Black Friday won’t be here for several more weeks, but the holiday promos are beginning to take shape at Amazon, Best Buy, and other retailers. We expect to see steep discounts on a number of gaming goods when many of the early sales kick off next week, but if you want to shop ahead of time, Seagate’s 2TB Storage Expansion Card for the Xbox Series X / S is already matching its all-time low of $199.99 ($160 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Seagate’s online storefront.
While pricey, Seagate’s proprietary expansion cards are a great way to expand the storage capacity of your Xbox Series X or Xbox Series S. The NVMe-based, Microsoft-licensed cards — of which there are currently two — are incredibly easy to install, fast, and allow you to run games as if they were loaded on your console’s internal memory. That means they support Microsoft’s Quick Resume function and prevent you from having to shuffle downloads around, which you’d have to do if you were to purchase a USB-based external hard drive (those are limited to playing backward-compatible games).
Understandably, Sony’s approach to expandable storage, which lets PlayStation 5 owners upgrade their console with any PS5-compatible M.2 SSD, is still far more inviting. But Seagate’s proprietary option has been coming down in price since the introduction of Western Digital’s WD_Black C50, and Seagate’s 2TB model is far easier to stomach now than with its original starting price of $399.99. Here’s hoping the current price drop is a sign of steeper cuts to come.
Other deals and discounts of note
- Google’s Pixel Buds Pro 2 are on sale at Amazon, Best Buy, and Wellbots for an all-time low of $179 ($50 off), with the latter retailer offering an additional $10 off when you use offer code VERGEBF60 at checkout. They’re a pretty notable step up from the prior model — particularly if you use a Pixel phone — with a smaller build, an excellent transparency mode, and some of the best battery life you can get in a pair of noise-canceling earbuds. Read our review.
- Nomad is running an early Black Friday sale through the end of today, November 9th, allowing you to save 20 percent on a variety of accessories when you use coupon code EARLY20. The promo applies to a few Verge favorites, including the Traditional Leather Case for the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max ($12 off) and a selection of Apple Watch Sport Bands ($12 off), along with the Nomad Stand One ($22 off). The latter isn’t as capable as the Stand One Max, but it still offers up to 15W MagSafe speeds and an ultra-premium design made of metal and glass. Read our Stand One review.
- In some ways, the best Fitbit you can buy is actually the Google Pixel Watch 3. The Fitbit Charge 6 isn’t a bad alternative for fitness tracking, though, especially since it’s fallen to $99.95 ($100 off) at Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy. The high-end band features a color OLED screen and a solid suite of fitness-tracking tools, plus EKG, EDA, and SpO2 sensors. It also offers turn-by-turn navigation via Google Maps and a haptic side button, one that’s far better than the inductive groove on the previous model. Read our review.