Avoid Cyber Monday FOMO without emptying your bank account or risking divorce with one of these top sub-£50 deals. We’ve checked out price histories, WIRED's own product recommendations and scoured multiple retailers to find these modestly priced picks. If something sells out or goes back to full price, we’ll cross it out. Check back over the weekend as we will add more fresh discounts, including those for Cyber Monday, and have a look at our main edit of the best Cyber Monday deals too.
It’s Black Friday 2023. Check out the WIRED team’s picks for the best Black Friday deals in the UK here.
With peak read/write speeds of up to 3500MB/s, the performance of these low-cost SSDs is staggering for those who remember running Windows off a spinning platter hard drive. This is a QLC NAND SSD, which is typical for a budget drive. It limits performance and lifespan a bit, but this drive is ideal as a secondary drive you’ll use for data storage and game installs.
White Ambiance Philips Hue bulbs may lack the pizazz of the multi-colour versions but they’re cheaper and offer the kind of light we want 95% of the time. You can choose the colour temperature of the white light – cool in the morning, warm in the evening, tends to work well. These bulbs typically cost £35 each, so It’s a bit like a BOGOF deal, and then some. If you’re willing to wait a while, you can actually get the two bulbs plus an Echo Dot for less money (£27) somehow. But they may not arrive until 2023.
Deals like this reassert how keen Amazon is to get Alexa into our homes. For just £35 you get a smart speaker, a tablet-like display and a video chat camera in the one device. The screen can also be used to watch movies and TV shows from services like Amazon Prime Video and Netflix, not just to show visual information following any questions you might ask Alexa.
Get in on the January rejuvenation vibes early with one of the original viral blenders, used by millions to make “healthy” smoothies. It may look on the small side in promo images, but the top part has a capacity of 680ml, more than you need when making a personal morning smoothie. This is one of Nutribullet’s mid-range models, with a 600W motor. The “starter kit” here doesn’t actually include more than you’d expect to see in a blender, but it does sell direct from Nutribullet at the claimed £60 right now.
When shopping for a reasonably affordable power bank, you can get very high capacity, no problem. The 20,000mAh offered by this PowerCore model should be enough for up to two tablet charges, up to four phone charges. Limits are more to do with the power delivery. This one can head up to a decent 20W, which is ideal for most mobile devices, but a bit low for laptop use. Good discounts have been available for this one a few times, but this is the lowest we’ve seen it sold on Amazon to date.
This is one of Oral-B’s simplest brushes. While the pricey Bluetooth connected ones that create a machine learning generated map of how you clean your teeth are alluring, this one is going to offer just as good a clean if you use solid technique. It includes a free tube of toothpaste, a cheaper pack-in than an extra brush head. But we’re dealing in budget buys today, folks. You may want to step up to the Oral-B Pro 3 at £39 for its longer-lasting lithium-ion battery. But it’s barely selling at a discount despite Amazon’s claims.
Huawei has dropped off some people’s radars but it still makes great little budget fitness trackers. For less than the cost of the Fitbit Inspire 2, you get a much better display, double the battery life and an always-on display mode. It doesn’t have GPS, but can use your phone’s GPS to collect reliable distance data.
This portable charger doubles as an iPhone stand, and it uses wireless tech to avoid cables during use. In Apple style, magnetic rings keep your phone in place, and it houses a 5,000mAh battery. However, as it doesn’t use legit MagSafe tech the charging speed is limited to 7.5W.
If you’re looking for a mouse that’ll take up a teeny amount of room in your bag but will work like a dream when you need it, the MX Anywhere is a great pick. Logitech’s mini mouse offers multi-device connectivity via Bluetooth, as well as the option of a super stable connection through a 2.4GHz dongle.
Small speakers don’t have to sound small, as this coat pocket-friendly unit from JBL proves. Its battery lasts up to five hours and we were genuinely surprised by the audio it produces, despite having tested the things for years.
