The Verge’s 2025 holiday gift guide
The holidays have a way of sneaking up on us. One minute you're trick-or-treating with your kids, and the next you're panic shopping in a Buc-ee's gift aisle. But it doesn't have to be that way. With the right cheat sheet, you can keep the holiday spirit high and stress levels low.
Fortunately, we did some planning on your behalf. As much as we love playing with the latest gadgets and gizmos here at The Verge, we also love recommending them. That's why, after consulting with our expert team of writers and editors, we've compiled a medley of gift ideas that won't be regifted come this time next year - from noise-canceling earbuds and e-reade …
Sony’s XM5 headphones and the latest Kindle round out this week’s best deals
If you’re feeling the stress of having procrastinated on your holiday shopping — and you missed out during Black Friday and Cyber Monday — we’ve got you. We’ve found a variety of gadgets on sale that make for great gifts, many of which will ship in time for the holidays. One of the standouts is the current promo on Sony’s noise-canceling WH-1000XM5 headphones, which are on sale with a free pair of wireless earbuds. Other deals you may have missed include steep discounts on Amazon’s latest entry-level Kindle and the new Echo Dot Max.
Sony WH-1000XM5
Where to Buy:
Sony’s last-gen WH-1000XM5 have consistently impressed us with their audio quality, active noise cancellation, and comfort. And right now, Amazon is offering them with a free pair of Sony’s WF-C700N earbuds for $248 ($152 off). The headphones have an updated design that includes a thinner headband, more memory foam in the ear pads, and repositioned mics that reduce wind noise when taking calls. These changes didn’t add much weight, and the headphones still get 30 hours of playtime with ANC enabled.
The XM5 sounded “more refined, detailed, and spacious” in our tests, but we noticed less oomph when listening to EDM or hip-hop tracks with a lot of bass. The headphones have eight microphones, four of which are for voice, and their excellent noise reduction on calls was immediately noticeable, even in louder environments. The $89.99 WF-C700N, meanwhile, are a midrange pair of noise-canceling earbuds with an IPX4 rating, up to seven and a half hours of battery life (with ANC enabled), and a slim design.
Read our full Sony WH-1000XM5 review.
Kindle (11th-gen)
Where to Buy:
Amazon’s 11th-gen Kindle is our favorite budget-friendly e-reader, and you can pick up the ad-supported version for $89.99 ($20 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target. The entry-level ebook reader features a six-inch 300ppi E Ink display that won’t show glare from the sun like your phone or tablet. It has enough storage space to hold thousands of books, or dozens of audiobooks from Audible, the latter of which you can play via Bluetooth headphones or speakers.
The Kindle’s built-in battery lasts up to six weeks, depending on how long you read per day and how reliant you are on its backlight, and recharges over USB-C. It has the same screen resolution and storage as the step-up Kindle Paperwhite, but it’s not waterproof, which may matter if you like to read at the beach or in the bath.
Echo Dot Max
Where to Buy:
Amazon’s last-minute “Super Saturday” sale is underway, though, we’d argue some of the better deals are actually some the lingering discounts we’re seeing on Amazon’s own devices, many of which have been effect for several weeks. Right now, for instance, you can grab the new Echo Dot Max at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target for $79.99 ($20 off), which is the best price we’ve seen on the smart speaker since it launched.
Despite the name, the Dot Max is less of a follow up to the Echo Dot as it is the fourth-gen Echo from 2020. It’s got a compact knit fabric design, simpler controls, a better processor, and more smart home sensors and radios than prior models (it offers support for Matter, Thread, and Zigbee protocols). It still sounds great for its size, though, and like prior models, it can function as an Wi-Fi extender if you’re looking buoy a Eero mesh network. It’s also one of the first devices to offer Amazon’s AI-powered Alexa Plus out of the box, which, while still very much a work in progress, is a step in the right direction.
Read our full Echo Dot Max review.
Several more great deals
- Hollow Knight: Silksong is one of the best games we’ve played all year, and the PC version is down to an all-time low of $15.99 ($4 off) on Steam as part of the store’s annual Winter Sale. The boss battles and platforming sections of the difficult-but-fair Metroidvania require persistence to clear, but feel great when you do. You’ll face over 200 enemies and 40 bosses as you make your way through Pharloom, and you’ll need to refine your techniques using weapons and traps to find the best way to take them down. Read our hands-on impressions.
- If your room needs a little more fun, Amazon and Target have knocked the price of the Lego’s “Up” House down to $30.39 (about $30 off) for a limited time. The 598-piece set includes mini figures of Carl Fredricksen, Russell, and Dug the dog, along with the kit’s titular house — complete with plenty of balloons. Turning the house around reveals a lot of detail within different rooms, with custom bricks depicting props from the movie.
- We once dubbed the Keychron V1 Max the “Toyota Corolla of keyboards” because of its reliability and value. That’s especially true today, given Amazon has marked the model with quieter Silent K Pro Red switches down to $95.99 ($24 off), which matches the lowest price we’ve seen on the mechanical keyboard. Each key can be remapped in the Keychron Launcher web app, and you can swap its switches to suit your preferences. You can also alternate connecting the V1 Max to your device with a USB-C cable, 2.4GHz adapter (included), or Bluetooth.
