paying that in there so it's already part of your expense of having the phone I'm big on letting the phones go longer in the tooth you know the trend used to be a lot of people used to change a phone every 19 months a few years ago now it's extended out to I think 32 months is the average ownership of a given phone by most of us that's in the u.s. I think so we've all gotten the idea that you know what the phones are only incrementally better as they move forward you know they have some amazing new features they have a notch that does this or that or they have the cameras are getting better but we haven't gotten to that point now where we've had a major breakthrough that says I've got to get off this 7 I'd sit on it for a while until there's a foldable phone from Apple then maybe you got a couple years at 7 Allen thank you so much thank you all right let's go to a question that I think is tailor-made for Dan in New York this one is coming in from John in California hi John welcome to say it life you're only Airin seen it live 10 Daniel volumen you had a question about laptops for us we'll come back to you we'll come back to you John alright let's jump to another one we had of Jim in Michigan as well representing Michigan today we have a budget laptop question from you Jim yes I'm just looking for a recommendation for a budget laptop that has a solid-state combination of a low price and a solid-state drive I think a lot of the nicer Chromebooks out there are probably a good choice especially for a kid I like the Samsung Chromebook plus which is under 500 bucks has a nice solid state hard drive and a touch screen and a stylus and even runs Android apps in addition to regular chromebook stuff that's been my budget go-to choice for a while now and what are you looking for in terms of an operating system in this new laptop or you want you Mac Windows or are you open to Chromebook and Android either one yeah it's not he's not blocked into anything ok that's interesting so you've got a lot of flexibility so the world is his oyster right Dan I mean he can shop aggressively on our list of the best budget laptops which as you mentioned starts with Chromebook Samsung Chromebook pro at 550 yeah and you can go into configurators on anyone's website yeah and get it where you want it ok all right so yes so go to our yeah go to cnet.com look at best laptops the easy to find right in our navigation there on the site and then you can look at the budget tab and we always filter the best budget laptops right there and that is constantly updated as well great thank you for calling Jim and just quickly let's jump to seeing it live the hashtag on Twitter if you can take a look at some of the tweets that are coming up we have we have something on any deals on the 70 plus inch OLED screens this season that is from Matt on Twitter how about that cats 70 plus inches Oh LEDs what does Matt consider 7 does Matt consider 7 grand a deal do you consider 7 grand the deal I don't know no right now we're rec you know 75 inch TV from Vizio that's you know around 2 grand so you know if you're gonna go oled you're gonna pay whatever that is you know two and a half times as much unfortunately LG has not gained to make their 77 inch size affordable in least and then it really need to because they're kind of in a class by themselves so I think for the foreseeable future it's gonna be you know two or three times more expensive than a similar LCD TV that performs really really well like this Vizio P series that I like a lot at 75 inches all right cats let's stay on this vein now and go from some of the largest and with the priciest some of the best technology bring me down now to a value set that has a really good price and good features especially around OTT and streaming what do you got there cuz that's kind of the sweet spot I want a good price I want good streaming built in and I also want it to be a decent size maybe you've got a brand that isn't household name mm let me let me think Brian screaming really good price yeah quality maybe not the name you might have heard of but maybe one of the one of the biggest fastest growing names in fact longtime best selling Amazon brand is TCL so this is the Roku TV that we've been recommending for a long time but this year TCL really hit it out of the ballpark with their 65 inch 65 our six one seven Roku TV there's also a Best Buy version it's actually even less expensive that thing is nine hundred bucks right now at Best Buy or 65 inch TV and let me tell you for that money picture quality is amazing so this has that full array local dimming I talked about earlier with the Vizio e-series this thing's even brighter the picture quality is just it's really really really really good you're gonna be it's impossible to spend less money on a 65 inch TV than 900 and get a picture anywhere near this good there's plenty of TVs that are in that same ballpark that cost a lot more from other brands including Vizio and you know Samsung and LG the usual suspects but if you're you know really want to spend as little money as possible for an excellent picture you know in side-by-side comparisons this thing really knocked it knocked knocked out of the park so the other thing as Brian alluded to is streaming so you can always buy a 4k HDR streamer hook it up to any TV get really good performance from that but Roku is my favorite streaming system and this TV has Roku built-in so it's very very simple to immediately just pick up this simplified remote and start streaming 4k HD our Netflix Vudu all the the great streaming services