Black Friday TV deals for 2024: Save on sets from LG, Samsung, Sony and more

Black Friday is technically a week away, but many of the TV deals we expect to see on the day itself are already available. If you’re looking to buy a new set, we’ve scoured through reviews and checked price histories to find the Black Friday TV deals that are genuinely worth your attention. Right now, those include budget models and high-end OLEDs from the likes of Samsung, LG, Hisense, Sony and TCL. If you're already happy with your TV, we've also included a few deals on streaming devices from Amazon and Roku. While more than a few of these discounts have been available for a couple of weeks, most are still the lowest prices we’ve tracked. We’ll continue to update this post as prices change and new discounts pop up over the next week.

  • Hisense U6N QLED TV (55”) for $348 at Amazon ($200 off MSRP): Reviews around the web have praised the U6N as one of the year’s best budget-level TVs. It’s one of the few options in its price range with mini-LED backlighting, quantum dots and full-array local dimming, all of which help it deliver better contrast and richer colors than most of its direct rivals. Its picture will wash out if you don’t view it straight-on, and its 60Hz refresh rate isn’t the best for gaming, but it’s a good bargain all the same. While this deal has been live for most of November, it’s still an all-time low. Also at Best Buy. Other sizes are similarly discounted.

  • Hisense U7N QLED TV (65”) for $698 at Amazon ($300 off): The U7N is a standout LED TV for those who don’t want to pay for a high-end set but can still go above the budget tier. It delivers higher brightness levels and better contrast than the cheaper Hisense U6N, plus it can play at 144Hz in 4K, so it can get more out of a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X. Its viewing angles still aren’t ideal, though, and it’s limited to two gaming-friendly HDMI 2.1 ports. This is another deal we’ve seen for the last few weeks, but it’s the lowest price to date for the 65-inch version. If you'd prefer something smaller, the 55-inch model has dropped to a new low of $478. Also at Best Buy

  • Hisense U8N QLED TV (65”) for $898 at Amazon ($602 off): The U8N is another well-reviewed 2024 TV from Hisense. Like the lower-cost Hisense U7N, it offers mini-LED backlighting, quantum-dot color and 4K/144Hz support, plus it runs on the handy Google TV platform. The extra cash nets you a punchier image, with superb contrast for a non-OLED TV and higher brightness across the board. This deal ties an all-time low. Also at Best Buy. Other sizes are discounted as well, but note that the 55-inch version isn’t as bright as the larger variants, while the 75-inch set has slightly worse contrast. Viewing angles aren’t super wide either way.

  • LG B4 OLED TV (48”) for $600 at Best Buy ($200 off): The B4 is LG’s entry-level OLED TV for 2024. It gets you the essential perks of any good OLED set — excellent contrast with deep black tones, wide viewing angles, fast motion, etc. — but it’s not as bright as higher-tier models, so it’s best kept in a darker room. That said, this is a stellar value if price is a concern and you don’t mind a smaller panel. This discount marks an all-time low. The 55-inch version is also on sale for a low of $998, a price we've seen a few times before, while the 65-inch model has hit a new low of $1,198.

Samsung The Frame
The Samsung Frame TV.
Amy Skorheim
  • Samsung S90D QD-OLED TV (65”) for $1,398 at Amazon ($800 off): The Samsung S90D is a premium set that’s notable for its QD-OLED panel, which mixes the benefits of a good OLED display with a layer of quantum dots. This helps it put out a wider gamut of more vibrant colors, so images tend to “pop” more than they would on more traditional OLED TVs like the LG B4 or C4. It also has four HDMI 2.1 ports. Like all Samsung TVs, though, it doesn’t support the popular Dolby Vision HDR format. This discount matches the best price we've seen for the 65-inch model outside of special in-store and one-off coupon deals. The set has typically cost $200 more over the past month. Other sizes are similarly discounted, but be aware that only the 55-, 65- and 75-inch versions use the superior QD-OLED tech. Also at Samsung, B&H and Best Buy.

