CNET's Holiday Buying Guide Live 2017

[MUSIC] Hey, what's going on everybody? My name is Jeff Bakalar, and for the next 60 minutes, you're going to have CNET's finest here to help you find the best tech deals of this holiday season. Plus, we've got great shopping advice you can use all year around just in case you're already poor from buying all your relative's gifts. On my left, that's your right, we've got TV expert David Katzmaier, laptop sorcerer Dan. Sorcerer? That's right. What have you been doing with laptops? And deal hunting maven Bridgette Cary. How do you do? How are you, Bridgette? I'm ready. Well, I've already been scanning for deals all day. Okay, good. So, I'm ready for this. Great, let's do it, let's hear it. Well, when it comes to deals though we have to talk to Rick. Okay. Our very own deal wizard, coming in on Skype from Detroit, Mr. Cheapskate himself, Rick Broida. Wow, I got elevated from maven to wizard. I'll take it. Yeah you leveled up in an hour, congratulations. Awesome. Now if you're joining us live, Okay rick hold on one second we'll get back to you. If you're joining us live you can ask your questions via twitter using the hashtag #CNETLIVE. So just go on Twitter. And [UNKNOWN] because we are going to giving you special breaking CNET only deals that you are only gonna find right here on this broadcast, okay? So make sure you use #CNETLIVE. But first, let's talk about all the hottest holiday gifts that are out there this season My panel of gift finders and deal finders. What are the best holiday gifts this season? $2300 televisions. They are. Yes, they are. Really, if you want to make someone's day. 2017 holiday, buy them an O-Led TV. << Yeah just because that's what you do! That's what normal people do. << That's what his Santa has in his pack. He's got you know, 15 of them you know. Although the waitlist is so long though, maybe he didn't even get them. Why is it that TVs have the biggest. I feel like that is the gift to get. Right, absolutely. That is the most substantial. Except for the Lexus in the driveway, but a TV is a nice second place for that. Right on, okay. Now we are going to go the opposite direction, not the $1500 to $2300 TV. I think a lot of people are getting the inexpensive smart home devices like the Google Home and the Echo and the mini-sensors which are both about $30 I think pretty much throughout the holiday season. And they pair very well with other inexpensive things like. Philips Hue smart bulbs, and get a nice little smart home ecosystem going for $50 or $75. It's like a baby step into the smart home world for $30. It's the trojan horse of smart home, and then you get the smart bulbs, and then you don't remember what life was like before you were talking to your lights. Yeah. I fell like, though, with all the smart devices, they kind of can't give them away though, right? I mean, I know everyone's got an Echo Dot. Or you know the Google home thing, but now they're almost at the point where they want them in your home Yeah their glutton, they want to get them in home and then they want to sell you the lightbulbs and the voice shopping and all the other accessories and the fancy bluetooth speakers to connect them and get you hooked on that Amazon shopping life Right, and who isn't now I don't know. Bridget what do you say we toss it to Rick. Rick, what do you got for us? Well first of all I want to be on David's gift list because he's giving out big fancy TV's. Dan I can get my own $30 dock thank's for nothing. [LAUGH] Regular cheapskate readers know I'm all about the drones. And one of the great deals that are going on right now is on the DJI Spark, which is kind of one of the big drone success stories of this year. It's very compact, but it has all these super advanced features. It has follow me mode, and obstacle avoidance, and all this great stuff. It's very portable. And normally, up until now, it's been basically 500 bucks just about everywhere. Lots of stores have it on sale Black Friday and Cyber Monday for 399, but, right here, we're giving an extra 20 bucks off thanks to the folks at Wellbots. All you need to do is apply promo code, RICK20, that's me. R-I-C-K 20, and you'll knock it down to 379, which is the best price I think I have seen on the Spark. Ever. I want my own coupon code. That's when you know you've really made it. [LAUGH]. Yes. It's a code Bridget. It's $10 more. [LAUGH]. That's excellent. So what, so you think right now is the like the right time to jump in to a drone life? If you wanna go something higher end, normally you're talking 7,8, 9, 100, $1000 to get something really fancy. This is less than half the price to do that, and this drone, I think, will fit the bill for a lot of people. Now, that being said, one of my favorite products of the year, I have it right here, is the Techboy TB-802. And this is just a little indoor drone for fun. For people who are just getting started, for kids or whatever. And you control it using this little puck, this little mouse. It's just your control. You pivot it goes this way, then you pivot back it goes this way. It's super easy to fly. It's like 25 30 bucks. It's the best thing. It's the best thing ever. See that's where I'll get started on a drone at least. But is it rare to see sales on drones like this? Is now the time to dive in if you are on the fence about drone life [LAUGH]? Right, so this mark is rare to see on sale. Like I said, it's been $500 since it debuted earlier this year. 399 and then 379, that's a great deal. I would jump because it may be a while before we see a price that low again. This little guy that I was talking about, this tech boy, is very frequently in the anywhere between $20 to $30 range. So if you're just looking for something as a gift to give to some body, this, this is awesome. I can't recommend it highly enough. I love this little guy. Ok what else you got? My gosh. Well so I would be remiss if I didn't. We didn't talk about Amazon and let's just do this real briefly because I think everybody kind of knows at this point what Amazon has to offer but the tablets. The tablets! You know you've got the Fire HD10 which is currently 99 bucks. You've got the HD8 Which is 50 bucks, and then you've got the Fire 7, which is 30 bucks. It's just amazing deals. And the HD 10 in particular- Yeah, Dan's got it right here on the table with us. Yeah, I mean, for that amount of money, given that this is a newer-generation model, faster processor, higher resolution screen, built-in Alexa. I mean, it's madness that you can get this much tablet For this little money. And actually Target is doing 15% off site-wide today, meaning that in theory you could get the Fire HD 10 for 85 bucks. Now I think they're out of stock. But I think you can still order it. So it might be worth, and look. Even Amazon it looks like is now backordered on this. And I can understand why. That's a no-brainer. No, I was going to say like, I feel like that for me. I mean for me, I'm a new parent. And that's something you can just give to a small child. And not really get heartbroken when it