The sun is setting on the summer and a new school year is beginning. If that has you bummed out, these Labor Day weekend sales are sure to cheer you up. In fact, Labor Day weekend is the best time of the year to stock up on some new kit for work or school, and it’s one of the last big retail events we’ll see before Black Friday.
If you want to strike while the iron is hot and are looking for some juicy Labor Day weekend deals, now’s the time and this is the place. We’ve already combed through all the offerings to bring you the best picks you can grab right now from the 2021 Labor Day weekend sales, with massive discounts on everything from smart gadgets to laptops.
Amazon Echo Dot — $35, was $50
Amazon
The Amazon Echo speakers are hugely popular even among folks skeptical of the whole “smart home” thing, due in no small part to how affordable they are. The Echo Dot series represents the cheapest entry point into the Alexa AI ecosystem and is a great addition to any tech-savvy home. The Echo Dot 4th-gen redesign gives you all the capabilities of a smart speaker, while its new spherical shape allows for surprisingly impressive audio output for such a small device.
Ring Video Doorbell 3 — $140, was $180
Ring
Video doorbells are a quick way to smarten up your home security and make it easier to keep an eye on things, and Ring is the go-to name in this burgeoning market. The Ring Video Doorbell 3 is one of the brand’s newer offerings, featuring a 1080p video feed (sent right to your mobile device), improved motion detection, and even night vision capabilities. It’s easy to install and set up, and even works with Amazon Alexa if you have a compatible device like the Echo Dot smart speaker.
11.6-inch Gateway Ultra Slim Notebook — $169, was $199
You might remember the Gateway brand from the early consumer PC era, and the brand is now back as a Walmart exclusive. But we’re not talking big, clunky, beige-colored desktop computers: This 11-inch Gateway notebook is light as a feather and can go with you anywhere. Its dual-core Celeron CPU, 4GB RAM, and 64GB of flash storage are suitable specs for basic use, and it comes loaded with Windows 10 S so it’s compatible with your Windows software. It even includes a free year of Microsoft 365 personal — a $70 value all in itself — making this one of the best Labor Day weekend deals for anybody who needs a cheap mobile workstation.
Apple AirPods Pro — $190, was $249
Apple almost single-handedly kicked off the true wireless earbud revolution with its AirPods, and the newer AirPods Pro improve upon everything that makes the originals so popular. The most notable enhancement was sound quality paired with excellent noise cancellation that make the AirPods Pro a worthy upgrade for audiophiles, and Amazon’s Labor Day weekend sale is your chance to grab pair of what might be the best true wireless earbuds for Apple users at one of the best prices we’ve seen.
iRobot Roomba 676 Robot Vacuum — $224, was $275
Robot vacuums are one of the earliest smart home devices to hit the market, and iRobot’s Roomba brand has become practically synonymous with these little mechanized helpers. The Roomba 676 is a great pick for anybody who wants to try a robot vacuum without paying nearly a grand for some of the higher-end models. Its straightforward design does everything you want a robot vac to do (it even works on carpets), and can automatically detect dirt and obstacles. You can also program and schedule it from the iRobot app, or you can sync it with your Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant smart speaker for easy voice control.
Apple Watch Series 6 (40mm, GPS) — $329, was $399
Andy Boxall/Digital Trends
Apple seems to keep inventing new mobile device market niches only to dominate them, and the Apple Watch is one of those products. The new Apple Watch Series 6 represents the pinnacle of the brand’s smart wearable design, refining everything we love about this smartwatch. It’s well-built, feature-rich, and almost boringly reliable, and also sports an excellent array of health- and fitness-tracking functions. In other words, it’s pretty much everything you could want in a smartwatch, and Labor Day weekend sales are your chance to grab one at a nice discount.
Apple iPad Air (64GB, Wi-Fi) — $500, was $599
Sitting somewhere between the standard iPad and the high-end iPad Pro is the iPad Air, but this “middle child” is so good you’ll wonder why people even bother with the Pro at all. The new iPad Air 4 release is particularly great, featuring a redesigned frame, a larger 10.9-inch display, and hardware that puts in nearly on par with the iPad Pro in terms of sheer performance. Its generous battery life, USB-C connectivity, and Magic Keyboard compatibility (meaning you can deploy this thing as a lightweight 2-in-1 laptop if you’re so inclined) are also some great new touches. If you want a top-tier iPad but don’t feel like shelling out nearly a grand for the Pro, this is the one.
