Humanity’s last safe city has fallen to an overwhelming invasion force, led by Ghaul, the imposing commander of the brutal Red Legion. He has stripped the city’s Guardians of their power, and forced the survivors to flee. You will venture to mysterious, unexplored worlds of our solar system to discover an arsenal of weapons and devastating new combat abilities. To defeat the Red Legion and confront Ghaul, you must reunite humanity’s scattered heroes, stand together, and fight back to reclaim our home.
Lance McDonald, AKA ManFightsDragon, AKA the guy who’s known for data mining games like P.T., Bloodborne, and the Dark/Demon Souls series for cut or hidden content, has officially released his 60 frames per second mod for Bloodborne.
The patch allows players to alter the 1.09 version of Bloodborne (the latest update) and modify the game engine to increase the framerate cap to 60 FPS, and optionally lower the resolution to 1280×720.
In a previous video demonstrating the 60 FPS mod (which you should absolutely watch), McDonald shared that accessing Bloodborne’s debug mode and altering the framerate only served to speed up everything in the game to twice the speed, creating a comical Benny Hill effect. The PS4 Pro afforded some older games a boost mode that improved framerate and other performance metrics, but Bloodborne appeared to be locked behind what McDonald calls an “arbitrary” 30 FPS framerate, something Dark Souls 3 and Sekiro weren’t restricted by on the Pro. IGN has reached out to McDonald to clarify how well this patch could work on a base PS4, if at all.
You can find McDonald’s mod and instructions on his Patreon, but make sure you know what you’re doing. Altering your PS4 console in such a way will almost certainly void any warranty you have should something go awry. You’ll have to mod it to run homebrew software in the first place.
Don’t get your hopes up for an official 60 FPS patch from FromSoftware or Sony anytime soon, as neither company has even alluded to any intention of revisiting the game’s code. Considering the Demon’s Souls remake looks astounding at 60 FPS, we can still only hope they’ll see fit to do so.
The Pokemon Company has canceled this year’s Pokemon World Championships. In a statement on the official Pokemon website, the company explained that the competition will be moved back to 2022 in accordance with public health guidance, while all sanctioned Play Pokemon events will remain suspended this year:
“After careful review and pursuant to guidance set forth by local, regional, and national health authorities, as well as the World Health Organization, Public Health England, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, we have made the difficult decision to move out the next Pokemon World Championships to 2022. This event is planned to take place in London.
“With the continued suspension of the Play! Pokemon event series, all sanctioned Play! Pokemon events including League Challenge, League Cup, Premier Challenge, and Midseason Showdown will remain suspended until further notice. We look forward to celebrating the accomplishments of all our competitors at an expanded 2022 Pokemon World Championships in London.”
This marks the second year in a row that the Pokemon World Championships have been postponed; the 2020 World Championships were similarly canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Pokemon Company says that all invitations to the 2020 competition will still be honored in 2022, although it has not yet announced any further details on next year’s event.
The Pokemon World Championships feature dedicated competitions for the Pokemon Trading Card Game, mainline video game series, and Pokken Tournament DX. The 2020 event were slated to be the first featuring Pokemon Sword and Shield, the series’ latest mainline installments.
While the Pokemon World Championships may have been canceled, this year is still shaping up to be a notable one for the series. This month marks Pokemon’s 25th anniversary, and The Pokemon Company is celebrating with new merchandise lines, announcements, and more activities, including a collaboration with Katy Perry.
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Persona 5 Strikers is the follow-up to the iconic RPG from developer Atlus, Persona 5, and it’s a continuation of the story with the same core characters of the Phantom Thieves. It features action-based combat that uses mechanics from the main game’s RPG system, and also has some light social sim elements that bring it closer to the core Persona experience. However, Strikers isn’t nearly as long as the main RPGs in the series, yet it still has a lengthy runtime.
How Long Is Persona 5 Strikers?
Upon finishing the game for review, I clocked in around 42 hours. This included completing the main story with all its dungeons, doing a large majority of the side quests called Requests, and experiencing the story elements at a normal pace. Your mileage may vary, but I would say that the estimated playtime for Persona 5 Strikers is around 35 to 40 hours. Completionists are likely to spend 45 hours or more.