inevitably gets shattered. I have a one and a half year old, that's exactly what I do with the fire seven. Which is only like 30 bucks now on sale or at least on Black Friday it was like really cheap. So, that's our airplane tablet for loading up all those Disney movies and it's like, who cares it was just like 30 bucks. And they have the kids version that comes with like a leather bumper and like a no questions asked replacement thing. Right. But [CROSSTALK] couple of months ago. And a 150 bucks it was really good and 99 bucks it's really really good especially if you are use the Amazon [UNKNOWN] video [UNKNOWN] Amazon services, the only thing is if you wanna use android apps and not the Amazon apps store you have to jump a few hoops to get to the, Traditional Google input. Which you can do. You can. You're basically hacking your tablet but most of the big games and apps are in the Amazon app store but it's mostly for like reading books and watching videos and some basic web surfing. And that's what you do the most with the Fire? Cuz I always wonder what are people using these for? And that's what it is. It's basically a portable streaming TV thing as opposed to the next step Step up in a tablet which is like an iPad which is at least 300 bucks if you get into that. Maybe a little bit less during the holiday time but for 99 bucks selling it almost as good. Not quite as good but in the same ball pack of that 9.7 in [UNKNOWN] it's great. [UNKNOWN] has always been on the top of people's shopping list when it comes to our CNET surveys. We do a holiday survey every year. Right. And it just came out today that tablets went down a few notches especially when millennials, it was like lower than four or something like that. So, it's, maybe tablets are kind of seeing a time where people aren't as giddy as maybe other times. The phones are bigger, the laptops are smaller. The tablet's in the middle are getting. Squeeze they're becoming more specialty items for specific things, like sitting on a plane watching Amazon Prime videos. How's the battery on that? The battery is not terrible. Watching videos is actually a pretty low stress thing for a battery in most products, you get a pretty good amount of time streaming videos opposed to playing games. Right, and at that price, I don't even care if I leave it on the plane. Exactly. [INAUDIBLE] for the next passenger. Right, it's a communal tablet. That's how it's supposed to be done. Where someone'll call security and say there's a mysterious electronic thing [CROSSTALK] Okay, we don't want to go down that road, Dan. Thanks a lot. All right, Rick, we're gonna come back to you in our next segment. But for right now I want to jump on Twitter and see what is happening. Again, please use the hashtag CNetLive. And you can ask us for all types of buying advice even if it's not tech. Even if you just have someone you want to buy a gift for. We're gonna help you out. All right, maybe Dan can help us out with this first one from Chris on Twitter asking I'm looking for a new laptop. Ideally 13 inches. Lightweight, an SSD, and under $700. I mean, you're not a miracle man, that's really specific. I mean that's a tough one to get a premium one that everyone's super interested in. I do have one right here that's a little bit more, but I think a really good deal, and that's the current generation Surface Pro from Microsoft that's usually $999, and they make you buy this keyboard thing. Which is really the best part about it. Separately for more than $100. Right now you can get the base Core i5 version of this plus one of the keyboard things for $899. And they've also got some deals on the Surface laptop. If you're wanting to go much less expensive than that, I saw that one of my favorite Chromebooks the Acer Chromebook R13 which has one of the longest battery life laptops we've tested. It clocked it in at more than 13 hours on our test which is Wow. A pretty tough test. Is a 100 bucks off at Costco right now and maybe a few other places. It's usually 389 Now it's 289, now that's a Chromebook, but 99% of what you do on a laptop these days- Here, I've got it on my screen- I know, you're just buying a Facebook machine anyway, right? You can do with a Chromebook, and it's got a touchscreen, and it's got one of those 360 hinges- That's pretty great. That's a great deal. Yeah, and that Surface, that has an SSD? Yeah, I mean almost any laptop except for, I'd be hard pressed to think of a laptop you could buy right now that does not have an SSD. Unless it's one of those weird, just bulky office laptops. So last Christmas I got my mom a Chromebook. And she's the most tech [UNKNOWN] person And I was afraid she wouldn't know what she was doing but immediately, she's like, you know, going on using Facebook, using the Internet and everything. Loves it and then just, she visited me recently, she's like I love this thing. I go, I was like it was 300 bucks. That's what she sounds like? Yeah. Very difficult to mess up a Notebook. That's the nice thing. That's great. I love it. No, and just from personal experience, I have friends who have been really nervous, really intimidated by kind of investing in that Chrome ecosystem. But it's really not a huge kind of gamble. [CROSSTALK] That's really all it is. [CROSSTALK] Into Facebook and everything else you do. Exactly, all right, really cool. Let's see if we can find another question here. I have got something coming in. Well here's maybe Dan and I, we can have a crack at this, coming in from agaddis wants to know the best 24 inch monitor deal just for general computing. I feel like I will [UNKNOWN] my desk that I really like, but I know they make a lot of Sub 24 inch monitors that you could probably get for under $200 that really are gonna do what you need it to do. Especially if you're not worried about latency and stuff like that for gaming. Yeah, they make a lot of good monitors. I think Dell also does a lot of good monitors, especially for gaming these days. And they have a ton of Various Black Friday into Cyber Monday deals on their site or even doing Cyber Monday Doorbusters, like limited time stuff on every hour during the day so you could find something good there. If you're super anxious about getting just a 24 inch monitor and you don't have these prerequisites that are gonna have you finding special ports or special specs about that Pretty much any of these sites are gonna have a some kind of discount, so you really don't have to find [CROSSTALK]. Or at least free shipping. Right. Yeah, you don't have to worry too much. [CROSSTALK] Totally, cuz otherwise- 4K monitors. Yeah, at this point just go with that sort of brand and you're gonna be well served with that. All right, please keep these questions coming. We're here to help, as you can see. We have to take a quick break. When we come back there are plenty more deals out there. We're gonna learn all about David Katzmeyer's gif pics. You're not gonna wanna miss this. We're dealing with the best TV person on planet Earth so you might wanna stick around to hear what he has to say. We'll