Microsoft Surface Pro 7 with Type Cover Keyboard — $599, was $959
Riley Young / Digital Trends
What if we told you that one of the best touchscreen laptops on the market today is actually a tablet? That’d be the Surface Pro 7, the latest installment in Microsoft’s excellent Surface Pro lineup of Windows-powered tablets. Paired with a Type Cover keyboard, this 12.3-inch touchscreen device is more than capable of pulling laptop duty while still remaining slim and sleek enough to slip into your bag and be carried around with you all day. That 12.3-inch PixelSense display is a dream to look at, too, thanks to its crisp 2,736 x 1,824 resolution and 3:2 aspect ratio. This one sports a 10th-gen Core i3 CPU, 4GB RAM, and a 128GB SSD, and comes bundled with the Type Cover so you’ve got everything you need to get to work right out of the box.
70-inch Samsung 6 Series 4K TV — $650, was $700
In 2021, you don’t have to spend a fortune (or more than a grand for that matter) to score a nice big-screen 4K TV, even from top-quality brand names like Samsung. This Samsung 6 Series 4K TV comes in at a whopping 70 inches, so it’s the perfect size for your living room, man cave, or anywhere else you want to go big. Samsung is a leader when it comes to panel technology, too, so you can be sure that its Crystal UHD panel will deliver a great 4K HDR picture for all of your content. Its built-in Tizen software is compatible with all the major streaming apps and services, and it even has a dedicated gaming mode.
Apple MacBook Air — $850, was $999
We’ve complained for awhile that Apple was too slow to update the CPUs in its Mac computers, but the company totally blew us away last year when it rolled out its astonishingly good M1 chip. Better still is that the MacBook Air, the most affordable laptop in the Apple stable, was one of the first machines to get this processor upgrade. Along with the M1 CPU, this MacBook Air sports 8GB of RAM, a 128GB SSD, and a lovely 13-inch Retina display, which ticks all the boxes if you’re after a no-nonsense MacOS workhorse. And at this Labor Day weekend sale price — which is the cheapest we’ve seen it yet — the MacBook Air M1 is a downright steal.
17-inch Asus TUF Gaming Laptop — $850, was $1,000
Today’s gaming laptops can easily hang with the desktop big boys, and this new 17-inch Asus Tuf proves it. This beefy backpack-friendly battle station pairs a big 17.3-inch 144Hz display with an Intel Core i5 CPU, 8GB RAM, and one of Nvidia’s latest 30-series GeForce GPUs, the RTX 3050 Ti, to deliver excellent horsepower for gaming in a package that can replace your desktop. You’ve also got 512GB of solid-state storage to give you plenty of space for your digital game library. These Labor Day weekend deals let you score this awesome Asus Tuf gaming laptop for less than a grand, which is an incredible price for a portable PC of this caliber.
Should you shop the Labor Day weekend sales 2021?
Labor Day heralds the twilight of summer and the beginning of a new school year), and is the last major holiday of the season that brings major sales. October isn’t a big sale season and Black Friday lands at the end of November, so if you sleep on these Labor Day weekend deals, you’ll likely have to wait another couple of months to score worthy discounts on brand-name electronics.
If you’re not champing at the bit for new tech gadgets and you can afford to wait until Black Friday and Cyber Monday, then you probably will find better deals then. However, Labor Day weekend sales are every bit as good as other summer retail events (with the exception of perhaps Prime Day, which is more comparable to Black Friday), so you’ll still find plenty of good bargains here.
It’s up to you to decide if squeezing out some extra savings is worth holding out until after Thanksgiving, but even if you think it is, it can’t hurt to take a peek at the Labor Day weekend deals that are on tap — you might just see exactly what you’re looking for at the price you wanted. On the other hand, if you need something like a new laptop for work or school and you really don’t have the luxury of waiting until Black Friday, now’s the time to get shopping.
You naturally want to make sure that you’re getting a good deal, though, so it’s a good idea to do some planning before diving head-first into any of these Labor Day weekend sales. We always recommend setting a budget, but you should also familiarize yourself with retail prices and the usual “street” prices of whatever items you’re shopping for. A sale price that might seem at first glance like it’s offering a good discount off retail might actually just be a pretty normal price for that item even when it’s not marked down. Actually knowing what a product is going for outside of seasonal sales is the best way to avoid this trap.
Finally, exercise some caution when shopping at outlets like Amazon and Walmart that feature a lot of third-party sellers. We recommend sticking with Labor Day weekend deals from official outlets. This is where you’ll find the best bargains during big sales like this as the tech brands themselves like to run their discounts through the big retailers.
We strive to help our readers find the best deals on quality products and services, and we choose what we cover carefully and independently. The prices, details, and availability of the products and deals in this post may be subject to change at anytime. Be sure to check that they are still in effect before making a purchase.Digital Trends may earn commission on products purchased through our links, which supports the work we do for our readers.