Don't Miss This Apple Deal: Swipe $130 Off the Award-Winning iPad 9th Gen
PCMag editors select and review products independently. If you buy through affiliate links, we may earn commissions, which help support our testing.
Here at PCMag, we're always on the hunt for great deals on tech, which is why we love . Every day, you can find a new selection of discounted electronics, including some of our favorite, brand-name devices. As an added perk, Amazon Prime members qualify for free standard shipping. The one catch is that the best deals don't last very long, usually selling out within the day. This means you have to shop smart and shop fast.Today, you can save over $130 on the award-winning ninth-generation Apple iPad, and grab a pair of Samsung Galaxy Buds FE for less than half price. Plus! The Logitech Ergo M575S Wireless Trackball Mouse is on sale for just $35. Let's take a closer look at the daily Woot deals.
The ninth-generation Apple iPad packs in a ton of features for the price and easily outranks most low to midrange Android tablets. In addition to the bright, crisp, and vivid 10.2-inch LCD display screen, it boasts an ultra-wide front-facing camera for better video calling and peppy performance from its A13 Bionic chip. While digital artists might want to consider the Apple iPad Air, this entry-level model offers excellent media streaming and basic work performance, especially with an attached Smart Keyboard or the first-generation Apple Pencil. It earned both our Editors' Choice and PCMag Best of the Year Awards in 2021, and remains a top bargain for most iPad users, especially with an extra 30% discount right now.
Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 10.5" 32GB Wi-Fi Tablet for $216.66 (List Price $229.99)
Apple iPad Air 10.9" 64GB Wi-Fi Tablet (2022 Release) for $549.99 (List Price $599.00)
Lenovo Tab M10 Plus 32GB 10.61" Tablet (3rd Gen) for $249.00
Currently on sale for under $50, the Samsung Galaxy Buds FE are an affordable but quality option for Samsung users. They provide above-average noise cancellation with a bass-forward sound signature and crisp mics. Per our 2023 review, one of the biggest perks is how seamlessly they integrate across the Samsung device ecosystem. If you're an Android user looking for capable earbuds on a budget, these are for you.
Apple AirPods Pro 2 ANC Earbuds With USB-C Charging Case for $169.00 (List Price $249.00)
Beats Studio Wireless Noise Cancelling Earbuds for $99.95 (List Price $149.95)
Soundcore P20i True Wireless Earbuds (Black) for $19.99 (List Price $39.99)
Google Pixel Buds Pro 2 Wireless Earbuds (Hazel) for $189.00 (List Price $229.00)
Sennheiser Momentum Sport Wireless ANC Earbuds (Graphite) for $199.95 (List Price $329.95)
Unlike your conventional computer mouse, the Logitech Ergo M575S is designed to fit your hand comfortably and naturally, resulting in as much as 25% less muscle strain in your forearm, according to the company. It relies on thumb manipulation of the blue trackball for clicking, scrolling, and navigating, which makes it an especially compelling alternative for right-handed folks who tend to experience wrist pain. Plus, you can customize functions and settings, including the trackball's sensitivity. We gave it a rating of "Excellent" in our 2021 review, and right now, it's discounted to just $35 – but you have to use the promo code ERGOFIVE to get this price.
Logitech G502 Lightspeed Wireless Gaming Mouse for $96.67 (List Price $119.99)
Logitech G703 Lightspeed Wireless Gaming Mouse for $64.99 (List Price $99.99)
Razer Basilisk V3 26K DPI Optical Mouse for $44.99 (List Price $69.99)
SteelSeries Aerox 3 Wireless Super Light Gaming Mouse for $59.98 (List Price $99.99)
Logitech G305 Lightspeed Wireless Gaming Mouse for $30.99 (List Price $49.99)
Be sure to check out additional Woot tech deals for even more savings!