be right back. [MUSIC] CBS Thursdays! Welcome! TV's number one comedy brings Use scientific breakthroughs. I can't believe you can turn ordinary skin cells into functioning brain cells. Well, I turned this one into a functioning boyfriend, so sky's the limit. Ingenious inventions. Remote control Stephen Hawking. Hey good looking, want to go for a spin? And whatever this is. Care for a Brandy? I don't think so. Good choice, it's disgusting. Don't miss The Big Bang Theory, CBS Thursdays. Or stream it live or On Demand. Mondays, every hero. Superman likes to keep it loose in the caboose, you know what I'm talking about? [LAUGH] Needs a hero Hurry up, idiot. And when they get together- I'm sure this is a pity job. No, not pity, we just felt sorry for you. [LAUGH] You never know. I thrive in this environment. What might come up. Kevin James and Leah Remini. [LAUGH] In Kevin Can Wait. CBS Mondays or stream it live or on demand. What do I mean by inside look? This mirror for example has a forward looking HD camera on it right here on the side. Don't let your old printed photos collect dust in a shoe box. Here are two ways to back up an iPhone. These are the top five new features in the next ios. [Laugh] What is Big techies or I'm over 6'2". [MUSIC] Hey welcome back to the C Net Holiday Buyer's guide. We are live. My name is Jeff Agler here in the C Net New York studios. Along with our gang of experts, Bridget Carey, Dan Ackerman, David Katzmaier, and via Skype from Detroit, it's CNET Cheapskate, Rick Broida. You like being called a cheap skate, Rick? [LAUGH] Is that okay? Well, I should be used to it by now. It's been ten years since I agreed to be called that in public. You're a brave man. We're here gathered To help you find the best products, and deals this holiday season. Now if you've got a specific question, specific buying advice, hit us up on Twitter right now, just use the hashtag CNETLIVE, and we will figure out a way to answer your question. I wanna know what other deals Rick has. Yes. Because he seems to like, have a stockpile of them, and I want to know all about that. [LAUGH] Right, so before I go any further I wanted to mention something that everybody should be doing today, Cyber Monday, and pretty much every other day of the deal on any deals that you're shopping for. Is to use a cash back service. We talked about the Amazon stuff. If you go through a site like eBates or Top Cashback, or Be Frugal before you head to Amazon, They're literally offering 8% cash back on most of Amazon's stuff right now. So that $100 tablet, you're gonna save another eight bucks just by purchasing it through a cash back service. So. Yeah but Rick, how long does it take to get that cash? I always wanted to try it but I'm always thinking like, how many hoops do I have to jump through? No, the number of hoops that you have to jump through is next to zero. You literally start your shopping at that site then click throughout to amazon and shop like you normally would. you dont get the cash back right away usually the pay out is every ninety days but you shop you do this all the time a little bit adds up and adds up and by the time you get your payout youre looking at 10 20 50 bucks you would've not had otherwise its a no brainer no strings use it [CROSSTALK] But how many toolbars on my browser do I have to install? Because this sounds very toolbarrey>> [LAUGH] I'm very anti-toolbar myself, I do use the Ebay's toolbar, which is kinda nice because it pops up immediately to let you know What kind of cash back offer is available wherever you happen to be shopping. But if your answer is Toba you don't need to user. It's people are very suspicious of these things and I get that but I have used them for a couple years now without incident, I always get my money back. It's great, I really, especially today because a lot of the percentages are higher because it's Cyber Monday. That's really good advice. Appreciate that, Rick. We're gonna come back to you in just a little bit. I want to pivot over to David Katzmeye. Dave, let's give you the spotlight for once in your life. And I want to talk about how important it is to pay attention to tv deals specifically. Because they're probably the best products that you should be buying right now. Is on your radar for pretty much the best television deal/home entertainment going on on this Cyber Monday? So we'll talk about, we'll start at the high end and that's because that's where discounts are sometimes few and far between, thinking about Black Friday, Cyber Monday, you think about a $79 32" TV you had to fight somebody to get What these are. The deals that I like are the ones you can buy them anytime, obviously. The price is as good as it's gonna be all year and probably until next year. Cuz that's how the TV cycle works. Right now, the TVs are as cheapest as they're ever going to be until basically 2018, Thanksgiving time and later. The first one is an LG OLED and who doesn't know OLED technology is the best picture quality ever tested. Spectacular image quality. And all the OLEDs basically have the same picture. So you can buy the cheapest one. It's got the same picture as the most expensive one. So the cheapest one now is the cheapest it's ever been. $1,500 for a 55 inch and $2,300 for a 65 inch. And those are really expensive. But you're buying a TV, great TV, you're gonna keep it for a long time. You're gonna watch it eight hours a day or whatever And at the end of the day, I think it's worth it at this point, to step up and get that, Tom. I just want to sneak in a personal recommendation. I cannot explain to people watching how fricking amazing this television looks. If you play a lot of video games, like myself, like Dan, and Bridget, and Dave, I mean You sometimes have to peel me away from the one in the back, right? Yeah, it's amazing, yeah. I just can't really put it into words what it's like playing a 4k HDR video game on one of those bad boys. Okay, that's the end of [UNKNOWN]. And it makes everything pop regardless of video games, movies, you're watching the Price is Right, it's just spectacular. [LAUGH] Even the Price is Right. Yes. It's so good, Drew Carey, amazing, but. [LAUGH] It's the black levels, it's the contrast, it's the brightness, it's the colors, it's the pure, perfect off angle. Everything comes together, it's really the best picture we've ever seen. And so anyway, this TVs the one to get. And if you have the money, if not save up a little bit. But let's say you don't wanna spend $1500 on a television. I don't. [LAUGH] So you can a perfectly decent LCD-based television. Vizio's right now the best bang for the buck, they've been getting great reviews from me for years. The M-series is my favorite right now, Editor's Choice Television has now seen it. The 50 inch starts at 500 bucks, so that's the cheapest it's been all year. And a great television. It does 4K. It does HDR. Looks spectacular. You know, it's not going to get as good of a picture as OLED. Yeah. But you're also gonna save a heck of a lot of money, and it looks really, really, really