are right there and it's super simple Roku TV puts you know your inputs your game consoles or your cable box right on the same level they almost treat him like an app on the home screen they were the first to really do that so it's a very simplified easy to use experience in a very powerful TV that does you know again superb picture that also comes a 55 inch or 600 bucks but really I love that 65 inch size when you're when you're yeah I love the Roku integration Roku has been our favorite since the dawn of OTT platforms I mean it's just been always the best realized about as well as anyone is gonna do in breadth of content easy to use remote I'm so glad to see it a TV that you like lexy let's go from the biggest screens that we're talking about the smallest screens smartwatches you've got some pics in there I do sir we often get caught up in talking about the latest and greatest which is totally fine but for many of us it's not quite within our reach so I wanted to talk about some of the fitness trackers so obviously Apple has the Apple watch series 4 which is the latest one that's come out just a couple months ago this year but I want to recommend the Apple watch series 3 it is last year's model now you're not actually losing out that much in terms of the features and the specifications especially once you put watch OS 5.1 on there now they watch three versus the four it's a slightly smaller screen in terms of like you get less of the actual content on the screen itself you don't get things like the fall detection and obviously the EKG sensor which hasn't even been activated yet on the series 4 but everything else you're getting pretty much on par you're getting the same roughly the same amount of battery life unless you're doing epics six hour hikes in which the series fall will be your go-to and you're getting all of the same kind of functionality that you would expect thanks to watch OS 5 so I think that one is a pretty no-brainer when it comes to the Apple watch if you are wanting one with GPS and LTE connectivity which was the series 3 what should the one that set it apart from all of the previous Apple watches so I think if you want LTE and GPS and you're not ready to spend five hundred dollars on the Apple watch series four then the series three is the one to look at and speaking of fitness trackers an alternative to the Apple watch if you are a platform agnostic and you want to switch between iOS and Android or if you are just on Android you can consider something like the Fitbit Versa and this is the one to get if you want all of that battery life so you get about four days of continuous use out of this and what I really like about the Fitbit is its extra fitness features say if you want to do some sort of fitness tracking and then also have personalized workout so you can actually use the coach app and it gives you step-by-step a lot of those workouts that you need to do so it says like do five jumping jacks and then do five planks I mean it's torturous to say that on your wrist and not having a personal trainer shout it in your ear but I think it's quite nice to actually to have it there as you can see now on the screen you can have things it indicates all sorts of little videos and tells you how to do things so I like that about the Versa and of course four days of battery life you just cannot beat that under $200 under $200 now and there are more Black Friday deals coming out so that's the one to look out that's such a smart insiders pick because a lot of folks look at smart watches and they get a little bit put off by the price especially since they're still kind of forming their role in a lot of people's lives still a little bit of a niche but that one is a much safer pick unless you absolutely can see why you're buying an Apple watch like Lexy mentioned is that one hits to the home run of fitness a lot better or really well for its price I should say let's go back to Ackerman here for another talk about what's going on with some laptop picks we did touch on the new MacBook Air that's how we kick things off you're just joining us now on the show we said what's our best laptop to go to everyone seems to have a MacBook these days and he goes with the new air which has needed a lot of improvements and got them what else you got that you like out there Dan well if you want something that's kind of the size and shape and general character of a MacBook Air which is really the most useful overall laptop size for carrying around but working all day to death but either you don't want to spend as much as the new air cost that's 1199 to start and it goes up from there or you're just you just don't want a Mac you're you're one of those anti Apple people or you need some specific Windows software there are many reasons my my current fee alternative to that is another new laptop and that is this guy right here that is the Microsoft Surface laptop - now the first generation of this surface laptop which unlike other surface products is not a tablet of any sort it's just a plain old laptop I thought was ok it was a good first step the second generation one is even nicer it's got a 13.5 inch screen it's got current 8th gen quad-core processors versus only do core in the in the new MacBook Air so this is actually gonna be faster and it just kind of looks cool it's got a nice clean look and they even managed to fit in a good old fashioned USB a port you're not stuck with the USB C on this although you don't have any USB C so you really have to pick your poison there the nice thing is this guy starts at 999 which is