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For example, you can now use a spacious Navigation pane to search for text instead of the cramped old Find dialog. An Editor pane (formerly the Proofing pane) also replaces the old spell-check dialog, too. If you use a mouse, Word's multiple-pane interface works beautifully. But if you don't want to move your fingers from the keyboard, getting to these panes quickly is a challenge. Pressing the F6 key lets you jump to one of Word's panes from the editing screen or ribbon, but these panes still don't respond to many traditional keyboard shortcuts, such as Alt + Down to open a drop-down menu. Another recent controversial change is the removal of Track Changes balloons in the left margin. If all you need to do is type a report or a letter, then Word's ribbon interface gives you easy access to every feature you need. But if you want to customize formatting or use advanced features like fields that contain variables—which you can change throughout a document with a single command—you might need to customize your keyboard or ribbon with components Word doesn't usually display. Beginners can get started by choosing among hundreds of elegant, downloadable template designs directly from the app's New menu. If you want to concentrate on the text you're writing, a distraction-free Focus mode is available. Just click the Focus button on the toolbar (you might need to enable it from the right-click toolbar) to launch a full-screen editing mode with just a scrollbar and no visible menus. At the same time, advanced users can configure the interface to show a cornucopia of detail. Right-click on the status bar at the foot of Word's window to get an idea of the dozens of things it can tell you about your document. If you haven't spent half a lifetime learning Word, some behaviors might frustrate you. For example, Word adds a horizontal line at the foot of a paragraph if you type a few too many dashes by default, and then doesn't let you easily delete it (you need to use the border drop-down menu in the Paragraph section of the Home tab to remove it). And if you want to change the length of the separator line between text and footnotes, you might not easily guess that you can do so only by switching from the default Page view into Draft view and accessing the drop-down menu in the lower pane of that window. You can stop Word from adding border lines—and other things it does automatically, such as creating numbered lists—by customizing its auto-format features. However, you need to navigate through multiple dialog boxes to find all the options, some of which are inconvenient to manage. For example, you can tell Word not to flag grammar issues as you type, but you can't turn off the distracting grammar-checking in the Editor pane without turning off dozens of individual options, one by one. To help you find features and support topics, Word (and other Microsoft 365 apps) includes a prominent search field in its title bar. For instance, if you can't remember that you need to open the Ribbon menu's Insert tab to edit headers and footers, simply type Insert Header, and Word will bring up the relevant menu. However, this dialog won't tell you where to look on the ribbon for the feature in question or always bring up the correct menu. For example, if you search for the Master Document feature, which lets you build a large document from separately editable chapters, Word takes you to a completely different feature for displaying multiple pages in a single window. The search tool finds the Master Document feature only if you find it first; changing the View setting from Print Layout to Outline causes the Ribbon to show the Master Document menu. Word also sometimes makes formatting errors. For example, while I was working on this review, I also worked on another document containing many book titles. Word suddenly decided to italicize everything in two pages in the middle of the document, not just the book titles. Restoring the correct formatting took more than an hour. The Master Document feature is notoriously unstable, sometimes losing track of which parts of the document belong in the Master Document itself. Unless you're a Word wizard, you might not know that Word stores the formatting of the current paragraph inside the paragraph mark at the end of it—you can't even see this mark until you click the Show/Hide button (which looks like a paragraph mark) on the Home tab. If you delete the invisible paragraph mark between two paragraphs (for example, by backspacing across a paragraph break), the format of one paragraph might change to match the format of the other. I've wasted many hours restoring formatting that Word changed without warning. Word's layout options are sometimes a pain. If you want to change page margins in the middle of a document, you have to create a new section. Doing so, however, disrupts any automatic footnote and endnote numbering. Almost every other modern word processor imitates Word's nonsensical layout rules, except for WordPerfect, which lets you change margins anywhere in a document without affecting anything else. If you or your organization still has Word files from 20 or more years ago, Word now refuses to open them. Why? Because Word's old file formats supported macros that run automatically and can potentially damage your system. Other word processors, such as LibreOffice and WordPerfect, can safely open and import these old documents because they can't run these macros at all. You can persuade Word to open some but not all old documents by changing settings in the Trust Center on the Options menu. Word has the most full-featured programming language support of any word processor, the same Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) as in Excel and PowerPoint. It's not an easy language to grasp, but anyone can learn the basics by recording a macro and then studying the resulting code in Word's built-in Visual Basic editor. LibreOffice and Corel WordPerfect also have powerful macro languages, but Word's is so universal that you can quickly find help online. Mac users can alternatively use the easy-to-learn AppleScript scripting language to automate Word. Excel continues to outclass every other spreadsheet app in terms of speed and power, with the latest version further widening the gap. Google Sheets is almost on par in terms of processing speed, but it lacks a desktop app and isn't as capable. LibreOffice Calc is the best desktop-based rival to Excel, but it's slower and far less feature-rich. Apple's Numbers stands out for its ability to create graphics-rich, easy-to-manage worksheets, but it isn't as powerful or suitable for advanced corporate or financial use. Unlike Word, Excel is low on frustrations and always easy to navigate. It's even beginning to pick up some of the graphics-based features of Apple's Numbers. Excel does have automated formatting and layout features like Word, but these work reliably with the structured data that goes into an Excel worksheet (as opposed to the free-form prose you type into Word). I especially like Excel's Power Query feature, which saves hours of