This is quite lengthy for a musou-style game from Koei Tecmo and Omega Force, but considering how closely Strikers adheres to the core Persona format, it may not come as a surprise. For reference, it took me 125 hours to finish Persona 5 Royal and experience the content added from the original release.
The game makes good use of its runtime–in my Persona 5 Strikers review, I concluded it saying: “For all its shortcomings, Persona 5 Strikers reminds me why I loved the Phantom Thieves to begin with and shows how they’ve matured since we last saw them. Once you get your head around it, the action-RPG combat is a challenging thrill, and no one can pull off flourishes in the same fashion as these characters. I almost forgot I was playing a musou-style game developed by Koei Tecmo and Omega-Force, and I think that’s a testament to how sharp Strikers is as a Persona game. If you have any love for Persona 5, what say you save the world one more time with some old friends?”
Although the game has been out in Japan since last year, Persona 5 Strikers launches on February 23 in the west (or February 19 for those who preorder the deluxe edition) for PlayStation 4 (PS5 backwards compatible), Nintendo Switch, and PC.
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With Season of the Chosen, Bungie has introduced a new seasonal challenges system to Destiny 2. Certain bounties have been removed from the game in favor of a new setup that grants you more time to complete objectives (and thus earn rewards). Here’s how it works and all of the seasonal challenges available so far.
Seasonal challenges are accessed from the Quests tab, and they consist of a wide variety of objectives–so far they have involved tasks such as acquiring the new Cabal Gold currency, completing certain activities on Europa, and defeating Guardians in Mayhem with your Super. Each of these objectives has its own corresponding reward, which always includes XP. Other rewards include bright dust, emblems, weapons, and–perhaps most notably–War Table reputation, which is a new mechanic for Season of the Chosen.
A total of 10 challenges comprise Week 1’s lineup, and a new set of challenges (ranging from three to 10) will be introduced for the first 10 weeks of the season. Notably, you won’t only have that week to complete them: These challenges will be available for the duration of the season. Bungie has done away with certainly weekly bounties in favor of this system, which won’t penalize you for taking a week (or three) off during the course of the season. You’ll also have a period of time after the introduction of the Week 10 challenges to take care of those and any earlier challenges you haven’t already completed. Season of the Chosen will see 75 challenges offered, and completing them all will fulfill the requirements for the Master of All seasonal challenge, which nets you a bunch of bright dust.
Challenges can only be completed once per account, and there’s no process for obtaining them–when they’re released each week, they’ll be directly added to your challenges system. Other bounties do still exist and will need to be claimed as usual, but don’t forget the Destiny app now allows these to be claimed while in orbit. You don’t need the season pass in order to do seasonal challenges, but some (around 40% by Bungie’s estimate) will require you to have access to season-specific content.
Season Of The Chosen Challenges
Week 1
Contender’s Ascent
Challenger’s Proving quest completed
Cabal defeats with rocket launcher (75)
Golden Reaper
Acquire Cabal Gold (100)
Crash and Converge
Tribute Chests smashed (5)
Engrams focused (5)
Lenses in Focus
Lenses unlocked
Challenger’s Aspiration
Weekly playlist challenges completed (3)
Icebound
Europa bounties completed (10)
Europa progress earned (bountiest, patrols, public events, Lost Sectors)
Hail of Bullets
Calibrate kinetic weapons on Europa
Dredgin’ Up Victory
Complete Gambit matches
Flourish of Power
Defeat Guardians in Mayhem with Supers (50)
Dominance Operandi: Fallen
Defeat Fallen combatants in Strikes
Week 1’s challenges are reasonably straightforward. Advancing through the new seasonal content will get you on the right track with a number of objectives, such as setting you up to complete the Challenger’s Proving quest. That involves obtaining the Hammer of Proving and then socketing it with a Challenger Medallion, which is done by obtaining Cabal Gold (another Week 1 challenge). Other tasks will simply involve making sure you pay attention to what you’re doing, like playing Mayhem and killing other players with your Super or using kinetic weapons on Europa.