what the old MacBook Air used to start at and apparently Microsoft's store they have a store the Microsoft Store is going to have $300 off on some configurations of this maybe not the cheapest one on or around Black Friday we know the number but we don't know exactly which configurations are gonna have that deal but that's a nice chunk off and something that just came out like last month yeah nice machine really nice machine there they've really started to focus and hone on getting into the real market and staying with it you know what do you tell people who go to the mall if they still go to the mall and they walk by the Apple Store and it's like packed and then they walked down to the Microsoft Store that might be in the same mall and you can fire cannonballs and not hit anybody should that put anybody offer is that just a difference in retail presence I want to go find the mall that has the Apple Store and the Microsoft so I've got one right out here and I think there's a good YouTube video in there somewhere we're gonna see what happens they're not really the store business you're like showcase stores yeah a few of them it took them forever to get one in New York now they finally have one and it's actually kind of nice and they sell a lot of other stuff too they sometimes have good prices on stuff but you can usually get the same prices online I think they do more they service more online in the Microsoft yeah I do in the store okay and I want to mention to people you know I am for years now I've been running Windows on on a MacBook Air with boot camp which I'm always surprised how few people I run into who do that whenever I have my machine at a conference or something and people say why you're running windows on there is that parallel Sugano it's boot camp it comes with Mac OS and I've never met anyone else who's doing it you good there's two of us were the two boot campers okay there's three all right well there's I I should I should mingle and hire a higher socio-economic strata and I'd meet more people who do this but the thing is it's a really good rate of run Windows not just a kludgy rate way to run Windows which it is not at all I want to tell folks that so if they're trying to you know struggle between these two camps you can have it all on Mac hardware it runs Windows exceedingly well in fact I think I get a little bit better battery life running Windows on a Mac then running it in Mac OS much of course it retains okay thanks guys good thoughts there on what's going on with some of the of the laptop takes a lot going in there if you have questions for our panel and we start a little bit of time in the show here triple-eight 900 seen at triple eight nine hundred two six three eight or Lexi's watching Twitter where our tag is seen that live hit us with that hash tagging will see your question come in before though we get to any more questions Bridget Carey has taken a dive into this year's tech toys and I mean a dive she turned herself into an elf and got to work take a look if you dare hey folks what's up bridgie the elf here senior toymaker at Santa's workshop so here you want the inside scoop on what toys are gonna be hot this year well let me tell you all the high-tech stuff sure is changing the game for us toy makers it's making things way more complicated I mean everything now is packed with motion and touch sensors some even answer to voice commands just check out Zoomer the playful pup roll over there you go good boy good boy do you have to go pee and then there's for real Ricky the trick will open pub now as his name suggests he does do tricks get it you can feed him and he poops out the treats you know robots maybe getting more advanced but trust me a pooping toy never goes out of style now I'm sure you've heard of Hatcher moles well these mystery toys are still hot and the new ones are these babies you have to help hatch out of their eggs to find out the gender is it a boy is it a girl it's a it's it's a more complicated Furby and I do mean complicated just look at this list of things you have to study to know how to raise a little furball now if you want a real dinosaur to train check out this clever girl alpha training blue she's got everything a kid wants to pretend they are a jurassic world velociraptor trainer because you have to do certain combo moves with the motion sensor clicker to level up your relationship and you can control it like a puppet oh I'm sorry do you want something bigger hopefully we can go bigger hey bring in scout this is the first kid tracks right Emal's it's a country loving pony named Scout it's like a Power Wheels Jeep merged with a Disney animatronic robot this 70 pound pony has fully motorized eyes ears and head and of course wheels on the feet to ride it around there are 100 sounds of movements there's a rechargeable 12-volt battery and there are two forward speeds one backward speed and it can go up to 4 miles an hour Scout is smart to know when you feed it treats and when you brush its hair now that's how tech puts a new spin on playtime I better clean this stuff up before Santa gets back excuse me Wow there is something so wrong with tech toys I'm just putting it out there okay wow that's those are disturbing the one that proves and the other one that pees I got one that does that it's called Charlie's a cat so if you want to have a real go get an animal don't go with batteries and a remote control good grief Oh cats it was unsettling it reminds me of those toys from the 80s remember when they had the actual babies but no babies that you would feed and