effort by converting raw data from web-based tables or comma-separated data files into a lucidly formatted Excel worksheet, complete with sorting buttons at the top of each column. The same feature exists in both the Windows and macOS versions, but looks better in the latter. Unfortunately, the macOS edition tends to get new features long after the Windows and web-based versions. For example, the Check Performance feature that can clear unused metadata and other unnecessary details isn't in the Mac version yet. But at least it now has the nifty Flash Fill feature that makes it easy to, for example, create a column of full names from separate columns of first names and last names. Among the hottest new features in Excel is a spacious Python Editor pane for modifying any Python code that you enter into cells in your worksheet. You can test your code here before entering it into your worksheet, and even see how it executes, cell by cell, so you can easily debug any problems. If you're ready to try out Python in Excel, you can find it in the Formula tab of the Ribbon or simply press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+F2. Another impressive feature is the ingenious XLOOKUP function that makes it simple to display a value from a large array of data. For example, you might have a column that lists stock symbols and another that lists their current prices. You can then type in a stock symbol somewhere else in your worksheet and assign another cell to display the price of said stock. (You use the XLOOKUP formula in the second cell.) A dynamic array feature lets you create a formula in the first cell of a table that returns data from all the rows in the table, no matter how many rows it contains. That way, you don't have to know in advance how many rows your table will contain. This is an extension of the aforementioned Flash Fill feature. Finally, the app allows you to use a picture as the content of a cell (rather than having it float over the spreadsheet) so that it moves with its row or column of data. You can import pictures from a web address, and the cell's contents will update if the picture on the web changes. Excel now works as well on the web as Google Sheets. It lets you share just part of a workbook, such as a range, table, or chart. Collaborators can edit the data in these specific areas without the ability to share or modify anything else. This is an extension of an earlier feature that let you create a custom sheet view for specific people that shows only what you wanted them to see. Additionally, if you use Microsoft Forms to gather data, Excel can automatically update a live worksheet whenever someone submits a form. Traditional presentations never go out of style, no matter how many people dislike them. PowerPoint keeps adding innovations that make presentations easier to create and watch. A new Presenter Coach feature tells you to summarize your slides instead of simply reading them and alerts you to filler words like 'um.' A Record tab in the ribbon creates a video of you narrating your presentation and lets you read your text in a teleprompter tab at the top of the screen, so you don't have to keep looking down to read what you want to say. The Review tab includes a Check Accessibility function that allows you to test whether your slides have all the information that users who rely on screen-reading software need. PowerPoint's ease of use extends to its ability to add a live camera feed to all slides without inserting the feed into each slide individually. Earlier, it added a feature that records your freehand inking for playback later. If you're creating traditional presentations in Windows, PowerPoint is your only serious choice. Keynote is similarly superb for creating elegant slide decks from an Apple device. But if you're creating something for the web, consider an innovative alternative like , which creates non-linear presentations in which you zoom in and out of a large canvas. The complicated Outlook you know and probably don't love is finally destined for the recycle bin. Microsoft's new Outlook app (see the image below), available as part of Microsoft 365 or from the Microsoft Store for free, also replaces the old default Mail and Calendar apps on Windows. The revised email app does much of what the outgoing one did, but has a refreshingly simpler interface (though you can still switch back to the previous version as of publishing). Many Outlook alternatives are available. Thunderbird for Windows and Mac is free and has the most powerful search features of any mail client. Apple Mail works especially seamlessly within Apple's ecosystem. And of course, Gmail is available on the web and mobile. The latter version is uniquely easy to use and flexible, though the Outlook mobile app is also compact, elegant, and fast. The latest version of Outlook adds S/MIME encryption and lets you manage .PST files from the older app. If you have a Microsoft 365 subscription, Outlook now checks your spelling and grammar in an Editor pane like in Word. However, the translation features from the older Windows version of Outlook aren't available yet. A sidebar in the new Outlook app with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneDrive icons confusingly opens the web versions of the app, which might not even have the files you're looking for. Issues like this mean it still needs more fine-tuning before it can fully replace its predecessor, but it does continue to improve rapidly. The biggest new changes in the Microsoft 365 apps are the Copilot AI features. I especially like Copilot's presence in Excel, where it suggests useful ways of graphing data that would otherwise require some expert programming. Its capabilities in Outlook, PowerPoint, and Word are less impressive, however, and I turned them off after testing. Like rival AI systems from Apple, Google, OpenAI, and others, Copilot is better at organizing existing data than generating new content. Ask it to create a year-to-year percentage change in Excel, and it gets the job done in a few seconds. Ask it to write a Word document about anything that involves human beings and their life or work, and it produces wordy, overenthusiastic prose. At the time of testing, it often 'hallucinated,' meaning it invented facts that vaguely resembled the reality I asked about. If you're tempted to use it, make sure to check everything it says. I don't advise using Copilot to write an email for you in Outlook. It tends to open a message with 'I hope this message finds you well,' a phrase that tends to signal that you used AI to write the message. Every message I asked it to write used too many words to say what a real human being could have said in just a few. Unless you really want Copilot, you should go to the Options menu in Microsoft 365 apps and turn it off. If you don't, Word will open new documents with a prompt to use Copilot, and the Copilot icon will appear in the margin every time you start a new paragraph. If you don't intend to use these features at all and are eligible, you should downgrade to the aforementioned, cheaper, and Copilot-free Microsoft 365 Standard subscription.