With the launch of the Season of the Chosen in Destiny 2 comes a new activity called Battlegrounds. It pits you against waves of Cabal enemies to take down leaders before they can join the war council of Caiatl, the Cabal empress, and allow her to rally her forces in the solar system. It also provides you with a new rewards system for earning seasonal gear and leveling up your Guardian–but the whole thing is a touch confusing.
We’ve put together a full rundown of how everything related to the Season of the Chosen works, from the Battlegrounds activity to the new HELM War Table, the Hammer of Proving, and the new version of Umbral Engrams. Here’s everything you need to know to excel and earn your new Chosen gear.
You’ll get this quest as soon as you start up Destiny 2 during the Season of the Chosen. It’ll introduce you to the HELM and War Table and unlock your Bell of Conquests Seasonal Artifact and the Hammer of Proving, which you need to get the most out of Battlegrounds activities. Complete all the steps to get access to everything in the HELM area. You can enter the HELM from the Tower map in the Director.
How Battlegrounds Work
The Battlegrounds activities are a bit of a mix between a Strike and past seasonal activities like Contact. Your primary goal is to fight off waves of Cabal enemies, but you’ll need to push through three different phases of the activity in order to complete it. Currently, Battlegrounds come in two versions: an easier one launched from the Director map (find it on Europa), and a tougher playlist version found under the Vanguard Director node.
The phases you’ll face depend on which Battleground you’re attempting. For instance, in Battleground: Behemoth on Nessus, the first phase requires you to fight through waves of enemies until a tougher Cabal with the name Keymaster shows up. Once you kill three Keymaster Cabal Majors, you can interact with a terminal that allows you to drop a forcefield and proceed to the next encounter.
In Battleground: Hailstone on Europa, the first phase has you killing several Unstable Incendior enemies, which show up one per wave. Killing these guys drops an energy orb that you can pick up and then throw at a cylindrical generator called a Power Relay. There are three of these relays, which need to be destroyed before you can advance. You’ll need to be pretty accurate when you throw the orb, or you might fail to blow up the relay and have to wait for a new enemy to appear and bring you a new orb.
Each Battleground has objectives involved, so pay attention to waht you’re asked to do as you fight through waves of Cabal enemies.
The first two phases of a Battleground are mostly about fighting through waves of enemies, but pay attention to any objectives that are set for you along the way as well. In playlist Battlegrounds, you’ll also face Champions, and in some cases your objectives will involve defeating them before you can advance.
The last phase of the Battleground is a boss fight with a Cabal leader you need to take down. This bit enemy has a health bar divided into three sections. When each section is depleted, he’ll call on Major enemies called Shieldbarrers, who will create an impenetrable barrier around the boss. You need to kill the Shieldbarrers before you can damage the boss again, so clear them out as fast as you can.
When you’ve killed the boss, you’ll receive a chest for your efforts. In playlist Battlegrounds, if you’ve forged a Challenger Medallion, you can also smash one of the three forcefield-covered chests that spawns in behind the first chest at the end of the mission. This is the key element of how Battlegrounds get you new rewards–more on the Hammer of Proving below.
Each player on your fireteam should smash a separate chest for maximum rewards. Be careful about not bunching up, though, because it’s easy to use two hammers on the same chest by accident, which will rob you of a chance at the third reward.
You can upgrade the Hammer of Proving at the War Table. Use it to smash extra chests at the end of playlist Battlegrounds activities.
How The Hammer Of Proving Works
The Hammer of Proving is how you earn extra rewards during playlist Battlegrounds activities by smashing the extra chests that appear at the end. To do that, you need to add a Challenger Medallion to the Hammer before you start the activity. You can create Medallions by clicking on the Hammer of Proving on the Quest screen, but in order to make those Medallions, you need to earn a currency called Cabal Gold.
The good news is that Cabal Gold is easy to come by. You’ll earn it for doing basically everything, including completing playlist Rituals like Gambit matches, Crucible matches, Strikes, and Nightfall: The Ordeal runs. Gold also comes from public events, Lost Sectors, and battling in the Blind Well in the Dreaming City.
When you smash a Battlegrounds chest with the Hammer of Proving, you’ll earn a Hammer Charge. You can then bring those back to the HELM to use on the Prismatic Recaster and your Umbral Engrams.
