If you didn’t get a chance to snag a PlayStation 5 when initial pre-orders went live last week, you’ll have a chance to try and buy one tomorrow. GameStop says it will have additional PS5 stock available to pre-order on September 25th both online and in store.

We are pleased to announce that further quantities of PS5 consoles will be made available to pre-order at https://t.co/hfsGYTcy0V and in GameStop stores tomorrow, Friday 9/25. pic.twitter.com/EbRMkAe5RW

— GameStop (@GameStop) September 24, 2020

In a subsequent tweet, the retailer said it’s working on securing more Digital Edition units for people to pre-order, but tomorrow’s availability will only include the more expensive $499 model with disk drive. Neither tweet mentions when online pre-orders will go live. So we’ve reached out to the company for more information and we’ll update this story when we hear back.

Buy AirPods with wireless charging case at Amazon – $150

GameStop Nintendo Switch game sale

Nintendo

GameStop’s latest sale remains ongoing, so you can grab some first-party Nintendo Switch games for less. Some of the discounts are even better than those we saw in Nintendo’s own start of summer sale a few weeks ago. Notable titles on sale include Super Mario Bros U Deluxe for $40, Splatoon 2 for $40 and Yoshi’s Crafted World for $40.

Shop the sale at GameStop

Buy New Super Mario Bros U Deluxe at GameStop – $40

Buy Splatoon 2 at GameStop – $40

Buy Yoshi’s Crafted World at Gamestop – $40

Apple Watch Series 3

Chris Velazco / Engadget

The Apple Watch Series 3 remains at $169 at Amazon, the lowest price ever for the smartwatch. While not the newest Apple Watch, the Series 3 has most of the features you’d expect a solid wearable to have including all-day activity and exercise tracking, built-in heart rate monitor and GPS, and on-watch apps and smartphone alerts. We gave it a score of 82 when we first reviewed it thanks to all of the features previously listed as well as its solid performance and good battery life.

Buy Apple Watch Series 3 at Amazon – $169

Macbook Air

Engadget

The base model of the latest MacBook Air is still on sale for $899 at Amazon, which is $100 off its normal price (just be sure to clip the $50 coupon on the page before adding it to your cart). It has a Core i3 processor, 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, plus the much improved Magic Keyboard that replaced Apple’s butterfly mechanism recently. It’s one of the reasons why we gave the new MacBook Air a score of 87, in addition to its sharp Retina display, smooth trackpad and accurate TouchID sensor.

Buy MacBook Air at Amazon starting at $899

Amazon Echo Plus

Amazon

Amazon’s smart speaker turned home hub is down to its lowest price ever, only $80, and that includes a free Philips Hue smart light bulb. The Echo Plus normally costs $150, so this is a great deal if you’ve wanted a smart speaker that pulls double-duty as a smart home hub. Any Zigbee-compatible device, like the Hue bulb included in the bundle, can be connected directly to the Echo Plus — no other hubs required. We gave the Echo Plus a score of 86 for its much improved audio quality, more attractive design and its new stereo audio ability that let’s you connect two devices at once.

Buy Echo Plus bundle at Amazon – $80

Weber SmokeFire connected grills

Billy Steele / Engadget

Now’s a good time to upgrade your grill while Weber has its SmokeFire series on sale. You can get $200 off both fo the grills in the lineup, bringing the SmokeFire EX4 down to $799 and the SmokeFire EX6 down to $999. We originally gave these grills a score of 71 but recently bumped it up to 80 thanks to the updates Weber has made to its connected platform. Both grills now feature remote temperature adjustment and shutdown, better push notifications and more efficient handling of temperature fluctuations.

Buy SmokeFire EX4 from Weber – $799

Buy SmokeFire EX6 from Weber – $999

New deal additions

Aukey USB-C portable charger

Engadget readers can get Aukey’s 30,000mAh USB-C power bank for $42 by using the code ENGADGETY3 at checkout. That’s $18 off its normal price and the lowest price we’ve seen it. this high-capacity power bank can charge any USB device you throw at it including the newest iPhones and Android devices as well as the Nintendo Switch. It also supports Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 to power up compatible devices quickly and safely.

Buy Aukey 30,000 power bank at Amazon – $42

Amazon Echo Show 5 and Show 8

Both Amazon’s Echo Show 5 and Echo Show 8 are on sale right now — the Show 5 is down to $60 and the Show 8 is down to $90. This is a decent sale, even if they’re not the lowest ever prices we’ve seen for the two smart displays (that’s $50 and $80, respectively). We gave the Echo Show 5 a score of 85 for its sunrise alarm feature, good sound quality and its compact design that makes it a good nightstand device. The Echo Show 8 is much better as a communal device thanks to its larger display. If you plan on using it as a cooking guide for recipe instructions and videos, you should consider the deal Amazon has that includes one free year of Food Network Kitchen (which typically costs $40) when you buy the Echo Show 8.

The Echo Flex is also on sale for $17.49. This is the lowest price we’ve seen on the handy little adapter — it plugs into a wall outlet, allowing you to put Alexa in rooms that maybe don’t have room for a standalone smart speaker.

