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Weekend deal roundup: $4 Showtime, $600 Dell 2-in-1 laptop, $100 Echo Show 8 and more

Start your weekend off with some cool deals, including the best price ever on an Amazfit smartwatch.

Rick Broida Senior Editor
Rick Broida is the author of numerous books and thousands of reviews, features and blog posts. He writes CNET's popular Cheapskate blog and co-hosts Protocol 1: A Travelers Podcast (about the TV show Travelers). He lives in Michigan, where he previously owned two escape rooms (chronicled in the ebook "I Was a Middle-Aged Zombie").
Rick Broida
4 min read

Welcome to the weekend, fellow cheapskates! I've got some spectacular deals rounded up today, including an all-time-low price on a great smartwatch and a touchless soap dispenser for just 11 bucks.

Before we dive into all that, did you know there's a Cheapskate podcast? It's not just an audio version of this blog. Fellow deal-hunter Dave Johnson and I talk about myriad ways to save money, cheap alternatives to pricey products, amazing items for under $20 and much more. Hope you'll check it out! You can start right here, and the show is available everywhere you get your podcasts.

The GTS looks a lot like an Apple Watch. It's incredibly lightweight, with an absolutely stunning 1.65-inch (roughly equivalent to 42mm) AMOLED display. It offers heart-rate monitoring, activity tracking and all manner of notifications. Plus, it's water-resistant to 5 ATM, meaning it's suitable for the shower and pool.

I did some brief testing last year and liked it a lot, particularly the speed and consistency of the raise-to-wake feature and the smooth responsiveness of the onscreen menus. The Amazfit app lets you choose from a few dozen watch faces (some cool, some classy, some geeky), but you can also load one that includes a custom background (like, say, a photo of the family dog).

Battery life is about on par with Amazfit's promise of 14 days, though lots of variables can impact power consumption. Of course, even if it manages only half that, it's a huge improvement over the Apple Watch and many others.

Promo code 30CNET should automatically apply at checkout when you use the link below. 

Any person on the street can get a free trial of Showtime for one month. If you decide to continue after that, however, the service will cost you $11. So consider this limited-time Groupon deal instead: You get one month of Showtime and five one-night Redbox movie rentals for $4 with promo code SAVE. Plus, your next three months of Showtime (if you decide to continue) will cost only $9 each.

It's not a huge savings overall, but Redbox Blu-ray rentals run $2 per day -- so based on that alone, this is a pretty solid deal.

(Editor's note: Showtime, like CNET, is owned by ViacomCBS.)

Update: This was down to $90 earlier today at Newegg, but that deal disappeared almost immediately after I posted this. So we're left with Amazon's sale, a repeat. It's not the lowest price on record, just the lowest right now. This is "the single best Amazon smart display, period," according to CNET's David Priest.

Still on the hunt for a remote-work or distance-learning laptop? This Dell model, on sale for $600, offers a pretty useful blend of desktop friendliness and portability. It's an Intel i5 system with 12GB of RAM and a 14-inch full-HD display with four viewing modes (including tablet).

There's not a ton of storage -- only 128GB -- but it's solid-state, which is the most important thing. Plus, you can easily expand it by way of external drives; the system has one USB-C port and two Type-A USB. The onboard graphics are fine for everyday work, but if you're hoping to play high-end games, look elsewhere.

I now have three hands-free soap dispensers in my house, including one of these -- and I really like them all. This one has been on the job only a few weeks, but so far it's working like a champ. (Your mileage may vary, of course.)

It's about as basic as they come -- you can't even adjust the amount of foaming soap that gets dispensed -- and it looks cheap and plasticky. Which it is. But I still like it.

As noted on the product page, you simply mix one part regular hand-soap with five parts water. Presto: foaming soap. This is way cheaper than buying specialized foaming soap, and it actually nets you more bang for the buck from your hand soap. Win-win!

Use promo code UQJQRWGD to knock the price down to just $11 -- one of the lowest I've seen for one of these. According to the vendor (LeconeDirect), there's a pretty limited supply available right now, so don't be surprised if you see a different seller listed or the code doesn't work. That means Lecone is sold out.

Today only, and while supplies last, this crazy-versatile speaker -- in your choice of funky colors -- can be yours for $99 (plus $5 for shipping). It originally sold for $300 and currently runs about $250 at Amazon.

Although this model dates back to 2015, the nice thing about speakers is they don't really "age out." The Zipp supports not only Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, but also AirPlay 2. All told, that allows for benefits like two-speaker stereo pairing, multiroom setups and so on.

Plus, it's portable, with a battery that's good for up to 10 hours. CNET never reviewed this version of the Zipp (only its much-less-good predecessor), but reviews around the interwebs are very positive overall.

This article was first published earlier this week. It has been updated to reflect expired or sold out deals. 

Watch this: Amazon Echo Show 8 review: Alexa is getting even better

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