good. So, there's a lot of other TV deals out there. I still like these best. For example, there's a Roku TV, the CTL Roku TVs, even less expensive than the Vizios, in general. There's, they have 65 inch for 650, for example, which for that size television with Roku built in is great. Great smart TV and streaming for that kind of thing. And they make a great secondary television, maybe not that size, if you just wanna augment the TVs around your house. You wanna get one for another room. They're a great choice because they've got that Roku built in with all the streaming apps. Yeah, the TCL TVs kind of impressed me. I was playing around with one in your lab. Yep. That Roku you know, sort of operating system, you just know how to use it out of the box, and I feel like a lot of these televisions Maybe they're not the most user friendly when it comes to the menu systems and whatnot. But that [UNKNOWN] really kind of blew me away with like, this is just a big old Roku with a screen inside. Yeah, yeah, and it's got, and they put the inputs right at the same level as Netflix. Yeah. And it shows you live previews and And you can name all the inputs, and it's just a dead simple operating system. The kind of thing, again, for a parent or grandparent that wants to get into streaming. And I can save a lot of money doing this? This is great. I love your grandparent voice. It's not as bad as my moms. [LAUGH] It's not as bad [INAUDIBLE]. Really, son? You can get a Roku? What is that? Is it broke? No. So this, you know, [UNKNOWN] have been great. Again, really simple, really inexpensive and since you don't have to connect another device to them, you've got the same remote doing everything, it just makes it so much easier to use. I want to pivot real quick into a specific Twitter thing for you, because now that everyone knows you're here and you're live, everyone's got questions. Don't worry Dan there's plenty of stuff where that came from. But for you specifically and off the top of your head, and I know you know why. This question, and I dont know if its 100% accurate. But, this question came in from Luke and he says, hey gang, why isn't Samsung that aggressively in the Ola market? Well it's mainly manufacturing, they didn't invest years ago in building Big Screen Ola. Now, I dont know if people notice but Samsung makes more Tiny, phone sized OLEDs, than anybody else. They dominate the market with iPhone X and everything else. But when it comes to large screens, it's LG. And they're the only ones that invest in the factory to create 55 inch, 65 inch, even 77 inch large screen OLEDs. So that's the main reason. Samsung decided to make an investment a while ago and continue their LCD production, for whatever reason, and now they're kind of paying the price. I mean they They still could, then. Maybe they can make that investment now or a couple years in the future, but they're not gonna catch up to LG for a while. Right, they kind of set the bar pretty high for quality and price, so that's really kinda a tough sea to navigate right now. If you're building new factories, it takes a while to make enough TVs to- To catch up. Yeah exactly. Yeah and that kind of leads into another few questions we got. If Oled is the kind of TV you want to buy but LG is too much money is there any sort of wiggle room in between of like I know a budget Oled doesn't exist. Yeah. What kind of advice do you have for someone who's looking for something like that? I would definitely say a good local dimming LED based LCD like that Vizio that I talked about. Right. And if 500 bucks for you know a 50 inch TV. There's a really really good TCL Roca TV local dimming the one that you were talking about Jeff and you saw back there in the TV lab. Yeah. That's 600 bucks at Best Buy. Great television I mean the picture quality on these little glowing TVs is really really good. And that's what I'd recommend. And there's a big gap between those two and there's plenty of high end LCD's. Sony makes a good one. But they're bang for the buck. I like the TCLs and the Vizios. And if you're really gonna splurge the [UNKNOWN]. Excellent buying advice. I wanna go back into a few more general questions on twitter. Don't forget, please use the hashtag CNETLIVE. Hey Dan. Hey again. This is from Andrew. What's a good laptop, that could be on sale right now, for gaming and video editing? I feel like those two things kind of go hand-in-hand, when your talking about Graphics card and processing power. Do you have some sort of, maybe, mid level recommendation for those two things? You know it's funny. I actually do have a great really inexpensive gaming laptop. I was going to show you guys. It's right here. Which is brand new. It is right here. I always love it when things are brand new and they're better than the previous version and they're on sale. Which is happening here at this Inspiron 15 7000 from Dell. So it's not part of the Alienware line which is Dell's real gaming line. Instead, this is their Inspiron line, which is usually boring and grey. But they make this cool black and red gaming one. It started last year. And it was ok. It gave you a pretty good graphics card, an NVIDIA 1050. This year, it's got a 1060 which is really what you want if you want to get into VR Sure and just mainstream games at 1920 by 1080 which is full HD resolution So this guy starts at $999, and for that you get an Intel Core i5. Well, well today it says $899. That is, that is true. That is the cyber Monday sale that's going on right now. NVIDIA 1060 card. I think it's got 8 Gigs of RAM. It's got a 256 Gig SSD, which is not huge for games, Sure. but you know, you download them. You delete them. You redownload them Yes. through Steam, or whatever. And that core i5. But the fact we can get that nVidia 1060 for 899 now on sale is pretty fantastic. And we've been playing around testing this laptop. And you know what? It's pretty darn good and it fixes the main problem with last year's model which is the screen was not great last year. This year it's better. It's not the greatest screen you've ever seen on anything, but for regular 15 inch 1080 screen, it's pretty darn good. I mean, and considering that kind of processing power in this Relatively reasonable package. That's crazy. Usually you think I have this big honking laptop that I gotta carry around for this kind of stuff. This is not unmanageable. It's not. And we've seen a lot of super slim gaming laptops like the [UNKNOWN] from ASUS and a few other ones, but they're very expensive. $2300, $2500, and they're very very slim and very light, but you're paying a lot for that. It's pretty cool. Let's just maybe slide this closer here [CROSSTALK] I think for gaming you are. We all figured out years ago that if you're gonna trade between the CPU and the GPU, invest more in the GPU and you get more gaming bang for your buck. Definitely. And a Core 5 is fine, frankly. I agree. i7 maybe a little too much. You can get that just for a couple hundred bucks more. There's a step up and if you get one that's on sale also But this is that 9.99 now currently 8.99 base model. Excellent. Alright, you can always find cneps, cneps what's that? You can find our top gift pics in the holiday buying guide. There should be a URL right here. It's a little lower. In the meantime, we have to take another short break. Up next we're gonna talk more laptops, more deals, and more of your questions on Twitter using the hashtag cnet live. Please stay right where you are. We'll be right back. [MUSIC] How are jurors selected? The answer, may surprise you.