Buy Echo Show 5 at Amazon – $60

Buy Echo Show 8 at Amazon – $90

Buy Echo Flex at Amazon – $17.49

SteelSeries Arctis 1 gaming headset (PS4)

The SteelSeries Arctis 1 is one of our favorite wireless gaming headsets and now the PS4 model is on sale for $80 at Amazon. That’s $20 off its normal price and close to the lowest we’ve seen it. We like the Arctis 1 for its clear, consistent wireless connection and its detachable microphone. Also, SteelSeries makes some of the most attractive gaming headsets you can get.

Buy Arctis 1 (PS4) at Amazon – $80

Amazon Music Unlimited (3 months)

Prime members can try out Amazon Music Unlimited for free for three months with this offer. Aside from being an Amazon Prime subscriber, you also have to be new to Music Unlimited (so you can’t have paid for it or tried it out before). If you meet those requirements, you can snag this offer and try out Amazon’s Spotify competitor. It offers most of the same features as other music subscription services: unlimited music listening, an ad-free experience, unlimited offline listening and convenient voice control with Alexa. Just keep track of time — your subscription will renew at the standard $10-per-month price after the trial is up.

Get Amazon Music Unlimited (3 months)

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Buy AirPods Pro at Amazon – $228

10.2-inch iPad

Chris Velazco/Engadget

You can still snag the 10.2-inch iPad (WiFi only) for only $250 at Amazon and Best Buy. This is one of the lowest prices we’ve seen on Apple’s most affordable iPad, which normally costs $330. We gave the base iPad a score of 86 for its slightly larger display, good battery life and decent starting price (even when not on sale, it’s still a good value).

Also, the base iPad with WiFi and cellular connectivity is still on sale for $380 at Amazon. This is about $80 off its normal price of $460 and a good deal if you want an iPad that’s always connected.

Buy iPad (WiFi only) at Amazon – $250

Buy iPad (WiFi only) at Best Buy – $250

Buy iPad (WiFi + Cellular) at Amazon – $380

Dell XPS 13 touchscreen laptop

Engadget

One of our favorite laptops is still on sale at Dell — you can get a 2019 XPS 13 laptop with a 10th-gen Core i5 processor, a 13.3-inch FHD touchscreen, 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage for $833. This isn’t the lowest price we’ve seen on the XPS 13 but it’s very close to it. Keep in mind that this isn’t the 2020 model of the laptop, which has smaller bezels and a new keyboard design. Nevertheless, we still recommend the 2019 XPS 13 (it earned a score of 93 from us), especially when it’s available at a price as low as this.

Buy XPS 13 Touch at Dell – $833

Free Razer Viper mouse with Huntsman TE purchase

Razer

Today is the last day you can get a free Razer Viper mouse when you purchase a Razer Huntsman Tournament Edition gaming keyboard for $130. The Huntsman keyboard has a tenkeyless layout, double-shot PBT keycaps and Razer-made linear red optical switches, and it’s generally well-liked among PC gamers. The Viper mouse, which came out last year, is an ambidextrous wired gaming mouse that typically costs $80. This is a good opportunity to upgrade your PC gaming peripherals if you’ve been itching to do so.

Buy Huntsman TE at Best Buy – $130

HBO Max pre-order

Presley Ann/Getty Images for WarnerMedia

HBO Max’s official launch is right around the corner (May 27th) and you can still get it for a discounted monthly rate of $12. The only catch is that you need to sign up via the HBO Max website and not from any other distributor, which is easy enough. The normal monthly price is $15 so HBO is clearly trying to drum up as many subscribers as possible before launch with this promotion.

Buy HBO Max for $12 per month

New deal additions

BioLite Memorial Day sale

Now through May 25th, BioLite is having a Memorial Day sale that slashes up to 35 percent off many of its products. We’ve recommended BioLite headlamps before and this sale brings some of the deepest discounts ever to those devices — now the Headlamp 200 is $34 and the Headlamp 330 is $45. BioLite’s fire-pits and camping stove bundles are also deeply discounted as well. This is a good time to stock up on outdoor gear before summertime is in full swing.

Shop BioLite Memorial Day sale

Google Home Max

The biggest and most capable Google smart speaker, the Google Home Max, is on sale at Belk for $230 — that’s $70 off its recent going price of $300 and $170 off its price when it first debuted. In addition to being a solid home for the Google Assistant, the Home Max (which we gave a score of 88) has excellent sound quality, a tasteful design and support for connected audio devices via a 3.5mm audio jack and Bluetooth.

Buy Google Home Max at Belk – $230

Samsung T5

The 500GB model of the Samsung T5 portable SSD is on sale for $80 at Amazon and Best Buy. This is a reliable and ultra-portable SSD that can hold pretty much any digital information you need it to — photos, documents and more. It has one USB-C port but it comes with multiple cables so you can use it with USB-C and USB-A devices. While it’s not the newest version of Samsung’s portable SSD (the T7 was announced earlier this year), it’s still a good drive that you can easily take anywhere.

