Deals: Moto Edge (2024), iPhone 14 and 14 Plus (new and refurbished)

The Motorola Edge (2024) arrived in late June and features a 144Hz OLED display, a curved 6.6″ FHD+ panel, along with the Snapdragon 7s Gen 2. The premium design features an aluminum frame and faux leather on the back. While it’s not all function over style, the phone is IP68 rated for dust and water resistance and supports both 68W wired and 15W wireless charging for its 5,000mAh battery.

The chipset isn’t the fastest and the 8GB of RAM isn’t a lot, but it’s enough to run Motorola’s Ready For Desktop environment over USB-C. There’s a 50MP camera (1/1.5”, OIS) and 13MP ultra wide (120°) on the back, plus a 32MP selfie camera on the front.

For $200 less, the Motorola Moto G Power (2024) is available. It also has a faux leather back, but doesn’t have the full water resistance and instead has a basic water-repellent design. The battery has the same 5,000mAh capacity and 15W wireless charging, while wired charging has been reduced to 30W.

There’s a flat 6.7” IPS LCD (FHD+, 120Hz) on the front and inside is a Dimensity 7020 chipset with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of expandable storage (we’ll look at microSD cards at the end of this post). The 50MP main camera has a smaller sensor (with 0.64µm pixels rather than 1.0µm on the Edge) and can’t record 4K video. There’s also an 8MP ultra wide (118°) and a 16MP selfie camera. This phone also has a 3.5mm headphone jack.

Not everyone is going to be pushing to buy the latest iPhone, and the 15 series will be replaced next month anyway. The iPhone 14 is still going strong, and both it and the Plus are available for $75 off at Best Buy right now.

Compared to the iPhone 15 (Plus), you’ll miss USB-C and the 48MP main camera (these only have 12MP modules). The display also has a wide notch, which isn’t the most attractive design element. It runs at 60Hz, which is even worse, but ProMotion isn’t coming to vanilla iPhones anytime soon.

Instead of new units, you can also buy premium refurbished units from Amazon. Premium means that no cosmetic damage is visible (“when held from 12 inches away,” Amazon says). These are unlocked units, but you can get carrier versions for a little less money.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite (2024) has proven to be a successful design. This is the third version of the slate and strikes a good balance between features like a 10.4” 60Hz LCD, octa-core processor, stereo AKG speakers, and DeX, as well as price. Note that the USB-C port doesn’t do video out.

Earlier this week Samsung introduced new microSD cards in the Pro Plus and Evo Plus series. Both are rated V30 for 4K video recording and U1 for general file storage, as well as A2 for applications. The Pro models are slightly faster (Pro: 180MB/s sequential read, 130MB/s write vs. Evo: 160MB/s and 120MB/s), while the Evo is slightly cheaper.

Finally, Sony’s PlayStation VR2 headset comes with a well-known VR game (Horizon Call of the Mountain) and the combo is 33% off. Obviously, this requires a PS5 to play, but you can also get an adapter and use the capable VR headset with your PC.