Okay so AI is a blessing and a curse, but it's making tech way too goddamn expensive overall - so I'm going to share some insight from 11 years working at Best Buy and 20+ years being a cheap gamer and using everything I mention here to get great value for my dollar. For retail stores, don't be afraid to do open box at stores like Best Buy - especially if it's something you can power on like a laptop. For TVs, you'll probably not be able to do that because staffing has gone to hell and no one wants to take the hour they need to hit $1,2000 setting up a TV to hit $800 if they're lucky.
The absolute best general site to get tech deals that rotate is woot - it's Amazon's sorta-not-kinda clearance site, but it's got remarkable deals on computers, phones, and especially tablets.
[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.woot.com/[/URL]
I got my late housemate a Chromebook on there for $80, got 2 refurbished i7 laptops on there for $140 apiece, and got myself a refurbished M1 Macbook Air for $320 - but they're also great for grabbing a kindle for $40 or a kindle fire tablet for $25 and usually they'll have a promo code when they're clearing out the tablets to save even more money and you can hook up a kindle tablet to your PC and take away lockscreen ads and put Google Play on there within 10 minutes. They also occasionally have gaming rig deals and I bought a couple of those too and they all arrived in great shape. Woot does tend to be a bit slower shipping stuff, so you probably won't get things the next day. I just got a year of NordVPN on there for $25 - so anyone looking to take Steph's advice and maximize their Netflix subscription for WWE content or maybe check and see how well MyAEW streams Dynamite live, that's some good value there. They'll also sometimes have 10% off buying the same stuff, but doing so through their app.
They're also pretty good for shoe deals too -
[URL unfurl="true"]https://sport.woot.com/plus/brooks-running-shoes-11[/URL]
Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 2 Laptop (S&D) - $209.99 - Free shipping for Prime members https://computers.woot.com/offers/lenovo-thinkpad-t14s-gen-2-laptop-sd-0?utm_medium=share&utm_source=app
Amazon Resale - it's basically what Warehouse Deals was - but a bit better
[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.amazon.com/b?node=10158976011[/URL]
So this is a fantastic way to save money and get something quicker than woot. It's one of the best places I've found to get mini PCs at a good price point - those are essentially laptop-grade processors and horsepower, but in a tiny shell and I got a bosgame E4 for $240 on there and it's had zero issues. I use them for gaming, home theater stuff like MyAEW on the TV and they're fantastic deals.
The best storefronts for value can be Youtuber stores as well.
Lon.TV
[URL unfurl="true"]https://lontv-shop.fourthwall.com/en-usd/collections/all[/URL]
Lon Seidman does a ton of tech reviews and sells occasional stuff on there - with some good deals recently being on tablets and a few games. The best youtuber store is Madlittleshop tho.
[URL unfurl="true"]https://madpixelshop.com/[/URL]
I got into mini PCs thanks to him selling a review unit for $140 and it played AEW Fight Forever and Palworld decently and then I went and got a Ryzen 7-powered GEEKOM A5 from him for like $300 and that can run Tekken 8 and Street Fighter 6 well, and I grabbed the Ryzen 5-powered one for a work function since it came pre-loaded with a Coin Ops build full of classic games that I would of course naturally assume are all legally on there. He loads his mini PCs up with value like that, but also extra controllers or external drives - which boy howdy comes in handy now with external storage being sky high. I got four mini PCs from him and then bought one on Amazon for my aunt to use for nursing courses and I'm floored that something smaller than a router can do so much - but for gaming, he's got some great deals that naturally rotate, but right now, I'd recommend this to anyone needing a general purpose PC with some gaming too because my 2025 Ryzen 5-powered A5 can still run Street Fighter 6 and this is a bit newer. Unfortunately, drive sizes are going to be a bit smaller nowadays.
[URL unfurl="true"]https://madpixelshop.com/collections/all-inventory/products/geekom-gaming-mini-pc-a7-r5-7545u-16gb-ddr5-ram-500gb-ssd-coinops-8bitdo-controller[/URL]
IRL, keep an eye on thrift stores as they often have no real idea what they're selling and Goodwill even has a tech-centric store setup too. For some good value phone-wise, woot is occasional but Back Market is outstanding day-to-day.
[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.backmarket.com/en-us[/URL]
I got 2 samsung S22 Pluses for $140 apiece - and why do I buy 2 of everything? Better financing - I can pay the two off over 6 months and always have a spare device to work with and that was a lifesaver for my roommate's stepdad as he needed a laptop and I bought them to have as collateral for a former co-worker to help clean a destroyed room and he never got back to me, but I still had the laptops so like whatever I want to just get some use out of them and it allowed him to get classes done that he couldn't do on the chromebook I gave him.
Apple Refurbished
Apple is expensive as hell, but they do a damn good job with their build quality, so you'll get something that lasts a long time. My now 14-year old Mac Mini that I got for parts on ebay got me into MacOS, but the job search set me on needing something with MacOS now and had the timing been different, I'd have grabbed one of the 512GB Macbook Neos for $680 -
[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished/mac[/URL]
For anything other than video editing, you're in good shape and you shouldn't be buying Apple for gaming anyway outside of an Apple TV and Apple Arcade being a good value for $100-ish before the recent price hikes.
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