The best Prime Day 2020 tech deals under $50 that are still kicking

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<em>Breath of the Wild</em>, along with a few other Switch games, have been discounted on Prime Day.
Enlarge / Breath of the Wild, along with a few other Switch games, have been discounted on Prime Day.
Mark Walton

Amazon’s two-day Prime Day event is kicking off its last day, and we’ve been diligently combing through it all for the best deals. While there are some higher-priced products seeing steep discounts—see our full Prime Day deals roundup for the details—we have a handful of our favorite deals under the $50 mark that’ll reward thriftiness.

Among them are desktop accessories, streaming devices, microSD cards, and a few more fun choices, like Nintendo Switch games and smart home gear.

While you may see some shipping delays on some picks due to Prime Day’s high demand, you can check out the full list below to nab yourself some cheap thrills.

Streaming device deals

The Roku Streaming Stick+ 4K HDR media streamer.
Enlarge / The Roku Streaming Stick+ 4K HDR media streamer.
Samuel Axon

Roku’s Streaming Stick+ and Premiere are good options for getting your home theater on, particularly if you need 4K and HDR support. Between the two, the Roku Streaming Stick+ has voice control and power/mute buttons built into its remote, as well as faster 802.11ac Wi-Fi. The Roku Premiere also isn’t a “stick” design, so it can’t disappear behind your TV quite as easily. But if you don’t have many wireless issues at home and want to save $10, both devices run the same easy-to-use (if aesthetically dated) Roku interface, open apps quickly, and support the same streaming services. It’s also possible to hook up either device to an Echo speaker for voice control via Alexa. Perhaps the biggest practical drawback to Roku devices right now is their lack of HBO Max support. That should come at a later date, but as of right now there isn’t a convenient way around it. If that’s important to you, you may want to grab Amazon’s Fire TV Stick 4K instead, which doesn’t officially support HBO Max (or Peacock) either but can sideload the apps with a little legwork. The Fire TV Stick 4K also supports Dolby Vision HDR, which these Roku devices lack. Amazon’s streamer was on sale for $30 on Tuesday, but the deal appears to have since expired.

A solid gift card deal

Here’s an easy one: If you pick up at least $40 in Amazon.com gift cards—or reload an existing gift card balance with at least $40—before Prime Day ends (at 3am ET on October 15), Amazon says it’ll toss in another $10 of promotional credit at no extra cost.

You’ll have to go through an email or two to redeem the credit, the offer can only be redeemed once per account, and the credit will only apply to products sold and shipped by Amazon itself. You’ll also have to redeem the credit by November 29. But if you plan to pick up a gift card before the holidays anyway, it’s a nice little bonus.

  • Get $10 promo credit when you buy an Amazon gift card of $40 or more or reload a gift card balance with $40 or more (use code: GC20PRIME).

Nintendo Switch games, PlayStation and Xbox subscriptions, and gaming accessory deals

If you've been using your Switch a lot, it might be time to give it (yourself) a present.
Enlarge / If you’ve been using your Switch a lot, it might be time to give it (yourself) a present.
Guillaume Payen/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Prime Day hasn’t brought a ton of blockbuster video game deals—we expect more of those around Black Friday—but there are a few offers worth noting. A number of first-party Nintendo Switch games, for instance, are down to $40, including essentials like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, Super Mario Party, and the tactical RPG Fire Emblem: Three Houses.

Not all of these deals are all-time lows, but, given that Nintendo is famously stingy about discounting its own titles, they’re still better prices than we typically see over the vast majority of the year. Better yet, many of the offers do not require Prime.

Over on the PlayStation side, meanwhile, the dramatic (and divisive) The Last of Us Part II is also down to $40, which matches the best price to date on a popular game that arrived this past June. Note that it will be playable on the upcoming PS5.

In terms of services, a three-month subscription to Microsoft’s Xbox Live Gold—which is still required to play most Xbox games online—is $10 off. A year of Sony’s PlayStation Now service, which lets you download or cloud-stream a reasonably wide library of games, is $18 off. Another deal bundles a 12-month Nintendo Switch Online family membership with a recommended 128GB SanDisk microSD card for $40. Given that said family membership normally goes for $35 and the Switch itself only includes 32GB of built-in storage, that’s a good value.

Finally, we’re still seeing a few good offers on gaming accessories for both consoles and PCs. We’ve previously tested and touted the lightweight Razer Viper as a great gaming mouse, for one. We can vouch for a few other discounted products, too, such as PowerA’s Moga mobile gaming clip, which fits nicely with newer cloud gaming services, and HyperX’s Cloud Stinger, one of our favorite budget gaming headsets.

The Razer Viper is currently a top pick among wired gaming mice.
Enlarge / The Razer Viper is currently a top pick among wired gaming mice.

MicroSD cards, desktop gear, smart home gadgets, and the rest

Satechi's Backlit Wireless Keyboard is little more than $50 at $59.99, but it's a worthwhile stretch with this discount.
Enlarge / Satechi’s Backlit Wireless Keyboard is little more than $50 at $59.99, but it’s a worthwhile stretch with this discount.
Corey Gaskin

Prime Day looks like a good time to pick up a new microSD card, as the 256GB version of Samsung’s EVO Select is down to a new low of $28. We’ve recommended this one before: it’s not as fast as a good V90 card, but for boosting Switch or Android phone storage, it’s good value for the large capacity and good-enough performance it gives back.

Photographers and video creators, meanwhile, might want to take note of the Lexar Professional UHS-II SD cards below. Meeting higher read/write times than the more common UHS-I cards, these are great for recording and offloading large 4K video files or hundreds of RAW photos in a snap. I actually jumped on a similar deal last year—and will need to again this year because, sadly, I lost mine.

Moving to smart home gear, we have a new lowest price on Chamberlain’s popular MyQ garage door opener, which enables you and up to three people to open your garage through your phone via Wi-Fi. For inside the house, Amazon’s Echo Show 5 smart display and (last-gen) Echo Dot speaker are still deeply discounted alongside the many other Amazon device deals we highlighted previously. Finally, yes, there’s one product here that’s over $50: the Satechi Compact Backlit Bluetooth Keyboard. Forgive us for cheating a bit, but, at $20 off, it’s the best price we’ve seen for a universal three-device wireless keyboard that topped the list in our working-from-home gear guide’s wireless keyboard section. The Razer Base Station Chroma headphone stand made that list for its RGB styling and USB-port extensibility, too, as did Satechi’s Aluminum USB Headphone Stand; both are conveniently down to new lows for Prime Day as well.

Here’s the rest of the under-$50 Prime Day deals we like:

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