Best Back-to-School Deals on Laptops, Headphones, and More Tech

The Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 was $80 more at the start of July. This is a premium 2-in-1 with a 360-degree hinge that lets you rotate the screen for use as a traditional laptop or a tablet, knocking out a report at your desk or sketching notes on the couch. The bundled stylus is handy for handwriting and drawing. Thin, light, and built to last a full workday away from an outlet, this is the sort of machine that earns its keep if you’re frequently on the move or travel for work. It sits at the higher end of our laptop ratings, so you’re paying for the flexibility and the display quality.

The Lenovo Yoga 7i is sorta like the Swiss Army Knife of laptops. It has a 360-degree hinge that lets you flip the screen around to use the device as a tablet or prop it up like a tent for watching movies (great for cramped airplane trays). The model we tested has premium specs: an Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB of memory, and a 1-terabyte solid-state drive. This one’s a bit more mainstream: an Intel Core i5 processor, 16GB of memory, and a 512-gigabyte solid-state drive. But, unlike many sub-$1,000 laptops that cut corners with dim screens or plastic bodies, it has a premium all-metal finish and a bright, colorful display. It’s perfect for students or professionals who need a machine that looks and feels expensive but costs less than a standard MacBook.

Looking for a lightweight tablet to read on the beach or accompany you on summer travels? The Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 FE has a crisp 11-inch display, plus a decent camera and reasonable battery life, too. It doesn’t offer quite the same power as the newer Galaxy Tab S11 (also on sale this week), but for everyday tasks, the Tab S10 FE will do just fine.

If you want your tablet to pack more power than the base iPad model, you can also snag a discount on the 11-inch iPad Air. This model’s M3 chip means it’s more capable of handling demanding tasks, like video editing or gaming, than the basic iPad model. However, if you tend to use your tablet for just the basics, the Air may be overkill.

For all of the popularity of Apple’s AirPods, these are rather unusual. Lacking the padded ear tips that plug your ear canals, they don’t offer much passive noise cancellation, but they do have reasonably effective noise-canceling tech. And so, you can elect to turn the noise-canceling feature off and hear what’s going on around you, which can be great when you’re on a run or walking on a busy street. In terms of sound and fit, the buds are very similar to the regular 4th-gen. AirPods. We’ve seen them as low as $99, but only during major sales like Prime Day and Black Friday.

Have a teen who loves to run outside? The Bose Ultra Opens are a unique option that let them stay aware of your surroundings. They hook on your ear, just above the lobe, kind of like a cuff-style earring. They sound surprisingly good, too, once you get the placement just right. And it’s totally easy to hear things around you with a clarity that the "transparency" mode of most earbuds can’t match.

The Bose Quiet Comfort earbuds sit near the top of our ratings, with really satisfying sound and exceptional active noise cancellation. Bose headphones also earn top marks from our members for predicted reliability and owner satisfaction. They’re still available for the same low price that was available during Prime Day.

If you’re looking to future-proof your home network, the Netgear Orbi 770 is a top-performing WiFi 7 router worth a look. It delivers excellent speeds in our tests, even at longer ranges, and setup is refreshingly simple. Security protections are solid, but privacy settings could be better.

This is a good deal on a wireless router that does quite well in our ratings. It’s not a mesh router, but if a single-unit router is sufficient to envelop your home in WiFi, this one should do a good job. Our testers note high speeds (technically referred to as “throughput”) across near, medium, and far distances, as well as useful features like automatic firmware updating (which helps keep you and your data safe) and the ability to manage everything from a smartphone app.

Mesh systems are the best way to banish WiFi dead zones forever, and the Deco XE75 Pro is a fine example of just such a system. This 2-pack system uses the newer WiFi 6E standard, which opens up a “fast lane” for compatible devices, reducing interference from your neighbors’ networks. With coverage up to 5,500 square feet, it can blanket a large home in reliable signal. Getting a high-performance 6E mesh system for under $160 is a rare find, making this one of the standout networking deals of the week.

The Netgear Nighthawk EXS27 is a smart solution for a single stubborn dead zone, like a back bedroom or an office over the garage that your router can’t quite reach. You plug it into an outlet roughly midway between your router and the weak spot, and it picks up the existing signal and rebroadcasts it. The catch is that an extended signal is usually slower than the one on your main network—often by about half—so it’s better suited to email, browsing, and video calls than to heavy 4K streaming. If your whole home has spotty coverage rather than one bad corner, a mesh router system is usually the better fix.

Our testers often sing the praises of black-and-white laser printers, especially for anyone who prints a lot of text documents and not much else. The models are more reliable and far cheaper to use than a standard color inkjet. This model from Canon produces crisp, clear text and does it fast. It has auto-duplexing for easy two-sided printing and wireless printing, so you don’t have to plug your laptop into the unit. Plus, it’s compact enough to fit nicely in a small space.

If you’re looking to invest in an all-in-one printer capable of serving a small office, this Canon laser is a smart choice. It prints top-notch text, and quickly. It has an integrated scanner, copier, and fax machine, plus automatic two-sided printing. It doesn’t excel at printing graphics, but that’s to be expected with a black-and-white laser. The good news is, along with these upfront savings, you’ll also spend relatively little over time on toner as laser printers have significantly lower operational costs than traditional inkjets.

If you want a reasonably low-cost home printer that can produce clear and crisp text documents at a clip, this black-and-white Canon imageCLASS LBP122dw laser printer earns our stamp of approval. Canon laser printers are also particularly reliable, according to survey data of CR members, which means they’re less likely to give you grief later on. This model doesn’t scan or copy, though.

The Apple Pencil USB-C is generally accurate and smooth, making it a good choice for sketching and note-taking. But it’s slightly less sensitive than the Apple Pencil Pro and less responsive than the Gen 2, which makes it somewhat harder to control. It offers palm rejection (so your hand won’t interfere while drawing) and tilt support, which allows for realistic shading and pencil-like strokes.  This model doesn’t support pressure sensitivity, meaning the thickness of your lines won’t vary based on how hard you press down. That can be a drawback for digital artists, but many creative apps allow you to manually adjust brush size or weight, so pro-level work is still possible, albeit with more manual input. The other trade-off is that the stylus charges and pairs via the USB-C port rather than the wireless charging and pairing of the Pro or 2nd Gen model. It can attach to the side of your iPad for easy storage, though.

To go with the iPad, this Digiroot stylus is a reasonably low-cost option if you just want to take notes or doodle. But it’s a bit challenging to control if you’re looking to create detailed art, our reviewer says. It’s prone to leaving erroneous marks, which she had to clean up. It offers palm rejection and tilt support, but no pressure sensitivity. The model charges via USB-C and doesn’t require pairing. Just turn it on and write away. And, unlike some other third-party options, this one can magnetically attach to the side of an iPad.