This Portable Beats Speaker Is Back To Its Black Friday Low, Amazon Clears Out Stock For Memorial Day
Memorial Day couldn't have arrived any sooner for music fans, as Amazon just dropped an unbeatable deal on the Beats Pill travel-sized Bluetooth speaker. As warmer weather brings outdoor bashes to everyone's to-do list, this waterproof speaker is flying off the shelves. Whether you're planning lazy afternoons by the pool, beach days with friends or backyard barbecues, the Beats Pill is the perfect companion for all your summer adventures.
It's the first time in a long while that we've seen the Beats Pill return to its Black Friday low: Now available for just $99, down from the regular $149, you're saving a full 33% which is a rare discount for a speaker that's become a staple for anyone who wants powerful, portable sound.
See at Amazon
Great Sound
The Beats Pill is popular for its seriously loud and room-filling sound, thanks to a custom racetrack woofer that moves 90% more air for deeper, punchier bass. The redesigned tweeter ensures crisp highs and rich mid-range tones while the woofer's advanced materials help minimize distortion even at high volumes. The Beats Pill delivers a listening experience that's far beyond what you'd expect from such a compact device.
IP67-rated, it is dust- and water-resistant, so bring it to the pool, beach or wherever your summer adventure goes. Its soft-grip silicone backing and removable lanyard make it easy to carry and its rugged construction means that it can withstand a bit of rough and tumble without batting an eye. It's designed for life on-the-go, so it's the perfect mobile speaker for outdoor play.
With 24 hours of playback from a single charge, you can listen all day and well into the night without ever worrying about battery life. And, as an added bonus, it's also a power bank: just plug your phone or other devices in via USB-C and top up your battery wherever you're at. That extra convenience gets you ready for whatever the day has in store.
Beats Pill pairing is easy regardless of whether you have an Apple or Android device: It boasts instant one-touch pairing and will pair automatically across your other devices. With the feature to use Find My or Find My Device, you'll never misplace your speaker. You can even pair two Beats Pills for an even bigger stereo sound experience.
With Memorial Day sales in high gear and summer just beginning, this is the perfect time to kick your portable audio up a notch. Don't delay, though: with demand this high and stock taking off the shelves, this Black Friday style deal won't last forever.
See at Amazon
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Chicago Tribune
an hour ago
- Chicago Tribune
‘The Better Sister' review: Estranged sisters reunite after a husband is murdered. Cue the intrigue.
Jessica Biel and Elizabeth Banks star in the eight-episode Amazon series 'The Better Sister,' about a wealthy woman and the estranged sister who comes barreling back into her world when her husband is murdered and her teenage stepson is charged with the crime. Twenty-five years ago, this adaptation of Alafair Burke's novel would have been an Ashley Judd movie with a tight, hour-45 running time: Part thriller and part mystery, as a woman comes to terms with the lies behind her upscale life. That kind of thing can be fun, if not especially deep, which is why streaming's tendency to expand stories over multiple episodes undercuts the propulsion needed to keep everything frothy and moving with enough economy that you're less likely to question whether any of it makes sense. Biel plays Chloe, the impeccable, girl-bossified editor of a magazine who seemingly has it all. It's a very thin characterization, but it does convey her supposed flawlessness. She's married to Adam (Corey Stoll), a corporate lawyer, and is stepmother to Adam's withdrawn teenage son Ethan (Maxwell Acee Donovan), but there's a secret: Chloe is also Ethan's aunt. Adam's previous wife was Chloe's older sister, Nicky (Banks), whose marriage to Adam fell apart — and her parental rights were severed — when she was found face-down in the pool one day, zonked out on pills and booze, and her toddler son nearly drowned. But that's too sordid a story for Chloe's public image, so she's portrayed herself simply as the stepmom who stepped up. She and Adam travel in high-end circles, befitting their income and ambitions. Their New York apartment has a wraparound terrace. There's also a house in the Hamptons, and that's where Chloe finds Adam dead in a pool of blood. What the hell happened? Suddenly, Nicky, who Chloe has erased from her life, is back in the picture and causing havoc as the police investigate the murder and zero in on Ethan, who had tensions with his father. That's one plot line. The more central (and interesting) narrative is the complicated relationship between Chloe and Nicky. Like Meghann Fahy in 'Sirens,' Banks is playing a very actressy version of messy and down market, chewing the scenery as a working class addict who is crassness personified next to her sister, who oozes perfection, right down to her razor-sharp bobbed haircut. Kudos to Biel for bucking the trend of long, beachy waves; breaking from that homogeneity is refreshing to see on screen. Biel looks amazing in that bob and it also speaks to who Chloe is, a woman putting intense effort to an idealized exterior meant to mask a more unpleasant upbringing. Chloe's ruse works for the most part. Even her ultra-fit physique telegraphs competence and control; it doesn't matter that everything is falling apart behind closed doors because people rarely look past the surface. I'm focusing on the visuals because they're doing more than Biel's performance, which is serviceable if not especially