then they would yeah the egg is wrong yeah it's real wrong Wow okay all right well let's get back to some calls and tweets Bridget we got so many questions coming in thank you to everyone who's cold and tweeted in let's jump to Kevin in Michigan who has a question for the this acquittance is a computer for $99 Kevin what is this all about well yeah I just won the Walmart $99 laptop for Black Friday is that good for ten-year-old let's see I'm gonna have to look and see what that is does anybody have gonna pull it up now here yeah so am i $99 laptop that's right okay right actually useful info Rick are you aware of this machine $100 laptop Walmart huh I'm gonna go ahead and say that anything for a ten-year-old is gonna be fine hang on beaches got it pulled up we go on the main screen with that again beach we can try and take a look if we can a theme of this is ahead I don't know if this is yesterday tablet it's $100 this has to be the one smart tab 10 to 10 inch two and one tablet with keyboard so it's a convertible for a hundred bucks I'm gonna try to scroll down let's look for some specs we're just doing this kind of by the seat of our pants hear anything more further down you don't see respects dad go to the table go the top four aspects tab anything there now all right so I'm gonna make an executive decision here and say no that's a that's a hard pass now $99 for a Chromebook you could probably get away with that'll feel okay this thing any ten-year-old is going to throw it is gonna I want to know she likes play games now 100% no I wouldn't pay 99 cents for that yeah Kindle yeah yeah oh yeah that's a great idea actually Amazon has these great fire tablets that get down the 10 inch one gets down to 99 bucks do you pay a couple it's more and get the kids version which actually is great comes with a free subscription to a ton of cool games and stuff my son is one of those and he and he loves it a lot of these door Busters the super cheap computers do um tablets that you see for blacks yeah I mean are not worth it you may feel like you're saving a lot of money but whatever you get you're just gonna throw away in like a week a lot of them are just awful I found a refurbished Acer Chromebook for $85 so that's that's per there's an example a Chromebook fits in this and get away with and they actually made for a kid too because they can't mess it up too much that's a great way to go so Chromebook really makes sense therefore what you're looking at instead of $100 laptop when you see too much for the price and then it does everything it's a convertible it's got this it's got that it's like you got to realize what had to cut corners on its durability and with a kid that's the wrong place to cut corners so look at a Chromebook or look at the Amazon fire tablet line I think you're gonna do a lot better than also Chromebooks are being widely used in schools now more so that's right pads yeah they've taken over the education market lately so you're gonna get double duty there your child recipients gonna say great I don't just play on this I actually can use it for school great question thank you so much for calling Jim and now let's change tack and let's head over to we have a question from Josh in Tucson who has a TV that is on the fritz hi Josh what's your question yeah I have a vizio currently that the screen is randomly started blacking out on its I have to talk with their customers for lights can see part another video and so I'm looking at some of the ones that Costco has specifically the 70 inch LG and it gets real mixed reviews on my knife here I see what you guys have to say about it well we know the man with the answers Katz what do you think here yes already here at about here about that you know I hear a lot from people my ex you know brand TVs on the fritz you know I'll be honest with you I hear it about you know LG and Samsung and you know TCL as well Vizio is you know very popular along with those other brands so reliability is very similar on these entry-level TVs you know if you if you don't want to buy a vizio though my next recommendation would be a TCL just because they do have the best picture quality for the money they got that great Roku TV operating system I mentioned 65-inch is generally where they max out you want to go to 70 you are looking at probably an LG or Samsung and those guys you know again you're gonna be paying a little bit more money for them you know then you would for the equivalent Vizio your picture quality's not gonna be that much better but you know if you already your Vizio already die then you get that peace of mind of that different brand so go for it alright thanks so much for calling Josh and best of luck with the new TV now let's jump to seeing it live on twitter the hashtag if you can just take my screen we got a lot of questions coming in so you don't have my screen all right well I'll just reach I will just I will just read them then so we have a question from Ken who says I'm looking for a tablet like the sous zenpad s 3:10 the 9.7 inch I want the memory I want the fingerprint scanner I want something around 9 to 10 inches but do I need to wait for CES coming up what do you what do you think I mean it's dad I know this is a that's an interestingly specific question where you see a lot of new stuff and the Sioux's always has a ton of new things to announce there they usually don't come out right then it's usually Oh take a look at them now and then maybe in the spring maybe in the summer you'll see them especially from a manufacturer from a Seuss that's not us-based you