Surface Duo fire-sale continues, now down to $398

Update, Sept. 22, 2021: Microsoft held its 2021 Surface event on Sept. 22, and unveiled the Surface Duo 2. The new folding phone features a faster processor, better cameras and many other upgrades compared to the Surface Duo. 

You may have thought $1,500 was a little steep for Microsoft's first Surface Phone, and you were right. While the Surface Duo has a lot of great hardware in it, the software just never fully came together. As a result, the price on this fascinating folding phone has been dropping like crazy over the last two months. A few weeks ago it seemed likely that cutting the price by two-thirds would have been the lowest point, but today you can grab a Surface Duo at Woot for $398, making it just $48 more than the freshly announced Nintendo Switch OLED due out in October.

Even if all you wanted was a quirky gadget to experiment with until the next one comes out, a Surface Duo for $398 is a pretty great deal. The two large displays can be used side by side or you can fold it into a tiny laptop and enjoy movies or gaming. Fans of Xbox game streaming will find it's surprisingly fun to have the lower screen act as a controller for your favorite Xbox games, and if you go looking for some decent emulator apps you'll find there's a ton of other games you can play wherever you are. 

This particular Surface Duo is locked to AT&T, but if you want to unlock it for another mobile network all you need to do is request an unlock code from AT&T or Microsoft. The only real downside here is software updates: If Microsoft is getting rid of these phones at such a rapid rate there's a good chance you're not going to see much support for this model for very long.

Watch this: Microsoft Surface Duo review: 5 stages of dealing with the Duo

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First published earlier this month. Updated with new deal details.