The cost of QD-OLED gaming monitors is going down, even as many other PC components are still soaring above their normal prices. If your budget is locked at $300, Samsung’s 27-inch 1440p model costs exactly that much thanks to a recent $50 discount at Amazon. Finding a good QD-OLED monitor under $500 these days is pretty easy, but under $300 is pretty rare. Its G50SF debuted at $499.99, but has spent the past six months bouncing back and forth between $350 and $450.

Samsung 27-inch G50SF QD-OLED

Where to Buy:

• $499.99 $299.99 at Amazon

Despite being cheaper than Alienware’s awesome $350 AW2726DM and some competitors, the Samsung G50SF doesn’t make a ton of compromises. It has a thin design, variable refresh rate support, and the same fast .03-millisecond response time we expect from these panels. It has a DisplayPort port plus HDMI 2.0 and a headphone jack (most competing monitors have two HDMI ports). Unless you’re keen on getting a monitor that has a 240Hz or faster refresh rate, you may not mind that this one tops out at 180Hz (via DisplayPort), or 144Hz via HDMI.

Some other Verge-approved deals

• Maybe you knew that Best Buy’s in-house Insignia brand has its own AirTag-like Bluetooth trackers, maybe you didn’t. I recently found out, and they’re surprisingly affordable; You can get a four-pack of its Apple Find My-compatible trackers for $19.99 ($10 off). It’s a nice price if you just want some low-cost trackers with lanyard hooks to attach to luggage before a trip. The tracker’s coin battery can be replaced, and its 65-decibel alarm can help you find lost items nearby. Insignia advertises up to a 164-foot Bluetooth range outdoors (or 65 feet indoors), but connecting them with Find My will let you track them from greater distances.
• Sony is hosting a summer sale on physical PlayStation 5 games, and it includes fairly new and notable releases like Saros ($49.99, $20 off), Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 ($29.99, $40 off), and Death Stranding 2: On The Beach ($39.88, $30 off), plus several other great games worth considering. The sale is happening at Amazon, Best Buy, and GameStop. These are some of the biggest discounts we’ve seen on physical titles, and digital versions on the PlayStation Store are matching these prices.
• Those who work all day at a computer might be familiar with having sore wrists, particularly from using a mouse. A vertical mouse might help, and you can get one of the better wireless models out there — Logitech’s MX Vertical — for $46.80 at Woot with the code LOGITECH22 used at checkout (usually $77 elsewhere). The mouse recharges via USB-C and can last for months with a single charge, according to my colleague Victoria Song, who loves hers. It can connect to devices with its included 2.4GHz receiver, or Bluetooth.

Subscribing to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate on a recurring basis has been tough to justify recently, even after Microsoft reduced the monthly cost from $29.99 to $22.99. But you can get a better deal on a three-month subscription (valued at $69) by grabbing a digital code at Eneba that costs $39.01 at the time of publication.

Game Pass Ultimate grants you access to the full Game Pass library on Xbox (compared to a more limited slice with Premium), including first-party titles and online multiplayer access. The subscription also gives PC gamers access to Microsoft’s catalog of Game Pass games through the Xbox app, though the selection differs a bit between console and desktop.

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate

Where to Buy:

• $69 $39.01 at Eneba

You don’t need me to tell you why deals like these are nice. The costs of subscriptions generally only go in one direction over time, and it is becoming more rare to find worthwhile discounts that give you a break. If you want to jump into Halo: Campaign Evolved when it launches July 28th on Xbox and PC, all you need is this subscription instead of buying the $49.99 re-remake.

New gaming gear is always promising to shave milliseconds off latency or response time. The improvements usually aren’t obvious. But the Glorious GHS InfinitePlay wireless headset, on the other hand, could save you far more than just milliseconds: It has the fastest hot-swap battery system I’ve ever used, and the headset doesn’t die when you swap out its battery either. 

Glorious improves on the formula popularized by SteelSeries, which made swappable, rechargeable batteries a feature worth caring about in a high-end headset. Its new $229.99 headset has zero audio downtime while swapping batteries because it has a fallback battery that can run up to three hours. This is a big upgrade over competing headsets, like the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Omni and the Turtle Beach Stealth Pro 2, which disconnect the moment their batteries are removed for swapping.