  • Samsung S95D QD-OLED TV (55”) for $1,898 at Amazon ($500 off): The S95D is Samsung’s flagship set for 2024. Its QD-OLED panel is excellent but mainly stands out for having a matte finish, which makes it noticeably more effective at fending off glare than most OLED TVs. That said, there’s no Dolby Vision, and the matte coating can make black tones look closer to gray under direct light. In general, it’s more TV than most people need. But if you’ve got cash to burn, this deal is another all-time low. Also at Samsung and Best Buy, with other sizes on sale.

  • Samsung QN90D QLED TV (43”) for $898 at Amazon ($400 off): The Samsung QN90D is another high-end LED TV for those willing to trade the deep contrast and wide viewing angles of a good OLED set for higher brightness. There’s still no Dolby Vision, and most reviewers we trust suggest that the Hisense U8N is a better value. This set comes with two more HDMI 2.1 ports, though, plus it comes in a wider range of sizes, all of which offer similar performance. This is the lowest price we’ve seen for the 43-inch model, though again, the deal has been available for a few weeks. Other sizes are also discounted. Also at Samsung, B&H and others.

  • Samsung The Frame TV (2024) QLED TV (55”) for $878 at Woot ($620 off): The Frame TV lags behind other sets in its price range in terms of picture quality, as it lacks local dimming to boost contrast. Instead, you’d buy it for its style, since it’s built to resemble a framed piece of wall art and you can use it to display actual artwork on-screen. Beyond that, this is one of the few TVs with a matte finish, which helps it ward off glare in bright rooms. This deal at Amazon subsidiary Woot is a new low. Other sizes are on sale, but note that the 43- and 50-inch models have a lower 60Hz refresh rate (instead of 120Hz) and lack variable refresh rate tech. Also available for $20 more at Amazon, Best Buy and Samsung.

The Sony Bravia 7 QLED TV set up in a living room.
The Sony Bravia 7.
Sony
  • TCL Q550F QLED TV (55”) for $250 at Best Buy ($200 off): The TCL Q5 is a relatively basic LED TV with no local dimming or HDMI 2.1 ports and a 60Hz refresh rate. This model also uses Amazon’s Fire OS software, which isn’t quite as clean as other platforms. Most people should get the better-looking Hisense U6N instead. But if you really want to save an extra $100 or just need a cheap TV for a back room, it should do the job. This discount for the 55-inch model is the best we’ve tracked.

  • TCL Q68 QLED TV (55”) for $300 at Woot ($200 off): The Q68 is another cheapo LED TV that broadly falls short of the Hisense U6N’s picture quality, though it should offer better contrast than the TCL Q5 thanks to its local dimming feature. Like the Q5 and U6N, it can also play at a 120Hz refresh rate if you drop the resolution to 1080p or 1440p, which is nice for gaming. If you don’t want to spend any more than $300 for a 55-inch set, this is the lowest price we’ve found for this particular model.

  • TCL QM8 QLED TV (65”) for $1,000 at Amazon ($500 off): If the Hisense U8N becomes unavailable, the TCL QM8 looks to be a decent alternative. It can get even brighter, according to reviewers we trust, but it has slightly worse contrast. We’ve seen this discount a few times in recent months, but it ties the all-time low for the 65-inch variant. Also at Best Buy.

  • Sony Bravia 7 QLED TV (55”) for $1,298 at Amazon ($402 off): The Bravia 7 is a relatively premium set with mini-LED backlighting to improve contrast and quantum dots to boost colors. Reviews suggest that it provides accurate colors out of the box and does well to preserve details in lower-resolution content, so it’s worth considering over the Hisense U8N if those are chief concerns. It only has two HDMI 2.1 ports, however, and it’s another LED TV with mediocre viewing angles. Most people will be happier with an OLED TV at this price, though this deal is an all-time low. Also at Walmart and B&H, with other sizes similarly discounted.

The Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max rests on a brown wooden tabletop next to its included remote.
The Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max is on sale for Black Friday.
Photo by Jeff Dunn / Engadget
  • Roku Streaming Stick 4K for $29 at Amazon ($21 off): A pick from our guide to the best streaming devices, the Roku Streaming Stick 4K gets you snappy performance, Apple AirPlay support, and a dead-simple interface that makes it easy to access free shows and movies. It works with the necessary HDR formats and apps as well (Twitch aside), though its search function isn’t as in-depth as some of its peers, and the UI looks fairly bland. This deal is $4 more than the best price we’ve tracked but still $11 off the stick’s average going rate in recent months. Also at Target, B&H, Best Buy and others.

  • Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max for $33 at Amazon ($27 off): This is a new low for Amazon’s top-end streaming stick, which runs fast and supports all the major streaming apps and HDR formats. We’ve found it to be surprisingly flexible as a gaming device, too, though you’ll have to put up with an ad-heavy interface that promotes Prime Video and other Amazon services above everything else. Also at Target, Best Buy and others.

  • Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K for $22 at Amazon ($28 off): The standard Fire TV Stick 4K offers the same core experience as the pricier 4K Max — for better or worse — but comes with a slightly slower processor, half as much storage (8GB) and Wi-Fi 6 instead of the technically-faster Wi-Fi 6E. Still, this is a decent value if you just want a competent 4K streamer for as little as possible. This deal is another all-time low. Also at Target, Best Buy and others.

  • Roku Ultra (2024) for $80 at Amazon ($20 off): The Roku Ultra is overkill for most people, but it might be worthwhile if you like Roku’s simpler UI and need a full-on set-top box with built-in Ethernet and USB ports. Unlike the Roku Streaming Stick 4K, it comes bundled with a rechargeable remote that supports voice controls, a lost remote finder tool and backlit buttons. (You can buy that separately, though.) This latest model also has a faster processor and Wi-Fi 6 support. This discount ties the lowest price we’ve tracked. Also at Roku, B&H and others.

Check out all of the latest Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals here.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/black-friday-tv-deals-for-2024-save-on-sets-from-lg-samsung-sony-and-more-161445522.html?src=rss

Samsung Black Friday 2024 deals: Save up to $350 on Galaxy S24 smartphones

Black Friday deals have arrived for Samsung smartphones, and now you can get a few of our favorites for a few hundred dollars less than usual. The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is currently down to $950 from $1,300. The Ultra came out in early 2024 and quickly became our choice for best premium Android phone. It scored an 89 in our review thanks to features like its long battery life — we often had over 50 percent left after 24 hours.

It has a titanium frame and a 6.8-inch OLED panel that peaks at 2,600 nits, rather than the previous 1,750 nits. Plus, it has a slew of AI tools and utilizes Samsung's Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for fast performance. 

If $950 feels (understandably) a bit steep then check out the Samsung Galaxy S24+. The 256GB model is currently marked down from $1,000 to $770 — still a solid chunk of change, but a noticeable difference. The Samsung Galaxy S24+ garnered an 87 in our review, not far off from its sister device. It comes with Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and features like Chat Assist and Live Translate. Its battery life impressed us, though its low-light photography performance left something to be desired. 

Check out all of the latest Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals here.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/samsung-black-friday-2024-deals-save-up-to-350-on-galaxy-s24-smartphones-150043358.html?src=rss

America’s ‘news influencers’ skew conservative, Pew report finds

It’s no secret that non-traditional news sources are becoming an increasingly relevant part of the already fractured online media environment. But a new report from Pew Research and the Knight Foundation offers a more complete picture of what the growing crop of “news influencers” on social media believe.

Titled “America’s News Influencers,” the report is based on a survey of 10,000 US adults, as well as an analysis of 500 “news influencers.” Pew defined the latter group as “individuals who regularly post about current events and civic issues on social media and have at least 100,000 followers” on Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok or YouTube.

The report highlights the growing popularity of these accounts, particularly among younger Americans. The researchers note that 20 percent of US adults report “regularly” relying on influencers as a news source, and that the number climbs to 37 percent for people between the ages of 18 and 29.