This is one of the best alternatives to an Amazon Fire TV stick. It’s a good fit if you’re not that interested in the large array of extra apps and games available via Amazon’s sticks. However, it maxes out at Full HD resolution, not 4K. Look at the Roku Express 4K (£30) for that upgrade.
A smart home camera need not cost a fortune. The Blink Mini offers all the basics for the cost of a few drinks on a night out. It has 1080p recording, night vision and two-way audio, letting you use the camera a bit like a walkie-talkie. Blink is an Amazon company, so it means you’re handing even more data over to Amazon. But it won’t half work well with your Echo devices.
Here’s one of the most practical buys of Cyber Monday for gadget fans: a cheap, high capacity, fast microSD card. Class U3 speeds mean it’s roughly a match for SanDisk’s Extreme series. And for this kind of money you’ll only get 128GB from SanDisk. Despite lacking a Nintendo character on the front, it’ll work perfectly with a Nintendo Switch, or a Steam Deck. Higher and lower capacities are on sale too, but 256GB might just be the sweet spot.
Anker has turned “cheap” into an art form. It makes the budget power banks people trust, and did a remarkably good job upon moving into headphones. The Anker Soundcore Life Q20 are a cheap alternative to something like the Sony WH-1000XM5. They have active noise cancellation, 40-hour battery life and perfectly decent sound. They typically cost £50.
This highly-rated mechanical keyboard is made for gamers, but the substantial feel of its mechanical keys should appeal to long-form typists too. It’s not going to look too out of place on a stylish desk either, as this HyperX model cuts out all extraneous keys to make its footprint as small as possible. The “60” in the name refers to it being 60% the size of a standard keyboard. Other highlights include per-key RGB backlighting and an aluminium frame for superior rigidity. It’s a true deal as well, currently selling at by far its lowest Amazon price to date.
Perfect Christmas present fodder for the gamer who keeps on blasting out the sound too loud, the HyperX CloudX is one of the better-reviewed budget gaming headsets. It’s a wired headset made for Xbox Series X and Series S, and includes a removable boom mic. There’s also an adapter included for use with a PC.
Still working from home a lot? This webcam will upgrade the picture quality of those remote meetings, with maximum resolution of above Full HD, and likely a much higher quality camera sensor than is in your laptop. It can perch on top of your monitor using its baked-in stand. And £44 is the lowest we’ve seen this webcam on Amazon to date.
The Fitbit Inspire 2 was Fitbit’s light and easy passive fitness tracker for 2020. It has recently been superseded by the colour-screen Inspire 3, but this one is still a current model. It’s best suited to people who want to check their step count each day, perhaps keep an eye on their resting heart rate. However, there are also proper exercise modes, and outdoors ones will take your phone’s GPS signal to create maps of your runs and walks. It’s a simple tracker, but finally competitive price-wise thanks to this Cyber Monday deal.
Boosting your laptop’s RAM is an easy upgrade—if your laptop allows the switch—allowing for more demanding web browsing, multi-tasking, and more. If you’re on 4-GB or 8-GB RAM, you’ll really feel the difference with this upgrade kit from Crucial. You’ll find decent 3200MHz speeds here too.
While this shaver has barely spent any time selling close to its £150 stated price, £50 is still an all-time-low for this no-nonsense Philips shaver. It has three “5D” heads for a smoother glide across your face, plus a classic flip-out trimmer. This gold version of the shaver also includes a charging stand.
This year’s Cyber Monday sub-£50 external SSD deal of the day comes from Netac. The 250GB and 500GB versions are both worth a look but you get more bang per buck with the higher capacity one, as usual. It has a sturdy aluminium enclosure, and the 3cm width tells us it uses an NVMe drive, not an old SATA one. The USB interface limits speeds to 500MB/s, but it’s still a far faster way to ferry around files than a memory card.
A bunch of Razer Kraken headsets are on sale this Cyber Monday. The best buy of the lot is the black “standard” Kraken, also known as the V3. It’s a no-nonsense full-size headset with cross-console compatibility. PC, Switch, Xbox, PlayStation — all will work with the lot thanks to its relatively simple design. The boom mic retracts back into the body, rather than detaching altogether. However, despite the grille on the outside this is a closed back headset so you could use the Kraken as a set of portable headphones.