The Prismatic Recaster lets you focus Umbral Engrams so they give you specific loot. For some, you’ll need to build up Hammer Charges, which require you to use the Hammer of Proving in playlist Battlegrounds.
How Umbral Engrams And The Prismatic Recaster Work
The Prismatic Recaster is back from the Season of Arrivals, this time situated at the HELM. To use it, you’ll need Umbral Engrams, which drop from various activities, but specifically pop up as Battlegrounds rewards.
After finishing the Challenger’s Proving quest, you should have several options for tuning Umbral Engrams to make them decode for specific loot rewards. The first two, which give you armor and weapons from the world loot pool–the stuff you’d get from random drops off enemies as you’re playing–cost nothing but Legendary Shards and Glimmer. Once you have the Hammer of Proving, you can start to unlock Season of the Chosen rewards from Umbral Engrams. You can first tune engrams to drop either only weapons or only armor (or both, but just from the Season of the Chosen), and as you level up the Recaster, it’ll allow you to choose more specific loot drops.
This is where Hammer Charges come in. If you want to tune an Umbral Engram to give you Season of the Chosen loot, you’ll need to spend a Hammer Charge on it as well. So that means, to get a Season of the Chosen reward from an Umbral Engram, you’ll need to play various activities to earn Cabal Gold, use that to forge Challenger Medallions for your Hammer, then complete playlist Battlegrounds activities and smash a chest at the end to earn a Hammer Charge.
Each level for the Prismatic Recaster has different requirements, so pay attention to what you can unlock and how you can do so. Some levels require you to get a certain number of kills with a specific type of weapon, for instance, while others require you to unlock certain weapons from the Season Pass. Once you unlock those levels, however, you’ll be able to use the Prismatic Recaster to give you weapons and armor with specific perks and stats favored, allowing you to tune your loadout to your liking.
Ranking up the War Table gives you benefits for your Hammer of Proving, but to do so you’ll need to complete seasonal challenges.
How The HELM And War Table Work
The last element of the season is the HELM and its War Table. The HELM is the new seasonal room you can access from the Director’s Tower map, which includes the Prismatic Recaster, the War Table, and several kiosks that give you a lot of the functionality of the Tower. You can use this room to access the Post Master and your Vault, so you can drop in here to do a lot of your Tower business and claim Battlegrounds rewards.
The War Table is your hub for a lot of season-related stuff. Here, you can claim Season of the Chosen bounties, upgrade your Hammer of Proving, purchase seasonal mods, and claim rewards as you increase your War Table rank.
Upgrading your Hammer of Proving at the War Table requires War Table Reputation, which is earned specifically from the new seasonal challenges tab on the Quest screen. These challenges replace weekly bounties you’d previously get from Zavala, Lord Shaxx, and the Drifter. Instead, you can earn these challenges anytime during the season, with new ones appearing each week. Several challenges dish out War Table Reputation; others give Bright Dust, weapons, and other rewards. So it’ll be useful to pay attention to your seasonal challenges before heading out to activities to make sure you’re progressing each one and earning everything you can.
We’ll update this guide with more information as it becomes available during the Season of the Chosen. Expect more Battlegrounds to become available alongside more seasonal challenges, so there should be plenty to do as you upgrade your War Table, Hammer of Proving, and Prismatic Recaster.
There’s an unnerving air of mystery to Paradise Lost, a game that sees you explore an abandoned bunker that once housed a group of Nazis before becoming home to the Polish rebels that overthrew them. In this first-person adventure game set in an alternate timeline, Germany won World War II, nuking the Allies and plunging most of western Europe into a nuclear winter.
I had the opportunity to sit through a brief demo of Paradise Lost alongside game director Bogdan Graczyk and producer Chris Panas-Galloway. As I watched protagonist Szymon puzzle his way through the bunker, Paradise Lost slowly began to reveal small narrative threads that Graczyk and Panas-Galloway promise will connect in unforeseen ways going forward, all culminating in a story that’s about grief–both personal and societal.
“In this godforsaken world, [Szymon] lived with his mother and his mother dies one day, and that leaves him all alone and with no real good idea on what to do next,” Graczyk explains to me. “That’s when he finds this photo, and that’s when he realizes that the search for answers of where he came from, how he ended up [on his own], and what’s the answers behind the mystery of his mother might help him cope with the loss.”
