Why You Can Trust CNET Wild Wednesday: A $50 Pebble Time, mammoth Mac bundle and more!
From the Cheapskate: Add 32GB of storage to your iPhone or iPad for just $25, and name your own price for a $672 Mac software bundle. Plus: Get notified the next time "Wool" goes on sale.
CNET's Cheapskate scours the Web for great deals on PCs, phones, gadgets and much more. Questions about the Cheapskate blog? Find the answers on our FAQ page. And find more great buys on the CNET Deals page.
A quick housekeeping note: Prices are always accurate at the time I post them, but sometimes change soon after. Such was the case yesterday with Hugh Howey's "Wool" e-book, which quickly jumped to $4.99 from $1.99. Want to know the next time it goes on sale? Popular Amazon price-tracker CamelCamelCamel doesn't support Kindle books, but eReaderIQ can notify you of price drops. Just sign up for a free account -- and consider donating a few bucks to keep this invaluable site up and running.
On to business! The deal business...
It's that Time again
The Pebble Time hits an all-time low: $49.99 out the door.
There's refurbished, and then there's used. I tend to shy away from the latter, but exceptions can be made. For example, for a limited time, and while supplies last, A4C has the used Pebble Time smartwatch for $49.99 -- the lowest price I've seen.
This is the black model, and it's backed by a 90-day A4C warranty. However, because it's used, there will be scuffs and/or scratches -- though exactly where and how many is unknown. If it's the band that's banged up, no biggie: It's easy to swap out for any 22 mm watch band.
If it's the watch face, well, not ideal -- but A4C does offer a 30-day return policy with no restocking fee. I should note that the same vendor had a refurbished (i.e. scuff-free) Time for just $10 more last month, and deals like that are likely to recur.
So I'm just curious: Is the $49.99 price tag compelling enough for you to risk a used model? While you're mulling that, check out CNET's Pebble Time review.
Extra iDevice storage for cheap
If your iPhone or iPad is bursting at the seams, consider offloading photos and videos to external plug-in storage. Like this: Today only, and while supplies last, A4C (those guys again!) has the refurbished SanDisk iXpand 32GB USB flash drive with Lightning connector for $24.95 shipped.
Refurbished storage? Yeah, that's a little weird, but again I would argue in favor of the 90-day warranty and 30-day return policy. Any problems, just send it back. According to A4C, "This item is in immaculate, like new physical condition. In addition, this item has been thoroughly tested by our team of professionals and is guaranteed to be in perfect working order."
The same drive sells new for at least $15 more.
The iXpand sports a USB 2.0 connector for swapping media with your PC and a Lightning plug for piggybacking on your iDevice. SanDisk's app lets you offload and access said media. It's obviously way cheaper than buying a whole new phone or tablet just to get more storage.
A mammoth Mac software bundle
I'm kind of a sucker for software bundles, even if I wouldn't necessarily use every app. Because you still get incredible value.
For example, StackSocial's Award-Winning Mac Bundle has a combined value of $672, but you can get the whole thing just by beating the average price (currently $11.19).
I won't run down the full list of goodies here, but top-rated hard drive utility Drive Genius 4 normally runs $99 all by itself. You also get a three-year VPN Forever subscription, a $120 value.
So, yeah, duh -- if you own a Mac, get this bundle. Even if you use just two of the 13 included items, it more than pays for itself.
A mammoth monitor for $135
Finally, let's clear out that dusty old 22-inch monitor of yours, shall we? For a limited time (hopefully not too limited), Amazon has the Sceptre E275W-1920 27-inch desktop monitor for $134.99, with free Prime shipping. That's an insane price for a monitor of this size.
The key specs: LED backlighting, built-in stereo speakers and VGA, DVI and HDMI inputs. It earned a 4.2-star average rating from nearly 250 buyers, at least some of whom probably paid the regular $179.99 price.
Unsurprisingly, the monitor has a native resolution of 1,920x1,080 pixels, which some would argue is too low. It all depends on where (and how) you plan to use the monitor. (Keep in mind, too, that only higher-end graphics cards support higher resolutions anyway.)
And that wraps up another Wild Wednesday. Anybody buying anything?