>> I'm Dr. Jason Bourne. I'm not a lawyer. I'm an expert in what's called trial science. I study the jury's behavioral patterns. We know what they're thinking from the beginning. Everything my team learns, allows us to assemble a mirror jury that's scary in it's predictive efficiency. We'll know what the jury is gonna bring back. Well no, because that's what we do. Michael Weatherly is Bull, CBC Tuesdays. If you want change, be the change. [SOUND] [MUSIC] SWAT strength is in the pack. Hold it down, I'm on my way. We move as one. Sometimes following the rules and doing what's right isn't always the same thing. [SOUND] [MUSIC] SWAT is about saving lives. Are you cops? Metro SWAT. So like cops, just cooler? [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] Hey, welcome back to the second half of CNET's Holiday Buyers Guide Live Show. My name is Jeff Bakalar and joining me is Bridget Carey. Hello Dan Ackerman Hey now. I like that. And David Katzmaier. Just the glory of David Katzmaier. And of course, via Skype, it's Rick Broida. Hi guys Hey don;t worry we see you on the TV we're gonna come right into you very soon, don't worry Rick standby we're gonna talk deals and laptops for the next few minutes but keep those questions coming right in again, hit us up on twitter using the hashtag CNET live. Okay, so Rick, ready to come back to you What else do you have that is pretty today that we need to check out? Right so there's two things that I wanna make absolutely sure we get to and they're two of my favorite gadgets really. The first, smart watches, I love smart watches. I don't know why they're not more popular if for just for notifications alone, To have something on your wrist that let's you know when you're getting a call, a text message, or whatever, is not something I'm willing to live without anymore. so for Android users in particular, this is also iPhone compatible, but for Android users in particular, TechRabbit has the Verizon Wear24 Android wear 2.0 smartwatch on sale for 99.99, but you can knock another 20 bucks off of that if you use coupon code T-R wear 24. So for 80 bucks, you're getting a smartwatch that was $350, literally as recently as about as 6 months ago. This particular model was discontinued by Verizon. It was kind of introduced quietly and discontinued quietly. It's a pretty high end model. It doesn't have everything. It doesn't have a heart rate monitor, but it's got most of the Good bells and whistles and it's 80 bucks now. You get to dip your toe in the smartwatch waters for cheap. That's not too bad for someone who maybe isn't sure about smart watches, cuz normally they are over $300. Generally speaking, your average Apple watch, for example, your going to be paying upwards of $300 or more. So I love stuff like this and I especially love that this is new and not even refurbished so it's Do you need to be a Verizon customer to use it? [INAUDIBLE] but do you need it? Excellent question, now you do not but actually this watch is L.T.E. compatible so if you are a Verizon customer and you do want to use it without a phone you can do that. Hmm! Hm. All right. What else you got for us there, Rick? Well, the excitement over there is palpable. I don't have a smart watch because I'm already getting so many dings. But Come on you guys. But I guess it's not We don't want to say it, but we kind of hate smart watches, Rick. I know you do, that why I've got to be the champion here. For 80 bucks, you can't hate a smart watch. For 350 bucks, I get it. I get it, so give it a try. All right, I'm the only person in the world who has an Android phone, so I'm actually gonna take note of what you got there for us. What's next, though? All right, so next another one of my favorite products, and again you guys are all gonna roll your eyes I bet. Is a digital photo frame. [LAUGH] [CROSSTALK] That's right, come on. Hang on, hang on. Rick what the [NOISE], I'm kidding. No, tell us about this deal from 2011. [LAUGH] I better close my laptop. Tough really. Wow. [LAUGHING] As gift items go. For the grandparents, for the parents, for anybody who likes to look at photos in a traditional frame format. [LAUGHTER] These things are the best, you get a continuous slide show of all your friends, your family. And what's wonderful about these is that they're wi-fi connected, you can hook them up to your Facebook account, you can email photos directly to the frame. All of the hassles that used to be associated with these products are gone So Nixplay has their newest model, which is called the Iris. It's an eight inch frame and as you can see the photos, it's lovely. I mean it has this beautiful silver frame. It's real thin. Yeah, and you can get it in a couple of other colors as well. So normally 200 bucks. They are running a sale for 30% off but the cheapskate is here to bump that up to 34% off. A little extra sugar for you [LAUGH] [LAUGH] The code CNET34 brings that down to $131.99. It's a great gift item. We have one in my house. My relatives all have them now. They love them. Stop rolling your eyes. Wait wait. We're not I promise. Is this the kind of thing where like if I give it to my mom I can just put photos on there that maybe will surprise her because I can just log in and upload anything even though I'm not in the house so. That'd be cool. Not complicated. You can literally email new photos to the frame and they will just appear as if by magic. And if mom is connected to Facebook or any number of other services that use photos, new pictures will appear automatically. They just get sucked up by the frame. You can add to it via an app very easily. So it's, they become much easier to use. Yeah cause I remember Back in the day when these were the hot thing to have the resolution was all janky. But you're saying times have gotten better? M gosh yea. The hassle of adding new photos to those frames. It was obnoxious that's why everybody hates them. But what few people know is that they have evolved and gotten much better. Beautiful screens, beautiful frames, WiFi The whole nine yards. So I'm very fond of the product category [LAUGH] if you haven't figured that out. No, right on, I appreciate it. We're just having fun with you there [UNKNOWN]. Yeah, yeah. I appreciate that. We're gonna come back to you in just a little bit. Mr. Dan Ackerman It is your turn, sir. And now I have to decide which gift I got for you to return, the smart watch or the digital photo frame? That's not what we're talking about, that's not fair. What we're gonna do, Dan, is we're gonna talk about getting the best bang for people's buck when it comes to deals