see things you know and some things may be right away some things may be in three months six months they often don't know so if there's something specific you're looking for and you want to see if it's at CES that's great and all but don't expect to get it like mid-january as soon as the show is over yeah good point a lot of the stuff shows up later occasionally this stuff will show up much later and so CES isn't exactly retail availability of a lot of these products its announcement for weathervane for what's coming up in 2019 exactly and let's take a look again I've seen it live so many questions coming in thank you to everyone who has tweeted us a question and of course cold to Joe says what is the best deal on a dashcam any of the high-end brands holding sales good question the Pioneer that I showed you earlier that one was a hundred and eight dollars so not exactly the cheapest out there you can find here's the thing a lot of the dashcams out there like if I just go to Amazon right now and let me just search dashcam and you're gonna see a whole bunch of them come up here we go and now let's look at our results and here's a whole slew of these you're not gonna recognize almost any of these brands even the van true we've got here isn't exactly a household name among big Cee makers it's a really good dashcam the thing about these is they're all universally very similar the guts of them are not much different and you're not risking a lot at 40 to 60 bucks is a sweet spot for a lot of these dash cams I wouldn't feel terrible about going with any of them I've tried a lot of them and for the basic features which is it will record a loop on as big an SD card as you put in it we'll record when it gets bumped it will record when in the car is in standby mode parked when it gets bumped and and it's and it's HD those are kind of your four things that make up a standard dash cam they all do that so you're not gonna go wrong I I think a lot of these are actually pretty good for being decent and then you get into the better ones like the van truce the pioneers are some connected ones that are hundreds of dollars that use for g-cloud right now to do their upload that's a different market all right all year right yeah yeah let's let's jump in we have a caller from from Canada this is Daryl on the line you have a question about gaming hi Daryl what's your question hello Daryl yeah hi hi you had a question about gaming consoles and subscription services yeah so I've seen you guys do some videos about classic consoles and mentioning them as like not really being arrival to the subscription services that I offer classic games right so I'm trying to figure out which of the current consoles that I should get this year for Christmas for myself and and I was wondering does Nintendo has something dies that is worth getting or should I maybe go with Playstation or Xbox for their servers and services good question I actually it's true all the subscription services but Dan I know you have yeah that's right Simon Nintendo actually just launched their their online subscription service I think it's pretty inexpensive 20 bucks a year or something like that and you get a couple of classic games with it but it's more to allow you to play newer games online with other people that's what all these consoles do the PlayStation and the Xbox you have to pay oh that was me again coming back to myself but with with Xbox you can also get the Xbox game pass which gives you a big Netflix like selection of games you can play on-demand PlayStation has something vaguely similar for older games but with the race at regular things PlayStation Plus and Xbox Live do you get like one or two free usually pretty decent games a month you could download and keep as long as you a member but I really think the hardware choice comes down to number one which platform has the games do you want to play on it obviously want to play Mario Cart and Zelda it's clearly gonna be the switch which is a great system if you want to play that new spider-man game then it's gonna be the PlayStation if you want to play you know fallout 76 or our Red Dead Redemption - it's probably whatever your friends are playing on so you can have that social utility of that shared experience of playing with them there frankly both very good and I think there's a lot of comparable prices between them if you want to go super super super high-end they will tell you one thing I've discovered which is that if you're hooking it up to a big old ad 4k TV everything like that the Xbox one X the premium version of that is better than the PlayStation Pro just in terms of the sheer horsepower it can kick out okay good stuff thanks Dan good comprehensive answer there on that one and thank you for the call so now let's do a lightning round running a little bit long on the show here let's go around the horn one more time and get any final pixs or mop-up around cats what else you got in your in your bag for people to recommend this one's easy thirty bucks the Roku streaming stick before you add one of these things to your television they also have a four cavers it's a little more but the basic $30 one gives you everything you want also controls your televisions volume and power boom Dan give me something true everybody needs a Roku but I'm going the other direction I'm going 250 bucks for the Anki vector which is the a smart robot du jour and they just today announced that Alexa integration is officially coming I think in mid-december he's a smart robot already you can answer you know questions tell you the weather