Dan's Black Friday Favorites for 2023
Tech pics for laptops, 3D printers, displays, gaming gear and more.
One of my first projects as the new Editor in Chief at Micro Center was putting together some of my favorite Black Friday tech gift picks. I found a lot of great deals on more splurge-worthy items, as well as some well-priced staples, all of which make great gifts.
Samsung Odyssey Neo: A Spectacle of Screen Real Estate ($1,199, save $1,000)
This 54-inch insanely wide display is one of those showoff conspicuous consumption items that it's almost never practical to invest in...unless it's $1,000 off and then it just becomes a high-end, but still affordable, monitor.
MacBook Air M2: Iconic Yet Affordable ($989, save $110)
Still the most universally useful laptop most people can buy. And now that it's sometimes on sale for just under the classic $999 MacBook price, it's an easy pick. Just make sure to get the cool Midnight color.
LG OLED C3: The Television of Choice (65-inch: $1,599, save $1,200)
Almost everyone who used to work at CNET had an LG OLED TV, so that should tell you something.
Acer Nitro 17: A Budget-Friendly Gaming Beast ($999, save $400)
It's becoming harder and harder to find a budget gaming laptop with an Nvidia 4060 GPU for under $1,000, so points to Acer for this deal.
Some of my other pics are below:
Creality Ender 3 S1: A User-Friendly 3D Printer ($279, save $100)
Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5: The Smart Hybrid ($699, save $260)
Anycubic Photon Mono 2: The Resin Printing Revolution ($139, save $60)
Razer Black Widow V3: The Gamer's Compact Choice ($119, save $60)
Logitech Pop: A Mod Take on the Typewriter ($79, save $20)
HyperX SoloCast: The Streamer's Simple Solution ($29, save $10)
JBL Clip 4: Music That Moves With You ($56, save $23)
See my full Black Friday list here.
More on the OLED Steam Deck and Lenovo Legion Go
What a great year it's been for handheld PC gaming. Besides the Asus Ally, we also get the Windows-based Lenovo Legion Go and the surprise new OLED version of the Valve Steam Deck.
I've been testing the latter two of those recently, and while the early lead went to the polished Steam Deck experience, and its better, brighter OLED screen, the Lenovo Legion Go is finally getting the updates it needs to take advantage of its bigger 8.8-inch display and Switch-like detachable controllers.
My big thing was trying to play Starfield on the Legion Go, as the Microsoft/Bethesda game was on Xbox Game Pass, and should be easy to install and run from the Go. But even dropping the resolution and detail settings, I had no luck getting the game to run. Either it crashed right away, told me I had the wrong drivers, or ran at a few frames per second.
After I chased down and manually installed these new drivers, performance in some games jumped nicely, and Starfield finally ran. But by that time, I also got browser-based presets going on the Steam Deck for Xbox Cloud Streaming and Nvidia GeForce Now, which would let me stream games that don't run well on either the Steam Deck or the Legion Go/Asus Ally.
So, a few weeks in, the Legion Go is still awkward but getting better, and I love the big screen. The OLED Steam Deck offers no real performance improvements, but the ecosystem and interface have become so polished that it's a great consumer experience, and the (smaller) OLED screen will blow you away.
And as a fun bonus, Micro Center will do an in-store upgrade of the internal storage to 2TB — check it out at your local MC store.
See the Lenovo Legion Go at Micro Center.
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