for laptops. So we've been getting a lot into specific uses But is there anything else that you've got for us? Buying advice in general? Maybe speaking that you can lay on. The two things to keep in mind are you see a lot of these super sale deals, especially from Black Friday through Cyber Monday. Cyber Week. Where like, come to the store. Get this fully featured looking 15 inch laptop. Yeah. Like $200. Usually these are not the brands and parts that you want. If you get one of the super cheap ones, even thought it may seen like a good deal you may be disappointed long-term by something that you're just not going to use a lot and then you're going to spend more to replace it earlier than you normally. Normally would. Exactly. That said, there are not often a ton of discounted, super, super, super high end laptops, especially being high end gaming stuff. We looked at a mid priced gaming laptop, but for super expensive gaming stuff You may often get instead of a discount, they may throw in some extras, like Origin PC, which is a big gaming PC company that we both know. They have a whole bunch of deals on their Black Friday/ Cyber Monday page, where you can buy a very expensive desktop or laptop and instead of X number of dollars off They'll throw in a free 250 gig, really fast Samsung SSD. This is a very long list of plus more. Yeah, like free shipping on a big desktop, that can count for a lot, or an Amazon gift card $50 or a bunch of free new games like Wolfenstein 2 or the new ASsassin's Creed or- Wait, which is not nothing. I mean that's hundreds of dollars of games. Right, you add a bunch of these things up. And instead of having X dollars off you pay regular price on super high end stuff. And you get a bunch of extras. One even comes with a $50 Amazon gift card. Yeah, but [CROSSTALK] Like totally down with that. And then at the high-end premium non-gamer style, you can get some pretty good new laptop for a decent amount off. One of my favorite new ones, actually, is this guy right here. This is the HP Spectre. The 2017 edition, which has a cool new ceramic white look and I thought this was really a great look. I mean, look how thin that is. How light that is. And that's a Core i7 laptop there. It's a pretty laptop. Brand new $1,299, now it's down to $1,129 from HP. So that's $180 off the usual price on this. And then its sister product, the Spectre X360, which means it's got the hinge that folds over like that I think we have a special, Rick might have a special deal on that. If I can get my face ID to let me into my phone, I'll tell you. [LAUGH] The Spectre X360, I just learned about this, it's normally 1249. Ooh, ooh, I got it up, I got it up. You got it right there. It's 950 right now for Cyber Monday, but if you use the code, are you ready for the code? CNETHP50. Not Dan50. Like Rick's code. [CROSSTALK] CNETHP50, an extra $50 off. So it's $899 now. And these are two very impressive new high end laptops. Pretty damn good. I wanna get into some specific questions about laptop buying from Twitter, if you'll allow that? Let's go. The question primarily that's dominated a lot of this stuff is, well where can I get the Apple deal? Lay it out there for everybody, is getting a discounted Apple product even a thing, especially on something like Cyber Monday? It is possible, but not as easy as it is for a lot of other brands. We were talking about Black Friday deals last week. We know that one of the really good deals was Best Buy actually had I think 100 bucks off the Mac, the classic Mac Book Air which they still make even though it's not the most modern looking. Sure. Feeling Mac Book and they had some good deals on iMacs as well. If you go over to Apple's site they occasionally have things in the refurbished area of the site available. at good discounts, but I saw once again today at Best Buy, they've got the 13 inch MacBook Pro, the base model, which is $1299, which is great for a MacBook Pro, it's does not, it's the kind without the touch bar, with the traditional function key row, Don't need that touch bar, right. which frankly, yeah, which frankly, a lot of people A lot of people prefer, it's usually 1299. Best Buy has it for 1149 right now, so $150 off for a new MacBook, which is a high demand item. That's probably about as good as it's->> You're gonna get. New out of the box, not used, not refurb->> Right. Not last year's model Right and your student discount that's about it. [UNKNOWN] student discount. Yeah just hold on to that .edu email address, that's the only life advice I have. I know someone of Twitter was asking about are there any apple sales out there and someone was asking like. Well is there an Iphone sale today at Verizon because they saw an Iphone se on sale and so they wait and. I don't know if Rick can chime in on if he's ever seen specific phone sales past Cyber Monday. But, the only other phone sale I saw was T-Mobile has a BOGO, with buy one new iPhone, bet another free. That's seemed to be the big phone deals this year, with the buy one get one free, that sometimes went up to the iPhone 8. Yeah. Which was actually pretty impressive, and the new Samsung phones obviously. Yeah. [CROSSTALK] I activated a second line on those. That's the issue. [CROSSTALK] That's were they get you. All right so you know as long as you're paying. [CROSSTALK] We're going to get a family plan together. All right. Rick, what do you think about that with Apple phone discounts? Right so, the thing I tell people, with all the hype with Black Friday and Cyber Monday is that for me in my world, everyday is Black Friday, everyday is Cyber Monday. And I wanna remind everyone we're just about to pivot into holiday shopping, so there will be additional sales. If you miss something today, I'm pretty certain You'll see something similar, maybe even a little bit better as we get closer to Hanukkah and Christmas. There's no guarantees but there are always, always deals. I promise. Yeah, there's one I saw. I was just telling these guys. There's an Apple product, speak of the devil, that's actually on sale. It's a pretty indirect deal. So right now, Direct TV Now is offering a deal where they're a live tv streaming service, they replace your cable television so they're great for cord cutters. 