gripping. Adapted by Olivia Milch (daughter of David Milch) and Regina Corrado (whose credits include David Milch's 'Deadwood'), the series keeps you on your toes in terms of the whodunit, while plying you with the kind of aspirational lifestyle content that is so prevalent on television right now. No one is trustworthy. Is Chloe being played? By whom? By everyone? It's hard to care because she's presented as such a vacuous picture of faux feminist perfection at the outset. Chloe's patron saint is a glamorously formidable, well-connected power player embodied by a terrific and entertainingly slippery Lorraine Toussaint, who treats the role like an exercise in capturing something akin to 'Dynasty'-era Joan Collins. I love everything about the performance. Is she Chloe's friend or her worst nightmare? Then there's Adam's cravat-wearing boss, played by an equally slippery Matthew Modine. The cops keep turning up (an itchy Kim Dickens and the more watchful Bobby Naderi) and casting aspersions. And what are we to make of Ethan's attorney (Gloria Reuben), who seems like she's on the up and up, but is also close with a colleague of Adam's (Gabriel Sloyer), and maybe that's suspicious. The dynamic between the sisters may be predictable, but it works. When Chloe gets an iced organic matcha, Nicky gives her a look like, 'Are you for real?' Their bickering, at turns tense and mildly funny, is where the show is at its best, when Biel and Banks aren't being asked to play types, but to connect on a more fundamental level. 'The Better Sister' — 2 stars (out of 4) Where to watch: Amazon
Vox
an hour ago
- Vox
Why does Amazon want to scan your palm at the doctor's office?
is a senior technology correspondent at Vox and author of the User Friendly newsletter. He's spent 15 years covering the intersection of technology, culture, and politics at places like The Atlantic, Gizmodo, and Vice. Amazon One palm scanners are in use at hundreds of locations in the United States, including NYU Langone Health hospitals and clinics. Vox/Getty Images An Amazon-branded palm scanner greeted me at my last doctor's office visit a few weeks ago. I'm not sure what I'd call the experience. Unnerving? Orwellian? Amazon One is a relatively new service from Amazon that lets businesses verify your identity after you wave your hand over a sensor. The technology first rolled out in the short-lived Amazon Go convenience stores in 2020 and is now a way to pay for groceries at Whole Foods. It's also used for payment and age verification at a few sports and entertainment venues, including at Coors Field in Denver. And as of March, you can also scan your palm with Amazon One to check in at NYU Langone Health locations, which is where I encountered it. So far, you won't be forced to scan your palm to get a beer at a Rockies game or see an NYU doctor, but it's an option. In addition to its experiments in public venues, Amazon One is marketing its scanners as an alternative to the fobs and codes that let employees into their office buildings. Amazon is also working with hotel companies and manufacturers that make security doors and safety deposit boxes to incorporate its palm scanner. User Friendly A weekly dispatch to make sure tech is working for you, instead of overwhelming you. From senior technology correspondent Adam Clark Estes. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Biometric scanning refers to the process of capturing your unique physical characteristics in order to confirm your identity. Whether it's your palm, your fingerprint, your eyeball, or your face, the concept can feel creepy or invasive to some. Biometric scanning can happen without your consent, as was the case with Clearview AI, the company that built a massive facial recognition database from billions of publicly available photos online. There's also a permanence to the collection of biometric data. Once a company has the details of your face, you don't have much control over how that data is used. After all, you can't easily go out and get a new face. Something seems fundamentally threatening about a future in which big tech companies use biometrics to serve as the gatekeepers of our digital identities. Millions of people volunteer their faces or fingerprints, nevertheless, as a quick and convenient way to verify their identities and make life a little easier. With Apple's Face ID or Google's Face Unlock, you can keep the contents of your phone from prying eyes but avoid typing out an annoying passcode every time you want to check your texts. With Clear, you can skip the line at airport security. And with Amazon One, you can save a couple minutes of waiting at the doctor's office by scanning your palm instead of talking to a human. Nevertheless, something seems fundamentally threatening about a future in which big tech companies use biometrics to serve as the gatekeepers of our digital identities. What's especially disconcerting to me about Amazon One is that your biometric data is just another source of data that the company has about you. The tech giant, after all, is a massive enterprise whose businesses span from its eponymous marketplace to a health care company to a multibillion-dollar advertising network. It's not always clear how engaging with one Amazon-owned entity affects your experience with others. AWS, the Amazon division that operates Amazon One, specifies in a supplemental privacy notice that it will not share your palm data — effectively, the image of your hand — with third parties, although it also collects other data, including your phone number and your PIN, when you sign up. AWS, meanwhile, is clear in its broader privacy policy that it can share data about you with third parties, including advertisers. Then there is which is governed by its own separate privacy policies. Related Why your Amazon recommendations are getting a little too creepy When I asked Amazon about all this, spokesperson Alison Milligan said that your Amazon One profile is separate from your profile, and that Amazon One profile data is not used for marketing or shared with advertisers. 