Working Through Grief
Paradise Lost is structured to reflect the five stages of grief, with each level of the game both figuratively and literally representing each stage as Szymon works through the trauma of losing his mother. You’ll first play through his denial, then anger, bargaining, depression, and, finally, acceptance. It’s an emotional process that traditionally takes weeks or months, sometimes years of time in the real world, but developer PolyAmorous is condensing it into a matter of hours in order to fit the pacing of the game.
“For dramatic reasons, it might not be the most realistic pacing,” Graczyk admits. “There is a sense of epicness in this journey because it begins in a different place spatially. It’s a long way for Szymon to get to the bunker, which we’re not necessarily showing, but it sets this specific mood. The empty bunker is also a character. And this journey, each story is also, as I said, thematically connected to the grief, but on a different level–the grief of the world, like there’s a lot of broken dreams and horrific things happening in this world.”
“We’re based in Warsaw, Poland,” Panas-Galloway added. “So, we’ve lived in the midst of the history of the aftermath of the Second World War. A lot of the places here–for people that have connections to them and their families–serve as genuine catalysts for really strong emotional experiences. If you’ve ever come with a Jewish person to Auschwitz, they’ll have very strong reactions a lot of the time because there’s just so much emotion tied up in the stories that they’ve told each other of the generation. So this [bunker] is that to Szymon, it’s a catalytic place. It’s something that will trigger something in him after the loss of his mother–that’s the way we’re staging it.”
Changing Time
I wasn’t able to see how this would play out during the demo, though both Graczyk and Panas-Galloway spoke about how Paradise Lost would react to player’s choices as they navigated Szymon’s emotional journey through the game. As you navigate Szymon’s grief, you’ll be getting a glimpse into what happened to the group of Polish rebels that once occupied the bunker and how they dealt with their own grief. The technology of the bunker is interwoven with a mysterious, Slavic paganism, allowing your actions in the present to be reflected in the past, which then result in effects to the present.
“You make the decisions that the bunker’s system have already made to solve the problems, so it actually has different outcomes,” Graczyk explained. “The monument [seen in the demo] can have different variance based on the outcome of the insurgency and based on the players’ decisions. It’s like a hidden interactivity where you’re reshaping the past of the bunker, and it has an influence on the gameplay portion.”
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He continued: “It’s not any kind of time travel or reshaping the past. It’s rather that the events recorded by those systems are recorded via the perspective of the AI systems that were controlling the bunker. So there’s like a [sentient artificial intelligence] behind it–the moment that Szymon is experiencing those past events, we let the player become the actual AI from the past and make those calls.”
You won’t be making these decisions in a vacuum–discovering small details, leftover notes, and discarded correspondence will provide context to the world around. In this way, you’re encouraged to get as much out of Paradise Lost’s story as you’re willing to put into it. And that, in turn, ties back to the game’s message about grief. How you choose to interact with the world and understand Szymon’s grief will inform your ending–there are more than one, and your actions will determine which you get.
“Since it’s, first and foremost, an emotional journey, we tried to make sure that different endings, different outcomes, different routes have different emotional impacts,” Graczyk said. “So from this perspective, replaying the game can be a different emotional experience. Just looking at [the same events] but from a different perspective, gives you a fuller understanding of what has happened, what actually has happened.”
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Panas-Galloway added: “All the endings are equally valid. We left it really up to the player, how they experience Szymon’s story. The game is about perspectives on the past and on the present, and if you want to explore those perspectives and try to understand the world in a different way, then yeah–you’re encouraged to replay and find out what they are.”
I, for one, will be combing through the bunker in Paradise Lost with a fine comb once it comes out–the small tidbits of lore that I got to see in the demo are already intriguing enough for me to want to see the whole campaign through. It was, admittedly, a very small 15-minute chunk of the game so who knows how well the rest of the experience holds up, but the demo left off at what seemed to be a cool revelation and if Paradise Lost can maintain that sense of mystery and imbue it with a satisfying story about dealing with grief, then I think it will turn out to be a pretty good game. You’ll have your chance to play through Paradise Lost later this year, as the game is scheduled to launch for Xbox One, PS4, and PC in 2021.