35 bucks a month is their base package, so you prepay four months, which is 140 bucks. You can get a free Apple tv 4k. Which is never discounted, that's a brand new 4k streaming box. That's $180 so just do that and set your little calendar reminder four months in the future and you get $40 off the Apple TV 4k and you also can use this DirectTV Now service for that four months. So that's a pretty cool deal and again, it's one of these things that's kind of a backdoor deal but you can still get a pretty good discount. So there are ways to find it, you just gotta Really be willing to, you know, get DirectTV for a little bit, that's all. There you go. What were you going to say Bridget? I was going to say, what do you think about streaming services for gifts? I mean, if you just want to like, maybe, you know, I dont really buy TVs for people, but maybe I can soup up their TV and make it smarter or I can just give them a better experience. There's a couple things there. So obviously with a streaming service, you're going to say, hey, mom, I'm going to buy you Netflix for three months. Or I'm gonna buy Netflix for a year, whatever it is. That works out good, but eventually they're gonna have to start paying for it themselves. Or they're gonna have to share it with whoever. One of the things that I like to say is, instead of that, just get them a Roku or one of these little streaming devices that's really inexpensive. And let them experience for themselves that it's like, so Roku has a deal now, for example, on their Express Plus, which is a little thing which is like a streaming stick but it's not. Cheaper than heck. It's $22 bucks right now at Walmart and that thing actually has analog output. With the red and the yellow? Yes! They don't exist for anybody except for your crotchety uncle who refuses to get rid of that television in the family room. And all of the sudden, that tv's transformed with Netflix and everything else. Roku also has a deal on their 4K streaming stick now, which is $20 off. It was our editor's choice, best streaming product for 50 bucks. So and that has everything, 4K HDR, the kind of thing you could buy now even if you don't have 4K tv. And be set for when you can afford one of the newer televisions in a year or two. Excellent. Alright, make sure you keep an eye on CNet.com/cheapskate, that is Rick's domain. That's where you can stay on top of all the deals that Rick has spotted. We're gonna take one more break, and we'll be back to wrap things up with some extra goodies in the world of gaming, and a lot more deals. We'll see you then, stay here. [MUSIC] Movie pass. My daddy was always saying to me, If you want things to change get out there and be the change. [MUSIC] If anyone can bridge the gap between that community and the police it's you. [SOUND] [MUSIC] You and me. We got this. Together. [MUSIC] SWAT. Thursdays, or stream it live on demand. Go, go, go. You just saved a woman from being tortured. It's okay. I'm going to take you home. I call it a good nights work. [MUSIC] You can run, but you can't hide. You make it back home. Make it back home to us. [MUSIC] We got this. Go. Go. [MUSIC] CBS Sundays. I have created the hub where people can submit and dissect evidence. When it comes to crime solving. We vet any evidence and then pull it up at the stroke of a key. A million minds. Real time crowd sourced crime solving. Are better Better than one. Two uses, have you seen this man? Jeremy Piven. People wanna be a part of something meaningful. They're doing it on their own. Get back, police. You're under arrest. [APPLAUSE] Wisdom of the Crowd, CBS Sundays. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] Hey, thanks, everyone, for sticking around. If you are just joining us, we're in the final block of the CNet buyer's guide. Joining me, Bridgette Carey, Dan Ackerman, David Katsmyer. And through the magic that is Skype, Mister Rick Broida. Got that little under the chin wave. [LAUGH]. I'm Jeff Bakalar and what we're going to do right now is take a few more questions on Twitter. Let's get to the feed. Again if you have a question please use the hashtag CNET live. So, I want to get into a little bit of gaming stuff. Because that is my direct wheelhouse. A lot of the questions coming in are asking, what console should I buy right now, given the deals that are out there? There's high end game consoles right now, and sort of the ones that have been around for a few years. So I guess, and Dan and everyone feel free to chime in, I feel like the best console to get right now is probably the legacy ones. The XBox one, the XBox 4s, or a PS4 it's in a slimmer model right now. I know for a fact that the PS4 slim Which Maria has asked about here, is only 1.99 today on Cyber Monday. That is insanely good deal in my opinion. And how much was the Playstation from what it was, like 500 bucks, 400 bucks? It was way more than that. Yeah, yeah. I think it was $400. So you're talking about a massive discount with a gigantic library of games. I really can't stress enough that if this is your first [UNKNOWN] into the current generation of games, $200 for a console with such an amazing library, you really can't go wrong on a- And the One S is 189, which is the lowest price ever. [CROSSTALK]. And that thing plays 4K Blu-Rays, just in case you care about that, but obviously the games and everything are on there. So yeah, the price is better now. Yeah. I think the Xbox One X and the Playstation 4 Pro, you're not gonna get really much of a deal on right now plus that's the higher end stuff. You really need a 4K TV to take full advantage of what those consoles have to offer. So I think right now, for this season, the real sort of sales, the real discount and bargains are within those legacy cancels. But VR, then, is having this sort of You know, renaissance right now. Is it a good time to buy some VR? [CROSSTALK] It��s a virtual fire sale. Might not be the best time to own VR but it��s certainly the best time to buy VR. Because before now, I was just saying to people, whether it��s the HTC Vibe or the Ocular Thrift, it was so complicated to put these things together and hook them up to computers and they were so expensive. Seven, eight hundred dollars to buy. It was like having a boat or like a swimming pool. Someone else should have, you should have a friend who has one and then you can go use it but you don't have to go through the trouble of owning it. But now, I've got the Play Station VR right here that works with that 199 Play Station four. Also works with the Play Station Pro. But this is down to, I think, 299 now in different bundles and goes up from there if you add the camera and the controllers and games and things like that. And the the Oculus Rift, the thing that kicked all this off- Right. Was something like 6 or $600. It was just, it just had a dollar sign. [CROSSTALK] Plus $200 for controllers- Yeah. That came out a little bit later, now the whole thing, this thing and the set of controllers is 350. Which is just unfathomable. They dropped it to 399 and then for holiday time 350. And frankly, quality wise, it's fantastic. It works with Fairly inexpensive computers now, like that Dell Inspiron the 899 one we just looked at. Anything with an nVidia 1060 or better. And it's just a great experience. And the Vibe is discounted too, but not as much. Now a lot of people are asking about specific games Here and there you can find, for newer games at least, you can find roughly 5 to $10 off some of the biggest releases of the holiday season like Assassin's Creed Origins, Wolfenstein 2. But there really isn't necessarily, and you guys can speak to this, the gigantic sort of sale on the brand new game. That markup is- I've seen that though on the PC side, especially through Steam and other guys. New games, whether it's Wolfenstein Or Assassin's Creed, definite discounts going on at least in the past week. Right. And