It’s smart home week here at The Verge, where we have a variety of articles to help demystify the overwhelming world of the smart home and help you decide on the right system for you. And conveniently, you can get Amazon’s staple smart speakers today for their lowest prices yet. The best deal is on the fifth-gen Echo Dot with a clock, which is selling for $34.99 ($25 off) at Best Buy and Amazon. The tiny speaker has frequently gone on sale since it launched last year, but it usually dipped down to $39.99.

The clock-equipped Echo Dot is small enough to fit just about anywhere in your home and offers music, weather, news updates, and Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant. The latest model has improved sound, more useful tap controls, and a temperature sensor that can tell you the temp in the room or even activate an Alexa Routine to kick on your HVAC system when that room gets too hot or cold (if you’ve got a compatible smart thermostat system). The fifth-gen Dot can also extend an Eero mesh Wi-Fi setup. It’s a handy way to get more out of this little speaker if you’re pretty entrenched in Amazon’s smart home ecosystem. Read our review.

If you don’t see much need in having a visible clock display on your smart speaker, the standard fifth-gen Echo Dot is also on sale for its best price — dropping to $27.99 ($22 off) at Best Buy and Amazon. It’s got mostly the same benefits and features of the Dot with the clock display (including the temperature sensor and Eero extender functionality), but it’s just a little bit cheaper. Personally, I think the clock is nice to have, but if you’re buying a small handful of these or sticking some in your home where they will be heard but not seen, then it doesn’t hurt to save as much as possible.

This week, both Target and Amazon are offering mix-and-match buy-two-get-one-free deals on select video games, tabletop games, movies, and books. The lowest-priced item of your selected trio will be the free one, so this is a great opportunity to, for example, pick up three full-priced video games (Target / Amazon) like Diablo IV ($69 on PlayStation 4, but upgradeable to PS5), Resident Evil 4 ($59.99 Xbox), and Dead Island 2 ($69.99 on PS5).

Other notable games included in this promotion include Star Wars Jedi: Survivor ($69.88), Dead Space ($69.99), and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II ($69.99) on PS5 at Target. As of now, Target seems to have a slightly better selection of titles, but if history is any indicator, more titles may be added (or subtracted) throughout the week.

If video games aren’t your bag, both Amazon and Target have a variety of movies, toys, and books included in the promo, ranging from The Super Mario Bros. Movie on Blu-ray ($24.99) to Gloomhaven Jaws of the Lion board game ($25.49).

SSD prices keep falling like rocks, and today, one of Samsung’s go-to drives for the PlayStation 5 is at a new all-time low. The Samsung 980 Pro 1TB NVMe SSD with a heatsink is now $69.99 ($60 off MSRP) at Amazon. Or, if you prefer more storage, the 2TB version of the same drive with a preinstalled heatsink is $139.99 ($60 off) at Amazon or Best Buy.

With the built-in storage of a PlayStation 5 only offering 667GB of usable space, the console fills up fast if you don’t take advantage of its versatile M.2 slot. A game like Diablo IV, for example, takes up 80GB — about 12 percent of the PS5’s SSD. So do yourself a favor and avoid playing the uninstall-reinstall shuffle because that game is even less fun than The Lord of the Rings: Gollum.

Monday, Monday — so good to save

• If you don’t mind buying something for December in June, the Hallmark Keepsake Sega Genesis holiday ornament is selling for $12.95 ($10 off) at Amazon. It’s a faithful miniature reproduction of an original Genesis console with two controllers and a Sonic the Hedgehog cartridge inserted. The best part is when you flick it on and it loudly plays the classic “SEGAAAAAA” fanfare sound effect, followed by a short segment of classic Sonic music. You owe it to yourself to adorn your tree with this come the holidays, especially if you were a Sega kid.
• The Echo Studio smart speaker, Amazon’s largest and best-sounding of the Echo range, is on sale for $159.99 ($40 off). The Studio is a great addition to an Amazon Alexa-powered smart home if you already own other Echo products and want something much better for quality listening time. Read our review.
• Monica’s review of Apple’s new 15-inch MacBook Air just went live this morning, and the laptop looks to be a slam dunk for anyone wanting an affordable Mac with a big screen. And thankfully, you can still preorder a base 256GB model for $1,249.99 or an expanded 512GB configuration for $1,449.99 ($50 off) at Amazon ahead of tomorrow’s launch day. Read our review.
• Sony’s LinkBuds wireless earbuds are selling for $128 (about $52 off and their lowest price yet) at Amazon in either black or white. The unique-looking earbuds offer nice quality sound but with an open design that keeps you aware of your environment. Read our review.