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15/03/2023
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Today’s best deals: Apple MacBook Pro, Nintendo Game & Watch, and more

Dealmaster also has the Xbox Series S, Apple gift card deals, and Google's Nest Hub.

Ars Staff -

It's time for another Dealmaster. Our latest roundup of the best tech deals from around the web includes the best prices we've tracked for Apple's 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro laptops. A configuration of the former with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD is down to $1,749 at multiple retailers, which is more than $200 off the typical street price we've seen in recent months, while a similar config for the latter is currently available for $2,299, a roughly $150 drop.

2021 MacBook Pro review: Yep, it’s what you’ve been waiting forWhile Apple's new Mac Studio desktop and Studio Display monitor are garnering most of the Mac-related attention this month, the latest MacBook Pro remains a fantastic laptop for power users who prefer macOS. In fact, our review last October called the Pro the best laptop you can buy for heavy-duty content creation and software development. The M1 Pro chip found in these SKUs is still superbly quick, the Mini LED display is gorgeous, and the battery can genuinely last a full workday. The hardware itself is fairly bulky to accommodate this performance, but the Pro still comes off as premium, with a reliable touchpad and keyboard. The port selection, meanwhile, should be ample enough to prevent you from needing a dreaded dongle all of the time. Plus, there's no Touch Bar.

You'll have to make peace with the iPhone-esque notch at the top of the Pro's screen, and even with these discounts, the laptops are undeniably expensive. But if you can afford it, the new Pros give little to complain about. Although a refreshed 13-inch MacBook Pro is expected to arrive in the coming months, there has been little to suggest that these 14- and 16-inch models will be replaced any time soon.

The Ars Technica 2021 holiday gift guide: Procrastinator’s editionIf you don't need a high-end laptop, our roundup also includes a rare discount on Nintendo's Zelda-themed Game & Watch handheld, which is down to $42.50 as of this writing. Normally, the Game & Watch retails for $50. We recommended this little guy in our holiday gift guide last year: it's best viewed as a fun limited-edition collectible, but the device does come with three all-time classic Zelda games preinstalled (The Legend of Zelda, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, and Link's Awakening). All three titles hold up surprisingly well (difficulty spikes in the tough-as-nails Zelda II aside) and serve as a sort of historical document for action-adventure games as a whole. The roughly 5-inch handheld is tiny but adorable, and when you're not playing one of the included games, the whole thing can serve as a cutesy clock for your desk or nightstand.

Elsewhere, we have a $30 discount on Microsoft's Xbox Series S game console, a deal that nets you $10 in store credit at Target or Best Buy when you buy a $100 Apple gift card, discounts on a couple of smart displays in Google's Nest Hub and Amazon's Echo Show 5, a lower-than-usual price on Apple's excellent AirPods Max noise-canceling headphones, our usual smorgasbord of video game deals, and much more. You can have a look at our full curated list below.

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