It also offers new insights about the people behind these influential accounts. The researchers found that news influencers are far more likely to be men and “slightly more likely” to identify with the political right than the left. (Pew notes that about half of the influencer accounts studied didn’t explicitly identify with a political ideology.)

But regardless of political affiliation, it’s clear that influencers are tapping into a real demand for non-traditional news sources. “There's no partisan split,” says Galen Stocking, a senior researcher at Pew. “Republicans and Democrats are saying they're getting news regularly from news influencers at roughly the same rate.”

Pew’s researchers did, however, uncover some notable differences between platforms. While most of the 500 influencers they studied were active on multiple platforms, X was by far the most popular with 85 percent of influencers having a presence on the platform formerly known as Twitter. News influencers on X were also more likely to “explicitly identify with the political right (28 percent) than the left (21 percent),” the report says.

In fact, that trend holds true for almost all of the platforms in the study. On Instagram, 30 percent of news influencers identified with the right while 25 percent identified with the left. YouTube had a similar split with 28 percent right-leaning influencers and 21 percent left leaning. On Facebook, it was even more pronounced. “Influencers on Facebook are particularly likely to prominently express right-leaning views: There are three times as many explicitly conservative news influencers (39%) as liberal ones (13%) on the site,” the report notes.

news influencers
Pew-Knight Initiative

TikTok, meanwhile, looks somewhat different. It was the only platform to have a slightly higher share of left-leaning news influencers, at 28 percent, compared with 25 percent on the right. It also had the highest share of women news influencers at 45 percent.

While the report doesn’t attempt to unpack what the greater share of conservative voices may mean, Stocking points out that the social media users surveyed by Pew also expressed some differences in how they perceive the content shared by news influencers. “There's actually a pretty interesting gap where the moderates within the parties are less likely to say that it helps them better understand current events,” Stocking tells Engadget.

Pew’s researchers are far from the first to note that the political right is often more prominent on social media. A 2021 report from Media Matters found that posts from Facebook pages aligned with the political right consistently outperformed those from “nonaligned and left-leaning pages.” Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found in 2022 that conservative news was more visible on the platform then known as Twitter.

And while Pew doesn’t speculate about whether platforms themselves are incentivizing certain viewpoints, the researchers note that their findings are at odds with what many on the right believe about mainstream social media. “Many Republicans have long believed that social media sites censor conservative viewpoints,” the report says. “But overall, more news influencers explicitly present a politically right-leaning orientation than a left-leaning one (27% vs. 21%) in their account bios, posts, websites or media coverage.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/americas-news-influencers-skew-conservative-pew-report-finds-150002876.html?src=rss

Apple Black Friday deals: The M4 Mac mini drops to a record low of $500

Apple's new Mac mini hasn’t been available for that long yet, but you can already grab it at a discount. The M4-powered Mac mini has dropped to an all-time low of $500 thanks to a discount and an additional, clippable coupon that will bring the final price down to $500. That’s a total of $100 of savings off the original price.

The 2024 Mac Mini is available with an M4 or M4 Pro chip, both of which give the desktop computer a real boost from its previous version. We gave the upgrade a 90 in our review, in part due to the Pro's perks (which we'll get into later), but also general features like the base level being 16GB of RAM. This generation also offers front USB-C and headphone ports, as well as a design that's less than half the size of its predecessor.

The Mac Mini with M4 chip should be plenty of power for all your basic tasks. But, if you need a bigger boost, then check out Mac Mini with an M4 Pro chip. It's currently on sale for $1,349, down from $1,399. This deal is available on the model with 24GB of unified memory and 512GB of SSD storage. It's remarkably fast and offers Thunderbolt 5 support, rather than the M4's Thunderbolt 4. Thunderbolt 5 can triple data transfer speeds to 120GB/s, up from 40GB/s. 

Check out all of the latest Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals here.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/apple-black-friday-deals-the-m4-mac-mini-drops-to-a-record-low-of-500-144307243.html?src=rss

DoorDash can import grocery lists from iOS’ Reminders app

Though I do love walking through a supermarket and picking out my own foods, I will admit that, come winter, I often turn to delivery apps to get my products. DoorDash, one of the many delivery apps on the market, has launched a new feature that could make this process even more seamless, allowing iOS users import their grocery list from Reminders into the app. 