Glorious GHS InfinitePlay headset

Where to Buy:

• $229.99 at Amazon
• $229.99 at Best Buy
• $229.99 at Glorious

The InfinitePlay’s battery-swapping system is faster and more foolproof, too. Its batteries insert into the right earpiece’s open slot like a cartridge, and you can’t install them incorrectly, so long as their grippy edge faces down. It’s easy to slot it in without breaking eye contact from my screen, and the audio never stops. Removing and inserting the batteries is fun, too — though battery life is long enough that I rarely had to swap them during my monthlong testing period. 

Almost every aspect of using the InfinitePlay is satisfying. The notched metal knobs facing toward the back of each ear cup make it simple to adjust volume and game/chat mix, or pick up phone calls and pause music when connected to my phone via Bluetooth. I’ve been using the headset mostly with a PC, where the battery-charging base station always has a full battery ready for use. But I can yank out its USB-C 2.4GHz transmitter when I want to play on my PlayStation 5 or the Steam Deck.

Sound quality is better than I expected from a company that’s fairly new to the audio space. Its bass, clarity, and soundstage yield a pleasant listening experience. You can get better audio quality at this price point if that’s your priority (the Fractal Scape is a good alternative). But Glorious nails a lot of the basics. The headset’s near-180-degree rotating ear cups don’t pinch my head, even with glasses on, and its bungee-style headband and adjustable side arms should let most people find a comfortable fit.

The InfinitePlay doesn’t have everything going for it. There’s no active noise cancellation, nor does it ship with a nice hard case, and its built-in mic sounds pretty lousy (use its detachable boom mic when at all possible). There’s a companion app that’s serviceable, but I wish there was a browser-based app to make it simpler to adjust settings. There are pricier headsets that do a better job at ticking more boxes. But if you’re looking for something that’s good and just won’t die, this $230 headset embarrasses pricier options with its no-look, no-downtime swapping process.

Photography by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge

You probably know the signature PlayStation boot sound. Did you know that it’s technically a multi-part chime? There’s the synthy section where “Sony Computer Entertainment” shows onscreen with a white background. You only get to the next screen with the echo-y chimes and the color-filled PlayStation logo if your console recognizes the disc. How badly I wanted my sorta-broken console to get to that second screen.

My console’s disc spindle came apart pretty early into me owning it. As an eight-year-old kid, fixing the spindle was the riskiest undertaking of my life yet. The internet wasn’t really a haven for how-tos yet, so I superglued that thing, and it worked, sort of. But the spindle is supposed to be flexible to let the disc on and off (it had a rubber ring with small ball bearings in there, too — the mechanisms were blowing my mind at the time). So, pieces came off regularly, and I would just glue them back on and keep gaming.

The wait for the second part of the boot chime to activate on my console was agonizing. It would sometimes take close to 10 seconds, or not happen at all. The upside is that it my gaming time more precious, and it made Hallmark’s new Keepsake ornament of the console hit harder than I expected it to.

The company’s running series of console replicas is great, and its previous one was the Xbox 360 replica last year. It’s cool to see one made for a console with an even bigger legacy (one that’s not tainted by a widespread hardware issue). The PlayStation changed my relationship with gaming, as well as my relationship with tech.

The ornament celebrates the pre-DualShock version of the console. There are a lot of lovely details, like the ridged sides, the power plug, and the A/V port that Sony stuck with through the PlayStation 3. The controller is glued to the disc lid of the console, and its flexible cable is partially glued to its side. Upon pressing the power button, a green LED lights up, and the PlayStation chime plays in full — both parts. There are a few little imperfections that I noticed on my unit out of the box, and the power button’s font is a little crooked, but nothing that’s easy to notice at a couple feet away.

$28.99 for the ornament will either seem a bit steep, or totally acceptable, depending on how nostalgia-addled you are for this era of gaming. I’ve always been the kind of gamer who likes what I like without having to be loud about it. The ornament, like Hallmark’s other Keepsake models, is elegant and not too flashy. It’s just a PlayStation that can chill in a tree come time for the holidays. It’s also a fun memento that represents a great console that I played to pieces that I can display whenever and wherever I want.

Hallmark Keepsakes – PlayStation

Where to Buy:

• $28.99 at Amazon
• $28.99 at Hallmark

Discounts on the Nintendo Switch 2 are rare, but they do happen on occasion. There’s one happening now, actually, on the company’s $499.99 console bundle that includes a digital game (Mario Kart World, Donkey Kong Bananza, or Pokémon Pokopia). Usually, the bundle saves you $20 or $30, depending on the game you choose, but for $449.99 at Amazon (discount reflected at checkout), Nintendo is effectively giving you a game for free.

