The Prime Big Deal Days sale must have gone well as a lot of smartphones are showing as “out of stock” on Amazon – and for those that are still available, supplies are limited, so their prices went back up. We still managed to find a few good offers, but we’ll kick things off with a new release.
The vivo X Fold6 was released in China back in July. Now, October marks its global release. The phone is very expensive – there’s no sugarcoating it – but it’s also one of the premier foldables this year. In our review, we called it “arguably the most complete large foldable currently on the market.” It combines a well-built but comfortable body with flagship performance, great battery life and a substantially improved camera. It’s an amazing phone – if you can afford it.
The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra was €960 for a 12/256GB unit during the Tuesday-Wednesday sale – now it is €20 less. Note that the €940 price only applies to the Black, the White and the Sky Blue colors. Cobalt Violet is showing as €1,550. Anyway, if you want more storage, you are looking at €1,150 for the 12/512GB model. Strangely, this time around, the low price is only for the Cobalt Violet version, while the others cost more (€1,310 for Sky Blue and €1,750 for the others). The important thing to note is that the 512GB S26 Ultra was €1,015 during the Prime Day sale, so the 512GB version isn’t as good a deal as the 256GB version.
The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip8 has a massive 44% discount at the moment – but only for the 12/256GB variant. This is €20 less than the Prime sale price. However, the 12/512GB variant, which was pretty pricey during the sale, is now completely out of stock.
We rarely feature Apple devices in these weekly posts because Apple devices rarely have discounts worth mentioning – it’s common to see 5% off or similar, which is hard to get excited about.
The iPhone 17 is €100 off – that works out to 9% off – and we think that this is worth a mention. Apple.com still sells this model, but it costs €1,100 there. Alas, the 512GB model is only 5% off.
Apple.com no longer sells the Pro models from the 2025 generation, but you can still find them on Amazon. The iPhone 17 Pro is 10% off for the 256GB model and a better 12% off for the 512GB model. Here’s how the small Pro compares against the vanilla model.
The larger iPhone 17 Pro Max is in pretty much the same boat with 10% and 11% discounts on the 256GB and 512GB versions, respectively. The new 18 Pro Max has a smaller Dynamic Island, better battery life with faster charging and a more powerful chipset. And yet the experience it offers is mostly similar to the 17 Pro Max. Here’s how the old Pro Max compares against the S26 Ultra that we have listed above.
Another family of devices that rarely gets mentioned is Amazon tablets. The Fire tablets are alluringly cheap, but their hardware is as basic as it gets and they come with Amazon’s app store (though installing Google Play is easy enough). This week, Amazon unveiled the Alexa Tablets, which are much more traditional Android tablets, complete with full access to the Google Play Store.
The Amazon Alexa Tablet 12 Pro is easily the most powerful slate that the company has built yet. It actually has some premium features, the most interesting of which is the Nanomatte glass – Amazon worked with Corning to offer glare-resistant nano-etching. This is a €60 upgrade over the base model and you can push that further with 16GB of RAM and 256GB upgrade. The base model has an 8/128GB configuration. The Pro tablet is powered by the Dimensity 8400, which is massively more powerful than what the best Amazon Fire tablet has. Its USB-C port is wired for 5Gbps transfer speeds (USB 3.2 Gen 1) and it even has video out via DisplayPort.
Note that Amazon also released a keyboard cover and a stylus for the Alexa Tablet 12 Pro. You can get them in a bundle for €725 (this is for the 8/128GB standard glass model). The Nanomatte version of the bundle starts at €785 for the 8/128GB model and the fully kitted out 16/256GB Nanomatte bundle is €895.
The Amazon Alexa Tablet 11 feels a lot more like the Fire tablets – including having lock screen ads, which you can remove for €20 (the Pro tablet doesn’t have ads). This model uses the MediaTek MT8189 chipset and has 8GB of RAM – this is double the RAM compared to the Fire Max 11. All three Alexa tablets have aluminum unibodies, expandable storage and the Alexa+ AI built in. Only the Pro tablet has a fast USB port, though. This one and the one below have USB-C 2.0 ports.
The Amazon Alexa Tablet 8 has an 8.7” screen despite its name. It has the same mystery chipset as the 11” model but with only 4GB of RAM and 64GB storage. There is a 128GB storage variant, but it doesn’t come with a RAM upgrade. This costs more than double the price of a Fire 8 tablet, but you can expect much better performance.
We’re painfully aware that smartphone prices have been going up instead of down in recent months. The same applies to laptops too, so let’s check in with the Apple MacBook Neo. It’s currently 10% or so off and there aren’t many laptops in this price class that can match its build quality. The soldered 8GB of RAM is the Neo’s Achilles’ heel. However, rising component costs have forced Windows laptop makers to launch new models with 8GB too. And macOS handles the 8 gig confines better than Windows.
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