The 1939 classic film The Wizard of Oz, widely considered to be one of the greatest movies of all time, will be getting the remake treatment via New Line Cinema and director Nicole Kassell (Watchmen). This is not the first time a remake or re-imagining of the 1900 children’s fantasy novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has been attempted, and it’s likely not to be the last, but Kassell’s involvement via HBO’s Watchmen of all things is incredibly intriguing.
According to Deadline, an extensive search for a director ended with Kassell being hired because she “acted as a meticulous world-builder in overseeing every step of the Watchmen production, setting the show’s striking visual tone with no detail overlooked and weaving visual cues from the panels of the comic into the series as delicate Easter eggs for fans.” In other words, the exact strengths Kassell brought to realizing DC’s classic, New Line Cinema is hoping Kassell will bring to Oz.
“I am incredibly honored to… [be] bringing this beloved classic to the screen,” said Kassell. “While the 1939 musical is part of my DNA, I am exhilarated and humbled by the responsibility of re-imagining such a legendary tale. The opportunity to examine the original themes–the quest for courage, love, wisdom and home–feels more timely and urgent than ever. These are profoundly iconic shoes to fill, and I am eager to dance alongside these heroes of my childhood as we pave a newly minted yellow brick road!”
According to Variety, previous versions of the screenplay for this upcoming remake were written by Darren Lemke (Shrek Forever After) and the duo of Neil Widener and Gavin James (Now You See Me 3).
From February 9-15, Minecraft players will have access to special curated content and free items to help celebrate the Year of the Ox, even though it can’t be in-person.
Traditionally, Lunar New Year celebrations involve in-person gatherings, whether those celebrations involve trips to flower markets, festive parades, dances, or big feasts with family and friends. As noted in Minecraft’s blog post about the event: “All over the world, people come together to clear out the previous year by cleaning their homes, getting rid of clutter, and replacing or repairing broken items.”
But since that isn’t possible for many this year, Minecraft has added special curated Lunar New Year content and free skins so players can throw their own digital festivities if gathering in-person isn’t safe. “Since that type of gathering still isn’t possible we hope that you can find other ways to mark the occasion. If you want to welcome the Year of the Ox in Minecraft, you can find free skins in the Marketplace and Character Creator that will help make your celebration a little more festive!”
The Lunar New Year of the Ox skin pack features multiple “cultural elements,” including Hanfu (a type of traditional Chinese clothing), Tang suit (a type of traditional Chinese jacket), dragon lion dance characters, and ox in different festive costumes. You can snag it for free in the Minecraft marketplace.
The last time the Year of the Ox rolled around was in 2009, the same year Minecraft originally debuted. Back then there were no cows in the game (they weren’t introduced until 2010), but things have come a long way since then. Players can create all kinds buildings and decorations in the game’s servers now, so whatever kind of digital celebration you’re looking to hold Minecraft should be able to accommodate it.
Presidents Day (February 15) is coming up this weekend in the US, and whether you’ve got the day off to relax or still have to wake up for work on Monday, you can take advantage of some sweet deals on tech and more. As with practically any other holiday, retailers use Presidents Day as an excuse to throw big sales, and you’ll find some of the best prices around since Black Friday. You don’t have to wait until Monday either (though some deals will kick off that day); many of the best Presidents Day deals are starting to go live already. We’ll be updating this story throughout the week as more Presidents Day sales go live.
One of the best Presidents Day sales live so far is over at Ebay, where you can find huge markdowns on certified refurbished tech, home accessories, and more. While it’s easy to write off refurbished products at a glance, these are all “like new” products that have been certified by manufacturers or authorized partners, and they come with both a two-year warranty and money-back guarantee. Combine the initial discount with the PREZDAY20 promo code that slashes another 20% off in checkout, and you’re getting an incredible deal.
We’re also starting to see Presidents Day deals go live from tech brands like Lenovo, which always throws a nice sale around holidays like this. This year is no exception–Lenovo has great discounts on monitors, webcams, and more this week. We also expect to see more deals from major retailers like Best Buy kick off as we get closer to Presidents Day, so keep checking back. For now, check out some of the best Presidents Day deals you can already take advantage of below. Plus, keep in mind another holiday is coming up soon–a few of these products might make good Valentine’s Day gifts.
