Black Friday is over, and the Cyber Monday deals are here in earnest today, which means now’s the time to do some shopping, especially if you’re looking to cross some names off of your holiday gift list. Apple gadgets are always in demand and make for great presents, and a bunch of them are on sale right now, as you can imagine. Below, we’ve picked out our five favorite Apple holiday gifts that are on discount as part of the 2022 Cyber Monday sales, from stocking stuffers to one item that’s really something special. Read on.
If you’ve got someone in your life who is always misplacing their stuff, then the Apple AirTag is a worthy stocking stuffer. It’s a simple item tracker that lets you easily locate things, and it’s arguably the best item tracker on the market thanks to the huge Find My Stuff network that Apple has created (the iPhone is the most popular smartphone in the U.S., after all). We found the AirTag to be easy to use and the tracking to be quite precise as well, and at this price, you can buy a few, even if they’re only for yourself.
If you’re an Apple fan looking for a pair of true wireless earbuds, there’s only one name in town: Apple AirPods. Apple led the true wireless revolution when it scrapped the 3.5mm audio jack on its devices, and despite a great wailing and gnashing of teeth at the time, wired earbuds have since become a rarity. There are a few different models of AirPods available, but for the money, it’s hard to beat the classic. The Apple AirPods 2 sound good, are very well-built, look great (if that matters to you with earbuds), and offer good microphone clarity for voice calls. The second-gen Apple AirPods launched with a retail price of $199, but ongoing Cyber Monday headphone deals make the price of this pair with a wired charging case much, much more attractive — and a fantastic gift for less than a Benjamin.
Phones seem to be only getting bigger, and it’s no secret that iPhones aren’t cheap. Apple heeded the cries of many consumers when it released the budget-friendly iPhone SE in 2020. It’s essentially an iPhone 11 inside the body of an iPhone 8, so while it sports the older iPhone aesthetic (including the unfortunate “forehead and chin” bezels), it runs on the same hardware as more recent models. That means it’s plenty fast, and its 4.7-inch Retina display should be a welcome feature for those who want to buck the trend of ever-increasing smartphone sizes. It was priced at $400 at launch, but this prepaid iPhone SE is on sale for much less than that, provided you’re OK with Straight Talk Wireless as your carrier.
Although many scoffed at the idea of “a smartphone on your wrist,” it’s safe to say that the Apple Watch has made smartwatches actually popular. They’re so popular, in fact, that Apple released three new Apple Watch models this year, with the Apple Watch SE 2 being positioned as a more affordable alternative to the flagship Apple Watch Series 8 and the high-end Apple Watch Ultra. Despite lacking some bells and whistles of the more expensive models (such as an always-on display), the second-gen Apple Watch SE still does just about everything you’d want a smartwatch to do, right down to its comprehensive set of health-tracking features.
And now for something that will make someone’s Christmas truly special: The MacBook Air got a beautiful update in 2020 when Apple rolled out its new M1 CPU. The result is a featherweight laptop that’s not only thin and light but also surprisingly powerful and so thermally efficient that the MacBook Air M1 doesn’t even have any cooling fans (it doesn’t need them; the M1 chip is really that good). Apple has since released a newer MacBook Air with some fresh colors and the M2 CPU, but we can’t recommend it quite as strongly due to the new M2 chip’s heat issues. This one is still plenty powerful, and it’s also a far better buy, especially at this discounted Cyber Monday price.
The OnePlus Buds Clip are a new pair of open-ear earbuds built around a simple convenience. They join Sony’s LinkBuds Clip in the growing ear-cuff category, but either OnePlus bud can go on either ear.
Sensors recognize how the earbuds are being worn and route the audio channels accordingly. There’s no label to check before putting them on, and the feature also works when only one bud is used.
We buy fitness bands and activity trackers to keep tabs on our exercise, but it is easy to forget to start tracking or switch modes when moving between different activities. For Fitbit and Pixel Watch users, that could soon become a lot less annoying, as Google is rolling out a major upgrade to automatic activity tracking that can recognize more than 100 types of exercise, up from just 10 before.
Google first showed off the improved tracking earlier this month alongside the Fitbit Edge. It is now coming to Fitbit Air and the Pixel Watch 3, 4, and 5, and Google claims the added context behind the system makes workout detection nearly twice as accurate while cutting missed activities by more than half. Fitbit Edge will support it too.