To take advantage of this, you can go to Reminders and copy your list or import it directly in the DoorDash app. An option should appear while you're shopping inside a store that says "Got a grocery list?" in a box on the page. From there you can click import and choose which list you want to sync based on the titles and a preview of the items. DoorDash will then show you options based on your list. So, for example, if you wrote onions, then it will let you scroll through different onions for sale and below it will have your next item with other options. 

DoorDash is also unveiling other changes, such as letting you add items from multiple stores to an order before placing it. The company has offered DoubleDash since 2021 but that only allowed you to include items from close stores after placing the original order. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/doordash-can-import-grocery-lists-from-ios-reminders-app-140020164.html?src=rss

It might be time to say goodbye to Apple’s lightning to 3.5mm jack adapter

Once upon a time, in the year 2016 Apple completely disrupted our lives by removing the headphone jack. Starting with the iPhone 7, there was no port for your wired headphones, just a lightning charger. But, they did include one thing with the phone to soften the blow: a lightning to 3.5mm headphone jack adapter that allowed up to use our wired headphones in peace. Well, as all good things come to an end so, it seems, is the adapter, MacRumors reports

Right now, the $9 adapter is listed as sold out in the US and most other countries, with it for sale only a few places in Europe. The same pattern occurred earlier this year to the SuperDrive, with it selling out around the world before being discontinued. 

It's not a big shock if the adapter is no more, with wireless headphones and earbuds becoming such mainstays over the last decade (remember 2016 is also when Apple released its first generation of AirPods). Plus, you can't even use this adapter on the iPhone 15 or 16 series thanks to their USB-C port. Notably, the USB-C to headphone jack adapter is still available, also for $9. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/headphones/it-might-be-time-to-say-goodbye-to-apples-lightning-to-35mm-jack-adapter-133014701.html?src=rss

LG unveils its own 480Hz OLED gaming monitor

Back in January at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), LG unveiled a 27-inch 480Hz OLED panel with some incredible specs, but didn't say when or even if it would build a monitor around it. Now, the company has announced the UltraGear GX7 (27GX790A), a 27-inch QHD (2,560 x 1,440) OLED gaming monitor with a 480Hz refresh rate and a .03-millisecond response time — the fastest of any QHD OLED monitor, LG claims.

The new display supports both NVIDIA's G-Sync and AMD's FreeSync technology to reduce screen tearing and flickering. It received VESA's DisplayHDR True Black 400 certification, meaning it's decently bright, supports a wide color gamut (DCI-P3 98.5 percent) and produces deep blacks. It also comes with an anti-glare and low reflection coating.

The UltraGear GX7 is equipped with a headphone jack and both HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 2.1 inputs. It should be noted that neither of those display technologies natively support 480Hz refresh rates at 1440p resolutions, so LG's new display will likely use DSC (display stream compression) technology that allows such a high refresh rate in conjunction with modern NVIDIA and AMD GPUs. Finally, it's perched on sleek, height-adjustable stand with 15 degrees of tilt and 30 degrees of swivel.

LG's new display isn't cheap at $1,000, but it does undercut rival Sony's InZone M10S (also a 1440p 480Hz OLED display) by $100. However, Sony's monitor has a few extra pro gaming features, including one that draws an outline around enemies and another that simulates older LCD monitors for players who prefer that. The UltraGear GX7 is live on LG's site, but there's no pre-order button or shipping date yet.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/lg-unveils-its-own-480hz-oled-gaming-monitor-131924601.html?src=rss

Trump names commission member Brendan Carr as FCC chairman

President-elect Donald Trump has named Brendan Carr as the new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, The New York Times reported. Carr has previously argued in favor of punishing TV networks for political bias and regulating big tech firms like Google and Apple. The appointment doesn't require the usual senate approval, since Carr has sat on the commission since 2017. 

Under a Trump administration, the FCC will have two Democrat and three Republican commissioners. Carr will take over from current FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel. 