frankly on the PC side games get discounted awfully quickly. Definitely. It's almost disturbing how quickly a brand new game that somebody's put years of their life into and tens of millions of dollars and all of a sudden it's- In four weeks it's $10 off. Twenty bucks instead of sixty bucks. It's good for us gamers short term, but not good for making new games in the long term. Everyone I talk to, though, only cares about the Switch. [CROSSTALK] I mean, at least in terms of parents looking for their kids or just interested in everyone's buzzing about it. But that ain't on sale, right? You're probably not gonna find a Nintendo Switch on sale But I mean, to even find it for sale is impressive. Lucky to find it in stock now in a lot of places. You can actually find one, whereas before you couldn't even find it. That's right. And I mean, it is fantastic. You're ready to pull the trigger, right? I mean, I was thinking about it. It's in your cart right now. I'm a commuter and it's like I ride Play this thing on the train, you know, we talk about Skyrim on that thing- Skyrim. Which I've replayed at least four times, you know, but now a fifth. Might as well, right? And obviously, Mario. You can play Skyrim on Playstation VR now. I can, but I have to buy another version of it, right? Well, yes, and the headset. I gotta buy it three more times. That's the problem. But yeah, and obviously Mario. I mean, like I didn't play the [UNKNOWN] I came. So, the bottom line. I know, but, at least the good thing is when the switch first came out there were all these bundles. They're packed in junk really in need. But now it seems like the stock is catching up with the demand and if you do have to get forced into a bundle-, Mm-hm. Maybe you're not having to buy or spend extra dollars. You're really just getting the full price for everything, which is-. So, as a switch buyer,- Yes. I'll ask you the expert in games-, Sure. Best gaming expert on the planet A back log. Well that's fact. But sure. Of course.>> You don't have to say it, but sure. When is the price on the switch going to go down? Come on. I don't have a crystal ball in front of me. [LAUGH] That's the million dollar question. When is the first price drop on that console. Until people don't want them as much anymore. That's when it will happen. This thing is the hottest console that they've had since the original Wii. Right. It outsells a lot of the other consoles. It is very high in demand. I don't think that's happening for at least a year, if not more. Wow. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So sorry to bum you out. I guess I gotta go buy the thing then. You have to pay full price for that switch. But guess what, Katz? It's worth it. Alright. Nice. Just make sure you get the extra set of controllers so you can do the four player split screen on Mario Kart. Whoa. Which is the greatest Family, same room activity. Yeah. Can I get a deal #RickDeal. [LAUGH] Let's go to someone who actually has discounts. Yeah, we're going to go out to Rick. If you don't have a deal on the Switch, you have to have something you can help us out before we have to say goodbye. Just use coupon code Rick, I'm sure it'll work. [LAUGH] Discount on anything. Universal coupon. Cash back. [LAUGH] Yeah, actually let me circle back to something David mentioned in the last segment which was about streaming services. Hulu is running a deal right now. You can get the limited commercials plan for 5.99 per month instead of 7.99 per month. And that's for your first Year, so over the course of that year, you'll save 24 bucks, which is enough to buy that Roku Express Plus for 22 bucks. There you go. Ha! That's pretty good. Nicely done. And two dollars left to spare. Of course. And two dollars left to spare, yeah you have to cover the sales tax. Think about that. And we did some math. Dice, arithmetic. Okay. We're doing everything here on the show. Rick, is there any thing else you want to close it with? Yeah. Or are you all dealed out? So speaking of gift ideas, let's talk about some old-school streaming. And that's the movie theater, right? I've heard of that. So if you like to go to the movies, or if you know someone who does, I really think the gift of the year to get to that person is a movie pass. Subscription. You guys know Movie Pass? Yes. Can you explain for people who might not know? Right. So, Movie Pass costs ten dollars a month, and for that ten dollars, you can go to, you can basically get a movie ticket every single day of that month. So, you can literally go to the movies every single day, if there were actually that many good movies to see. [LAUGH] And, so, but you, again, it's a subscription service. So, it's ten bucks a month, but You can buy this for someone for 3 months, 6 months, 12 months, and you're basically giving them carte blanche to go to the movies as often as they like. And I think it's great, it's literally the price of one movie ticket, gets you into the movies 29 more times in a given month, it's amazing. Yeah, but I thought not every theater was gonna participate. In time. I thought -- So they say I think in excess of 90% of theaters accept it and really what you get from Movie Pass is just a kind of regular debit card. So a theater would really have to work hard not to accept it because it works just like a debit card does. Just you go, you buy a ticket using this thing They're none the wiser. You know, there are a few limitations on what you can see, like you can't go see a 3D movie, you can't go in the fancy DBOX seats, or anything like that, but for the most part, it's a pretty easy experience. Excellent. Alright Rick. We've got time for one last one. Do you have one you want to give us before we must say goodbye? My gosh, I have to say goodbye. Okay, so phones, let's talk about phone deals. So the hot phone earlier this year was the Google Pixel. And if you are not really hung up on the Pixel 2, you don't mind going back a generation, dailysteals has the original Pixel. And it's new, not refurbished. It's unlocked For $449.99 with a coupon code, hoping we'll put up somewhere. It's CHPSKTPXL with all the vowels taken out. Wow, okay. Extra ten bucks off, an already good deal. Maybe we'll tweet that or something. Okay, excellent. Rick, can't thank you enough for all the deals man, I really appreciate it Thanks for having me, it was a pleasure. All right, that's about all the time we have right now. A very big thank you to Bridgette for help steering the ship. Thank you for doing that. Always a pleasure. Big shout out to Dan Ackerman, David [UNKNOWN] and of course Rick [UNKNOWN] for taking time out of their very busy day to help us here on Cyber Monday. You can find all of their recommendations in the CNet Holiday Buying Guide and of course on Rick Broider corner of CNet at the Cheapskate blog. And you can keep track of his all of his deal-seeking work at cnet.com COM/CHEAPSKATE and of course that's all year round. You can always check out CNET. COM/DEALS for even more. Thank you everyone. Happy holidays and we will see you next time. [MUSIC]