Bose is one of the most well-known and beloved brands in the headphones game, but its products are sold at premium prices. During Presidents Day, you can snag the excellent Bose Noise-Canceling Headphones 700 for just $224 with promo code PREZDAY20 at checkout. These are sold directly from Bose via eBay and are in “pristine, like-new condition,” so you really can’t do better than this deal if you’re seeking a new pair of Bluetooth headphones for working from home. See our sister brand CNET’s Bose Noise-Canceling Headphones 700 review for more on why these headphones are worth the money.
iRobot’s Roomba is one of the top robot vacuum models for a reason–it’ll keep your floor sparkling clean by sucking up dirt, dust, debris, kitty litter, and more without you having to lift a finger. The Roomba 670 also comes with Google Assistant and Alexa integration so you can trigger it with the sound of your voice. Roomba smart vacuums can cost hundreds of dollars, but you can get this model for nearly 50% off at eBay during Presidents Day.
Need a new gaming monitor? This weekend’s a great time to pick one up for a fraction of the price. On sale for $200 with promo code PREZDAY20, the Acer KG1 28-inch gaming monitor has been professionally restored by an Acer-approved vendor and ships directly from Acer. This well-rated 4K monitor features a 60Hz refresh rate, a fast 1ms response time, and AMD FreeSync technology to reduce tearing and stuttering.
This 34-inch ultrawide monitor from Samsung is down to a great price as well. With promo code PREZDAY20, you can nab it for $240 via eBay. Once again, this is a certified refurbished monitor that’ll arrive in “like new” condition. While not suited for super heavy gaming, it’s a great option for those needing a wide monitor for both work and light gaming.
Lenovo’s excellent Legion H300 stereo gaming headset is $30 off, dropping its price to just $40. This is a quality headset at a budget price, delivering immersive audio, plug-and-play noise canceling, and a comfortable, lightweight fit. It’ll work well no matter what platform you play on, including PC, Nintendo Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X, and last-gen consoles.
Good webcams became a bit of a hot commodity in 2020 due to the huge influx of people working from home and taking video meetings from their living room. While webcam inventory has stabilized somewhat, it’s still rare to see discounts on webcams from name brands like Logitech, but you can find a great deal right now at Lenovo. The Logitech C925e HD webcam is $20 off for Presidents Day, dropping it to $80. Just plug it into your laptop and arrange it at the top of your screen, and you’ll have a clear and bright picture for video meetings.
For those who really just need a good monitor for working from home, the ThinkVision P27H is a fantastic option, especially while it’s on sale for $248. The 27-inch 1440p monitor has an edgeless IPS screen with excellent picture quality and vibrant colors, and it features a USB-C cable to easily connect to supported devices.
Let’s face it: We’re all going to be wearing masks for some time, and before you know it, the weather will start getting warmer again, which means any outdoor errands will result in the inside of your mask becoming a sweaty, gross mess. Now that you have that mental picture, here’s a better solution: Under Armour’s premium sports masks are on sale this week–normally $30 for one, you can grab two for $40 during Presidents Day. These masks are designed to be worn all day during high levels of activity, so they feature a structured design with better airflow that enhances breathability and comfort.
Great Apple Watch deals aren’t too common outside of Black Friday, but both Walmart and Amazon are dropping the price on Apple’s smartwatch this week. Available for $169, the Apple Watch Series 3 (38mm) comes with a GPS and barometric altimeter to track how far and high you travel. It’s also water-resistant and comes with dozens of features, letting you set alarms, read and respond to text messages, measure your heart rate, and more.
Amazon’s Echo Show 5 is one of the handiest devices to have in your living room or kitchen. You can use it to follow along to recipes, hear the weather, listen to music, and even video call with friends and family. It’s also designed to work well on your bedside nightstand due to its compact design–it comes with a neat ambient sunrise lighting feature and various clock faces as well–but it’d work great wherever you spend the most time in your home. The Echo Show 5 is $30 off for Presidents Day at Best Buy and Amazon.
