The Motorola Edge (2024) was unveiled earlier this month. It features a fast 144Hz FHD+ OLED display with a 6.6” diagonal and curved sides. It’s powered by the Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 and a 5,000mAh battery with 68W wired and 15W wireless charging. The cameras are similar to last year’s model, a 50MP main (1/1.5”), a 13MP ultra wide (120°) and a 32MP selfie.
The phone just launched, so there are no discounts, but you can get a very similar experience for $200 less with the Motorola Edge (2023). It has a comparable display (also with curved sides) and, as we mentioned above, similar cameras. The major differences are the chipset (Dimensity 7030) and a smaller battery (4,400mAh), though with the same 68W/15W charging. Both Edge phones are rated IP68.
Another phone in this price range is the Samsung Galaxy A35. Its 6.6” FHD+ OLED display runs at 120Hz and the phone is powered by an Exynos 1380 chipset (with 6GB of RAM). The 50MP main camera has a smaller sensor (1/1.96”), the ultra wide module is lower resolution (8MP), as is the selfie cam (13MP). The 5,000mAh battery only supports 25W wired charging and the water resistance is rated lower at IP67. While the A35 has less RAM and storage than the Motos, it does have a microSD slot.
If you’re looking for a flagship model, but don’t want to spend flagship money, check out these offers on refurbished phones. Note that they are locked to specific carriers and Best Buy has AT&T and Verizon models.
The Samsung Galaxy S24 trio is up to $390 off if you go the refurbished route. Not a bad discount, considering that these are the current models and are only a few months old.
Note that we’ve picked the 256GB versions (even for the vanilla S24), but there are other storage options and other colors too (subject to availability, of course).
Best Buy doesn’t have refurbished iPhones, but it does have refurbished iPads. The Apple iPad Pro from 2021 comes in 11” and 12.9” sizes. Both feature 120Hz LCDs (IPS on the small one, XDR on the large one) and both are powered by the original Apple M1 chip. Surprisingly, the large 12.9” slate is a bit cheaper than its smaller sibling.
For more casual usage, the base iPad (2022) would do quite fine – the Apple A14 chipset can handle streaming and productivity tasks and some gaming (especially since the display has only a 60Hz refresh rate). The 256GB models were out of stock and 64GB is quite limiting.
We were leaning towards the older iPad Air (2020), anyway. It uses the same A14 chipset and the same 10.9” IPS LCD, but it does feature a USB-C port instead of Lightning. And it’s only a few bucks more. The Air is thinner (0.24” vs. 0.28”) and lighter (1.01lbs vs. 1.05lbs). The iPad (2022) has a better front-facing camera if that is a consideration.
Finally, the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge is done with pre-orders. Last week, it came with a free TV, now there is a trade-in offer (up to $500) and Samsung Credit available ($150). Note that both the 14” and 16” laptops are powered by the Snapdragon X Elite.
However, the 16” model has an upgrade option – the X1E-84-100 version of the chip. Compared to the X1E-80-100 chip used as default, this one has higher boost clocks (3.8GHz vs. 3.4GHz single and 4.2GHz vs. 4.0GHz dual core boost). Also, the GPU offers more performance (4.6 TFLOPS vs. 3.8 TFLOPS). AI performance is the same (45 TOPS), though.
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