Ever fancied a pink toothbrush? If you haven’t then that is the only drawback to access the discount on this decent deal on a Philips device. This Sonicare comes with a handy travel case, easy head replacement, and up to 2-weeks of battery life. If pink is a no no, you’ll have to spend a tad more this Cyber Monday.
Not all routers have to look like tentacled beasts to improve upon the Wi-Fi you may have gotten bundled in with your internet service provider package. This Linksys router is simple, under £30, and offers dual-band Wi-Fi. It’ll cover up to 1,200 sq.ft and caters for up to 12 devices—so, think more flat than a family home.
Boosting your laptop’s RAM is an easy upgrade—if your laptop allows the switch—allowing for more demanding web browsing, multi-tasking, and more. If you’re on 4-GB or 8-GB RAM, you’ll really feel the difference with this upgrade kit from Crucial. You’ll find decent 3200MHz speeds here too.
Sometimes Amazon’s deals seem borderline ridiculous. £42 for a perfectly decent 8-inch tablet that will keep the kids entertained and avoid arguments when you can’t agree about what to watch on TV? Great. The 800p resolution screen won’t challenge an iPad for sharpness and charging takes a healthy five hours, but at under half price this is one of the top deals of the day.
£20 off the best Google smart stick is a deal that is surprisingly rare, considering how often Amazon’s Fire TV Stick rivals yo-yo up and down in price. It gives your TV a fresh new smart interface, adds Chromecast support and includes a remote. If you have a 4K TV we recommend this model over the HD only Chromecast, available for £24.
Spend money to save money with a multi-pack of smart plugs. They let you disconnect devices from power over Google Home or Amazon Alexa, or using the companion app. Handy if you have gadgets that still suck juice on standby, or want to add a schedule to dumb devices like fans or dehumidifiers. Only around £5 off, but still a deal.
Logitech’s G Pro range offers some of the best mice and keyboards we’ve tried recently. The G Pro mouse is a certified deal at £50, and while it has spent the entire year near or below £90 rather than at RRP, this is its lowest price to date. It has a rechargeable battery that last up to 60 hours and uses a USB dongle rather than Bluetooth. This is a good approach for low latency, but not ideal if, for whatever reason, you want to connect a mouse to your phone.
When did SSDs get this cheap? 7p a gigabyte is closer to the costs we’re used to in old spinning platter hard drives. This drive typically sells for around £25-27. And while not as well-known as SanDisk, Kingston is a veteran of storage. Bear in mind this is a 2.5-inch SATA SSD designed for internal use. However, you can use it as an external drive with an 2.5-inch enclosure or SATA to USB adapter cable.
A classic meat and potatoes deal — a godsend if you need one, not interesting at all if you don’t. Microsoft’s gamepads typically cost £55, and unlike many Cyber Monday deals they do tend to sell at their original price much of the time. Right now the white, black, red and blue gamepads are all available for £35 from Amazon and direct from Microsoft, which also has the Electric Volt yellow version in stock.
It’s not just Xbox fans that get a look in. The PlayStation 5’s DualSense controller is available at £20 off too. Amazon was offering the gamepad, but at the time of writing has run out of stock, so the link above will take you to Very. White, black, red and hot pink gamepads are all on sale for £40.
Amazon makes two versions of the current Echo Dot. There’s one with a clock display behind the speaker grille and this one, which leaves that part out. Sound quality is the most notable change in this generation. The speaker was poor in early Dots, because the aim was always to offer smart assistant access on a super-tight budget. But this version can actually make music sound pretty good. An excellent deal at half-off.
Stock up for Christmas with an absolutely giant bottle of moderate quality, high-alcohol-content booze. Southern Comfort is a whiskey-based liqueur, a category it slips into thanks to the spice and fruit flavours added in its production. This bottle has spend much of the last decade selling for upwards of £44 at Amazon, making this a certified deal.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