Nintendo Switch 2 “Choose Your Game” bundle

Where to Buy:

• $529.99 $449.99 at Amazon

If you’re considering grabbing a Switch 2, I highly recommend doing so now. The biggest motivator (aside from its great selection of new games and near-complete compatibility with original Switch games) is that the console will get a price hike in September, going from $449.99 to $499.99. Also, it’s not clear if it will continue to include a discounted game with purchase at that point. So, you’re getting more value at $449.99 here than ever before.

Almost all gaming laptops have gone up in price over the past year. Curiously, the surprisingly fast Asus ROG Flow Z13 gaming laptop/tablet combo has not. It’s actually gotten quite a bit cheaper recently. Best Buy has the lowest price on the configuration that includes the AMD Ryzen AI Max Plus 395 “Strix Halo” chipset, a whopping 64GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. Originally $2,999.99, it’s down to $2,099.99. Amazon has a version with half the RAM selling for $100 less, but the 64GB model is, obviously, a far better deal.

Asus ROG Flow Z13 (2025)

Asus’ latest gaming tablet opts for integrated graphics over a discrete GPU. That sounds like a downgrade, but its AMD Strix Halo APU gives it solid battery life and graphics performance on par with RTX 4060 laptops. Read our review.

Where to Buy:

• $2299.99 $1999.99 at Amazon (AMD Ryzen AI Max Plus 395 + 32GB)
• $2999.99 $2099.99 at Best Buy (AMD Ryzen AI Max Plus 395 + 64GB)

The Flow Z13 isn’t for those who want 100-plus frames per second in every game running at the 13.4-inch tablet’s 1600p native resolution. Though, that’s not to say it doesn’t have chops. In Antonio’s review, he saw an average of 50 to 60 frames per second in even graphically-intensive games with low to medium settings. It can run Elden Ring’s high settings at around 50 frames per second at native resolution. Games that support FSR 3 and frame generation can go even higher. In a world where the Steam Deck OLED is a few hundred shy of $1,000, the portable (yet more powerful), stand-equipped Flow Z13 is a compelling alternative.

The novelty of the first Flow Z13 in 2022 was that it looked like a Surface tablet but could actually play games. The 2025 model looped into this deal actually delivers the gaming performance we were hoping for with the debut. Beyond gaming, its “Strix Halo” processor delivers incredible performance and battery life regardless of the task. While it can’t stack up to bulkier, pricier 16-inch gaming laptops like the Razer Blade 16 or Asus’ own Zephyrus G16 in GPU-focused tasks, it comes shockingly close considering its thin, take-anywhere form factor.

Some other great Verge-approved deals

• Nintendo’s Switch 2 USB-C camera is a tough sell at its regular $54.99 price because its video quality isn’t great, and there just aren’t that many Switch 2 games that take unique advantage of it (and the pay-to-access GameChat feature hasn’t really taken off for most people). However, the accessory is much easier to justify buying for just $9.99 at GameStop. While it hasn’t been difficult to find affordable webcams compatible with the Switch 2 since its mid-2025 launch, Nintendo’s own model is nevertheless tempting because of its sleek stand, adjustable design, and physical privacy shutter.
• Despite the unreasonably high costs associated with building PCs, I choose to believe that there are still some of you out there that are venturing to go down that path. No shade at all if you choose to build a cheaper DDR4-based system. There’s actually a good deal happening on the “new” AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D processor. The company re-released the 10-year-old processor in late June for $349, and it’s among the best models you can slide into a DDR4 / AM4 socket motherboard. Newegg is including a free MSI MAG Core 240mm liquid cooler (a $70 value) with the CPU to keep it cool. It’s one less component you have to worry about shelling out for.
• One of my favorite cables ever is $15.99 at Amazon. The Anker 2-in-1 USB-C cable is a frequent star in our deals coverage, reappearing once every couple months. The price doesn’t wiggle much (it spent a few weeks costing $19.99), but I enjoy shouting about it whenever I get the chance. The braided six-foot cable can support up to 140W passthrough if you connect your gadget to a charger that supports the speed. Although, the main attraction is being able to charge two devices at once. The cable can divide the power coming from your charger as needed, giving more to a product that’s more demanding of power.