'Amazon One palm data is not accessible to Amazon business units outside of Amazon One,' Milligan said. Meanwhile, NYU Langone Health spokesperson Arielle Sklar told me, 'We do not share personal information with Amazon One, and Amazon One does not store any protected health information.' Still, privacy watchdogs caution that when it comes to massive tech companies, it's best to proceed with caution — the capabilities are enormous, and privacy policies can change. 'Amazon likely can infer unbelievably sensitive health care data about people, partly because they have so many different programs and so many different services,' said Calli Schroeder, senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, or EPIC. 'All of this stuff gets tied together and can be incredibly revealing.' Amazon calls its biometric offering a 'palm-based identity service.' You might call it the Everything Scanner. The key of the future is your body The concept of a digital key isn't all that different from physical locks that have been around since ancient Egypt. A password, in theory, is a key that lets you into a website or an account. Credit cards are a type of key too, since they unlock access to a bank account to make a purchase. The big change with biometrics, however, is that you no longer carry a key around. You are the key. The core argument in favor of biometric scanners is that they're more convenient and more secure than the old carry-the-key method. An Amazon One scanner works in less than a second, while tapping your credit card and entering a PIN can take several seconds. Those seconds add up, not just for you, the customer, but also for the business. Both parties also have to consider that credit cards and numbers get stolen with startling regularity. 'It's a lot harder to steal somebody's fingerprint or face print or palm print than it is to steal their cards out of their wallet or their pocket,' said Ash Johnson, senior policy manager at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, or ITIF. But it's not impossible, and when biometric data is stolen, it's incredibly valuable to hackers, because unlike a password, it cannot be changed. There was a major breach of biometric data in 2019, for example, when security researchers obtained the fingerprint and facial recognition data of over a million people. Had they been bad actors, they could have used the data — the code that represents real fingerprints and faces — to break into office buildings. Amazon also says it chose palm-scanning over other biometric approaches because palms don't reveal as much about a person's identity as a face scan would, and because a palm scan 'requires someone to make an intentional gesture,' which protects against unauthorized scans. I actually believe biometric scans are largely secure and the convenience is worth it for certain uses. I'm an outspoken fan of Apple's Face ID technology, and I've allowed Clear to scan my eyes in order to get through the airport security line faster. It's possible that my biometric data will one day end up on the dark web, but I was willing to take that risk when I was about to miss my flight. At the time, I hadn't considered whether I'd make the same trade-off in order to save a couple minutes at the grocery store or in a waiting room. The Everything Scanner It's not the idea of palm-scanning at my doctor's office that bothers me. The new system gives me pause because it's powered by Amazon. Like the vast majority of Americans, I like Amazon. I'm an Amazon Prime member, and a regular Amazon Fresh shopper. I visit my local Whole Foods at least once a week, and just as often, I watch movies on Amazon Prime Video. Thanks to all of these touch points, Amazon knows a lot about me, and I continue to be surprised by the ways Amazon combines my data in different ways — like the time Amazon recommended prescription medication based on my grocery order. It wasn't immediately clear to me what would happen when I put my palm on an Amazon One scanner at my doctor's office. Would basic details of my visit, like the time and location, get logged somewhere in my main Amazon account? Would I get ads for Ace bandages after visiting a sports medicine doctor? Would I get deals on heart-healthy options at Whole Foods after an appointment at a cardiologist? And what if Amazon changes its mind about protecting my biometric data or goes bankrupt, like 23andMe? Amazon denies that it's sharing data across its businesses this way, but it's hard not to feel wary. It starts to feel overwhelming when a website I signed up for 30 years ago to buy cheap books now wants details about my body in order to verify my identity. After winding through the labyrinths of Amazon's various privacy policies and even talking to the company, I'm still not entirely confident that I know exactly how it all works. I definitely don't believe that Amazon has access to my health records, and it's very clear that the image of my palm — my 'palm data' — is well protected. But the uncertainty surrounding any other metadata is enough to steer me toward a human receptionist for my next doctor's appointment. I also can't escape the implications of all this. Tech giants, like Amazon, only know growth, and so they continue to reach into new industries. That's business, sure, but it starts to feel overwhelming when a website I signed up for 30 years ago to buy cheap books now wants details about my body in order to verify my identity.