Carr wrote the FCC section on the infamous Project 2025 document, proposing new social media restrictions that could benefit conservative viewpoints. He also wants to limit the Section 230 legal shield that allows social media and other platforms to host and moderate comments and other user-generated content.

"The censorship cartel must be dismantled," Carr wrote last week on X. He added that the FCC under his leadership will also go after TV networks. " Broadcast media have had the privilege of using a scarce and valuable public resource — our airwaves. When the transition is complete, the FCC will enforce this public interest obligation."

However, Carr won't have full powers to enact new rules. Since companies like Google and Meta aren't considered communications services, the FCC would have limited power to regulate them. That means an expansion of its powers would require new legislation. Brendan Carr has “proposed to do a lot of things he has no jurisdiction to do and in other cases he’s blatantly misreading the rules,” Free Press co-chief executive Jessica Gonzalez told the NYT. 

That's not to say that Carr can't affect the way the internet operates. In 2017, he voted to repeal net neutrality rules, and in 2021, voted against restoring them. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/trump-names-commission-member-brendan-carr-as-fcc-chairman-130041732.html?src=rss

Roblox restricts DMs for kids under 13 and beefs up parental controls in safety push

Roblox is adding new restrictions to younger kids’ accounts and revamping its parental control features as part of a push to beef up the safety features on its platform. The changes come after damaging reports about the company’s safety practices and amid a broader industry reckoning over online platforms’ effect on kids.

Now, Roblox is drastically limiting the ability of its youngest users to interact with others on its service. The company plans “over the next few months” to bar all kids under 13 from exchanging private messages with other users outside of specific games or experiences. The company will continue to allow younger kids to see messages publicly broadcast within games and experiences, but they won’t be able to message other users without parental permission.

The added restrictions follow a previous update in which the company barred kids under 13 from accessing certain types of experiences. This included unrated experiences, as well as “Social Hangouts and Free-form User Creation experiences.”

Roblox is also making it easier for parents to set up and tweak their parental control preferences. With the changes, some of which were previously detailed by Bloomberg, parents will be able to monitor their children’s Roblox usage and settings from their own devices. Previously, Roblox’s parental control features required parents to make adjustments on their child’s device. Now, parents are able to get push notification when their kids want approval for specific actions like joining an experience with a higher maturity rating. Parents will also be able to keep tabs on their kids’ screen time stats and set daily limits, after which the app will be inaccessible.

The changes are Roblox’s latest effort to address safety concerns about its service. A report in Bloomberg Businessweek earlier this year detailed what it described as Roblox’s “pedophile problem,” noting that “since 2018, police in the US have arrested at least two dozen people accused of abducting or abusing victims they’d met or groomed using Roblox.” Hindenburg Research, a firm known for short-selling, also recently published a report in which it accused Roblox of failing to protect children from being targeted by predators.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/roblox-restricts-dms-for-kids-under-13-and-beefs-up-parental-controls-in-safety-push-120031833.html?src=rss

iFixit’s PS5 Pro teardown reveals an easily replaceable CMOS battery

The iFixit teardown of the PS5 Pro is here, and while there isn’t all that much different going on from what we’ve seen with the PS5 and PS5 Slim in terms of repairability, Sony has made one notable change: in the Pro, it’s pretty easy to get to the CMOS battery. Whereas accessing this battery to replace it in the two previous PS5 models required a fair amount of work due to its placement beneath the main board, iFixit found that it’s right under the faceplates in the PS5 Pro and nestled behind a hatch that has just one screw.

That’s a nice improvement over the other PS5s, where “you’ve got to take apart almost the whole thing to change [the CMOS battery] out,” iFixit notes. Other than that, things look pretty familiar. That’s not to say the PS5 Pro itself doesn’t have excitement to offer — as our reviewers found, the PS5 Pro is an absolute beast of a console when it comes to performance. Less exciting though is its $700 price tag.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playstation/ifixits-ps5-pro-teardown-reveals-an-easily-replaceable-cmos-battery-204423402.html?src=rss