Buy Samsung T5 at Amazon

Buy Samsung T5 at Best Buy

CalDigit TS3 Plus

If you need a dock for your new home-office space, you can get the excellent CalDigit TS3 Plus for only $230. Normally priced at $275, this dock has all the ports you could ever need (and more) and it can connect your main laptop to up to two 4K displays. We also like its sleek, unassuming metal design and the fact that it will charge your laptop when it’s connected using up to 87W of power.

Buy TS3 Plus at Amazon – $230

GameStop might just help you put the finishing touches on your computer setup. It’s running a PC gaming sale between now and May 16th that promises deals on a slew of hardware. To start, it’s offering a $100 gift coupon if you buy any MSI laptop with a 10th-gen Intel processor inside. GameStop is also promising discounts up to 20 percent off accessories, including an ASUS ROG Swift PG279Q gaming monitor for $620 (normally $650). Its 165Hz, IPS-based 1440p screen should up to the job of handling a high-performance gaming rig.

Shop GameStop PC gaming sale

GameStop’s move is unsurprisingly simpler given the products it sells: you’re limited to conventional curbside pickup and online deliveries.

In both cases, the stores are taking better care of employes. Staff won’t have to work if they aren’t “comfortable” with coming in, and those who’ve lost their working hours will receive two weeks’ pay based on a 10-week average. GameStop is also reimbursing benefit-eligible staff with a month of the employee portion of their benefit expenses.

The retail chains don’t have much choice. Even in states that don’t have shelter-in-place orders, officials are urging the public to stay at home as much as possible and reduce the spread of the coronavirus. That’s having a chilling effect on sales in general, let alone on retail. There’s also a question of public perception. GameStop in particular has been accused of knowingly putting employees’ lives at risk by remaining open, to the point where it was prepared to defy law enforcement. If they didn’t close their stores to walk-ins, they risked alienating many of their would-be customers.

We’ve asked GameStop for comment.

The retailer had maintained that it was an “essential business” as it improved the quality of life for people working from home. It reportedly went so far as to instruct stores on how to respond if police attempted to enforce closures. The company has effectively been setting up a confrontation with the law, not to mention employees who may refuse to put their health at risk just to sell consoles and games.

It’s not certain just why GameStop would insist on remaining open when companies selling more vital products have remained open. However, it’s well-known that GameStop is already in deep financial trouble. Mandatory closures could exacerbate those problems and leave the store chain with poorer chances of recovery.

In a memo the company sent, it explained that it believes it’s an essential business since the products it carries “enable and enhance [its] customers’ experience in working from home.” The memo even includes instructions on what to do in case law enforcement officers attempt to enforce closure. It told store managers to hand officers a flyer with a number for GameStop’s corporate office. The flyer reads:

“Thank you for what you are doing to keep us all safe. If you have questions about our store’s hours, operations or policies could I ask you to please call our corporate office:

GameStop Corporate Office
844-993-3145

Thank you for understanding.”

Whether the tactic will actually work — and whether employees will actually comply and defy authorities for their employer — remains to be seen. GameStop released Doom Eternal a day early as a safety precaution, seeing as it was supposed to be released on the same day as Animal Crossing: New Horizons. However, Kotaku says employees are worried, because it’s taken “little to no measures” to prevent further outbreak.

The recently retired exec justified the move by contending that the industry needed a “healthy and vibrant” GameStop.

The new positions come as part of a larger shakeup of GameStop’s board. Four directors are retiring in June of this year, while two more will leave in June 2021. The median tenure for someone on the board will be just one year versus eight from before. Much of the old guard won’t be there, in other words. GameStop also wants the average tenure for an independent director to be less than 10 years, while the committee members will ideally rotate every five years.

Fils-Aimé certainly has experience with video game success at retail. While the Wii U floundered in the market, there’s little doubt that Fils-Aimé helped fuel excitement for other hardware, including the runaway success of the Wii. He arguably helped drive the success of many games during his Nintendo stint, too. He has a deep understanding of what makes game sales tick. This could theoretically influence GameStop’s strategy going forward, especially with the PS5 and Xbox Series X on the horizon.

However, it’s not certain that his influence will be enough. Whatever GameStop’s problems are with executing on its strategy, it’s facing the much larger challenge of an industry that’s moving away from physical game sales. As adept as Fils-Aimé was at Nintendo, he’s not about to get people buying discs and cartridges again — any success may come by changing GameStop’s core strategy rather than refining it.

The company’s balance sheet has not looked healthy in recent times — its second quarter global sales decreased 14.3 percent, marking an adjusted net loss of $32 million. As such, GameStop CFO James Bell announced that up to 200 “underperforming” stores will be closed between now and the end of the year. In the company’s recent earnings call, Bell added that, “While these closures were more opportunistic, we are applying a more definitive, analytic approach, including profit levels and sales transferability, that we expect will yield a much larger tranche of closures over the coming 12 to 24 months.”

Despite these closures — and efforts to revamp the better-performing stores — it’s unlikely that GameStop’s fortunes will change any time soon, thanks largely to the end of the current console generation and subsequent weaker title launches. As a result, Bell said, the company expects its year-over-year sales to be down for the next three to four quarters.