Tom's Guide
an hour ago
- Tom's Guide
Huge Lego sale is live from $5 at Amazon — 15 deals I recommend for Father's Day, summer gifts and more
Lego fans everywhere, drop everything — Amazon is currently slashing prices on Lego sets. Whether you're shopping for yourself or are looking for Father's Day deals, there are a ton of awesome discounts to be found. Right now Amazon's Lego sale has deals from $5. I've been keeping an eye out for discounts on the Lego Ideas Tuxedo Cat, and now it's on sale for $90 at Amazon. This price drop has me itching to add it to my cart. Or, if you're on a smaller budget, these pretty Lego Roses are on sale from $11 at Amazon. Keep scrolling to see all my favorite Lego deals. Plus, check out our Amazon promo codes, and see this Garmin sale with up to 50% off. Every Lego build starts with sturdy foundations. This Lego Classic Green Baseplate is on sale for just $5, which is perfect if you want to get started on a city or park build. It's square-shaped with 32 studs in each direction. Add a little sunshine to your day with these pretty Lego sunflowers. This simple build is excellent for anyone of any age or skill level. Plus, you can display them however you like in a vase or amongst real blooms. There's a LEGO set for every kind of hobby, and believe it or not, some are incredibly affordable — even less than $10. This Creator 3-in-1 set is particularly great because you get three different space-themed builds from the same pieces, including two spaceships or an astronaut. These Lego Roses really brighten up a living space, and they make for an excellent gift. The set comes with 120 pieces, and is relatively simple to build. What's more, these roses will never wilt! Lego Botanicals sets are super popular, but if your kiddo isn't quite old enough for them yet, this is the Lego deal you need. Suitable for ages two and up, this cute garden build comes with flowers, bees and other critters. There are also blocks marked one to five, to help teach counting. Nothing's more important than family... or this Lego Speed Champions Fast and Furious set. Based on the Nissan Skyline GT-R (R34) that appeared in 2 Fast 2 Furious, this set looks slick and it even comes with a Brian O'Conner minifigure. "The Mandalorian" fans will love this BARC Speeder Escape set, inspired by the throwback scene in which Kelleran Beq helps Grogu evade Clone Trooper capture at the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. Another great addition to your Lego Botanicals collection is on sale at Amazon. This Lucky Bamboo set comes with three stems in a pot, with a plinth to display it on. There's no watering required, so this is a great way to add some greenery to your home. Take your minifigures on a tour of Lego City with this double-decker sightseeing bus set. The bus has doors that open and close and space for the minifigs to sit inside or on the roof deck. Terrify and amaze all visitors with this Lego Jurassic World Dinosaur Fossils T. Rex Skull! This set comes with 577 pieces, allowing you to build a T. Rex Skull, footprint and an information plate. It's perfect for dinosaur lovers aged nine and up. What's better than plants? Tiny Lego plants! This Botanicals set contains a variety of brick greenery, including cacti and colorful flowers. Each one comes in its own pot. This has to be one of the most impressive looking Lego vehicle sets out there. With 801 pieces included, you'll be able to recreate the Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut Grey Hypercar, with doors that open, wheels that turn and more. This 583-piece collectible LEGO droid figure, inspired by "The Phantom Menace" and "The Clone Wars," can transform into the iconic ball shape. It also comes with a special LEGO Star Wars 25th anniversary brick for the display stand. The LEGO Star Wars Darth Vader Helmet is on sale at Amazon. It depicts in close detail the menacing Darth Vader helmet, making it perfect for fans of the dark side. It even comes with a name plate. This Lego Icons Fountain Garden looks gorgeous, and it's now on sale for a nice discount. With a Lego marble archway, fountain, and foliage, it's one of the best sets out there to add to your home decor. If you're a cat lover, this Lego Ideas Tuxedo Cat set is a must-own. Once built, it comes in a cute sitting pose, and has options for different eye colors and mouth positions. Just make sure your real cat doesn't knock it off your shelf.