and I gotta tell you kids love him I just put him down in the on the floor he bleeps and bloops and follows him around for a few hours I get some peace and quiet it's fantastic he wants to say hi he's just waking up now yeah the vector they say it's the robot that doesn't want to take over the world but I would add but looks like it does I mean that's a mean burly little thing he's so aggressive looking little little aggressive thing I don't trust a little aggressive ones alright let's go to brodo give me him a last deal or two Rick what do you got okay I got two for you and there identical-looking earth day so first up is the tile this is one of my favorite trackers now that they have solved the problem of the non replaceable battery the new tile pro lets you replace the battery as needed so you don't have to send it back or swap it out for more money or whatever a crazy thing was the tile pro 4-pack plus a free echo dot is a hundred bucks as an exclusive deal for 4c net viewers today that's great gifts for you great gifts to give away so definitely hop on that deal and then this is the new mighty vibe which is a portable Spotify player it looks just like the the old iPod shuffle I'm surprised more people don't know about this product but it's one of the only ones that I know of that lets you take your Spotify playlists offline without you having to carry your phone around to the gym or out running or whatever so it slips up all of your Spotify playlists you clip it onto your shirt or your belt or whatever and you've got Spotify to go this is the brand new vibe it comes in different colors it has better bladder Elife and Bluetooth range and all that good stuff it's normally 86 bucks but you can get it for 68 80 and because I know Bonnie is over there flipping her lid here's where you can get all of the deals we talked about today at cnet.com slash - deals now that's not hot - deals you don't spell it out it's hot and - then deals everything all the deals I shared with you today or you can find them right there with all the codes and URLs that you need nice okay is that Spotify player real quick is that a connected device or it caches music on it no it stores music on it you set it up via Wi-Fi okay owner your tablet whatever it blasts all your playlists to it and then you take it offline interesting okay going back to the future on that one okay let's see you get the last word what do you got for us we have one more from Dan though we had to sneak I'm gonna get into the hot - business I'm gonna start selling hot - that's going we haven't talked enough about STEM toys for kids and things that teach science and engineering Nintendo lab Oh which is those cardboard kits you get and you build these these real physical engineered devices that work with your Nintendo switch is fantastic there's a whole bunch of and kids and they make all kinds of cool stuff their incredibly complicated in a way that really only kids can figure out but every time I tried to put one of these together it's been fantastically fun and I'm just gonna quickly say mine in my new obsession when it comes to stem stuff is 3d printing I printed out this little Holiday Gift Guide sign for us right here pretty good up for people in the office I got a mana price your mana price makes cheap stuff I got a $400 monoprice 3d printer and it is fantastic because kids can see how you design stuff in 3d and send it through the printer how it gets assembled I think it's a fantastic idea and then you can man program the robot to throw it at your head great great well all that learning makes you hungry right if you think about you know Meal Time Pizza is everybody's favorite food hands down I know it's my personal favorite so I have just discovered this this machine it is eight hundred dollars ignore the price oh but this is this is an amazing thing it is it from Breville it is a Smart Oven it's called the pizza Yolo and it actually has a range of temperatures so it can go do anything from a deep-dish Chicago style pizza to New York to even a wood-fired simulated pizza it gets up to 750 degrees Fahrenheit around 400 degrees centigrade which is something that just normal ovens can't do you put a pizza in and you pull it out and it in like 2 minutes it is just like a wood fire pizza I gave it to people around the office we probably gonna have pizza for lunch because this thing is amazing I look at just look at that like it's just making my mouth water right now looking at that it's you know wood fire pizza without the wood and without the fire and it lost me at eight hundred bucks but you got me back because there's a knob that has a New York position at least they know good pizza I'm on the fence then it's gonna go well you're in New York of course come on you have to be alright the bagel tron that be raised pizza all right so I want to thank everybody on the New York side the Detroit side Thank You Dan Thank You cats thank you broy de for being with us and rounding out the show with me and Lexie today and for even more deals make sure to check out our scenic home forward slash deals and our Holiday Gift Guide which is on your screen right there and make sure to enter our competition to win the HP laptop you go to see net coms HP giveaway and you have up until November 30th to enter so good luck that is an HP Spectre x-360 worth around $900 thank you so much to everybody for watching and Happy Holidays everybody yay mm-hmm all right pretty good dan and I were constantly fighting the urge to jump in oh I got this we're trying to fight the urge to go that's true