The best last-minute Christmas gifts you can grab for under $50
Holiday shoppers, it's time to finish knocking out that seasonal wish list. At this point, your online purchases may not arrive in time unless you're willing to pay extra for priority shipping - or you happen to get lucky. Still, gifting anything at all is awfully nice of you, regardless of when it arrives. If you're shopping on a budget of $50 or less per item, we've crafted this gift guide specifically for you.
Below, we've assembled a delightful set of practical gifts that can improve just about anybody's life. Quince silk pillowcase can make for a blissful night's sleep, for instance, and your giftee will surely think of you while using …
The LCD Steam Deck is done
The most affordable Steam Deck, the $399 LCD model, is not available in the US. And, according to the Steam Deck site, it won't be coming back. Underneath the listings for the various models is a note that says:
We are no longer producing the Steam Deck LCD 256GB model. Once sold out, it will no longer be available.
And, well, it's no longer in stock on the US site.
Valve's decision to phase out the Steam Deck LCD is disappointing. That means the most affordable Steam Deck is now the 512GB OLED model, which costs $549, quite a bit more than the former entry-level version.
We've reached out to Valve for comment, but have yet to hear ba …
Dogpile’s puzzles mix Balatro, Tetris, and a pile of puppies
One day, video game critics and journalists will put together a comprehensive study on the impact Balatro had on the industry - of how so many games that came after tried to capture its essence by adding complex systems to otherwise simple, easily understood games. Until then, I'm gonna play Dogpile.
Dogpile is a deckbuilding match-3 roguelike that builds on the style of merge games like Suika Game by adding a Balatro-like twist. The result is a cute, cozy (in both genre and vibe) game that appeals to both the numbers-go-up and the dog-loving sicko in me. Drop matching dogs on top of each other to create bigger dogs that reward you with poi …
You can buy your Xbox Ally an official pair of anti-drift joysticks
Even at $1,000, the Xbox Ally X handheld didn't ship with magnetic drift-resistant joysticks, and neither did the $600 model. But for an extra $20 at Amazon, you can change that today - with officially Asus-approved and sanctioned TMR joysticks from Gulikit, the company that's made a name for itself by supplying aftermarket drift-resistant sticks.
The company says it worked with Xbox Ally manufacturer Asus to create these sticks, that they'll be "automatically recognized" when you swap them in, and that you can use the handheld's built-in Armoury Crate app to calibrate them afterwards.
And while I haven't tried these ones (I do have a pa …
‘Friend slop’ made co-op gaming goofier than ever in 2025
When a friend invited me to play a new game called REPO earlier this year, I thought I was wasting my money - not because the game looked bad, but because it looked like Lethal Company. The surprise-hit 2024 co-op survival horror game has players wander through unnerving ruined structures collecting trash while evading monsters. Lethal Company was popular with my friends (and just about everyone else), but its eerie liminal spaces spooked me too much. My friends swore REPO was different, though, that it was so funny it was hard to be scared, especially with its goofy robot avatars - and they were right.
REPO has become one of my favorite ga …
Rivian’s AI pivot is about more than chasing Tesla
RJ Scaringe is sitting in Rivian's Palo Alto offices, explaining why the adventure-themed EV company suddenly decided to build its own self-driving cars, when an unexpected guest glides by the window outside: Waymo.
A robotaxi from the Alphabet-owned company pulls up outside the office. The passenger, an analyst from Goldman Sachs, briefly takes a selfie before climbing inside. The Rivian founder and CEO chuckles at the scene.
"That's amazing," he laughs. "So perfect."
The arrival of the Waymo helps clarify the challenge that lies ahead for Rivian. A few hours earlier, Scaringe was onstage in front of an audience of hundreds of investor …
The sold-out Nex Playground made my kids laugh and cry
If you told me last year the Nex Playground would outsell Microsoft's Xbox, even for two weeks, I would have laughed my way out of the room.
It's a three-inch cube of a game console that's likely less powerful than your phone, one which uses a single camera to track your body. It only plays curated, certified kid-safe games. Though frequently compared to the Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Kinect, the Nex Playground is worse than either at tracking motion.
Nor is it cheap: $250 upfront plus $89-a-year or $49-a-quarter subscription to get more than a basic sampler. If you like a game, you can't buy it separately. Many are little better than sho …
Want to link from Google’s app store to your app? That’ll be $2–4 per install
Today was the deadline for Google to reveal how it's complying with Judge James Donato's order to crack open Android for third-party app stores, stop illegally tying its Google Play Billing system to its app store, and let developers link to ways to download their apps outside the Play Store in the US.
But Google isn't just letting app developers do things however and whenever they'd like. The company's quietly updated its support pages with a January 28th deadline to enroll in specific Google programs for "alternative billing" and "external content links" - and these programs will come with large alternative fees of their own, assuming Jud …