Save on tech thanks to these back-to-school Amazon deals

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As with every back-to-school season, you’ll find no shortage of deals floating around the web right now. To commemorate the new school year, Amazon has slashed prices on all kinds of tech for grade-schoolers to college students alike. Check out some great deals for tech-savvy students below.

The Echo Dot is a great way to experience all that Alexa has to offer. While not as loud or bass-y as the full-sized Echo, it’s quite close, and more than makes up for the loss of decibels with the dip in price. The Echo Dot can do things like play your favorite study beats, read you the news of the day, give you the weather, add items to your Amazon cart so you don’t forget to buy them later, and much, much more. If you’ve ever wondered what having an Echo around the house is like, this is a great way to dip your toe into the general Amazon ecosystem at a 20% discount.

AirTags are a great, affordable tech accessory to help users keep track of things that might get easily misplaced during the hustle and bustle of college (or even high school) life. You can put one of these in your backpack, on your keychain, or anywhere else to help you track it down at a moment’s notice. It features a one tap setup, and in addition to being able to zero in on an AirTag by checking out the map on your iPhone or tablet, you can also make it play a sound via a built-in speaker if you know it’s in the room but are having trouble finding it. If you or your kid are always misplacing things, this might be the perfect solution.

Every student needs a laptop, right? Luckily, if it’s going to be used mostly for internet research and word processing, you can find some super affordable options out there. This HP Stream has a 14-inch screen, Intel Celeron N4000 CPU, 4 GB of ram, 64 GB of storage and it comes with Office 365 Personal for a full year. Naturally, if you need to run CPU-intensive software like Photoshop or want a laptop that can be used for gaming, you’ll need to dish out a bit more cash for something more capable, but for run-of-the-mill school assignments and web browsing this should give you everything you need and more.

An iPad (or tablet in general) can be one of those things that seems tough to figure out why you’d need one, until you actually have one. For many, once tried, a tablet becomes indispensable. It can very quickly become your go-to way to consume news, read books, create art or music, control various smart accessories in your home (or dorm), browse the web without having to deal with a much heavier and more cumbersome laptop, and more. For most people, once you live that tablet life, you’ll never go back, and the iPad is still the undisputed king of the tablets. This one has a 9.7″ retina display, an 8MP rear cam, and 32GB of storage, which should be sufficient if it’s mostly being used for assignments, reading and web browsing. You can also take advantage of iCloud to free up some space. For the cost savings, it’s likely worth it.

The Echo Show 5 features a 5.5″ HD touchscreen, a full range built-in speaker and a 2 MP camera for video calls. If you’re tapped into the Amazon ecosystem already, it’s a great way to stay in touch with friends and family. If both you and a family member have one, simply ask Alexa to make a call to someone in your contacts list and she’ll take care of it. Of course, you can also use the Show to check out your calendars and reminders, to set voice timers, hear the news, or any number of other things. You can even check in on your home or dorm while you’re away with the Show’s built-in camera.

Headphones might not be the best idea for middle schoolers or high schoolers, but they’re essential for college living. Being able to tune out the world around you to focus on a task is invaluable on campus, and these wireless Sony earbuds let you do just that. They feature noise canceling and can even automatically switch between pure noise canceling or ambient sound, depending on the needs of the user. As with most earbuds nowadays, you can also make calls with the LinkBuds, which offer “Advanced Voice Signal Processing” to help improve the sound of your voice on the phone. These earbuds get up to 6 hours of battery life on a single charge – 20 hours with the charging case. They also feature quick charging, which can give you up to 60 minutes of listening time after just a 5-minute charge.

If the student in your life is a big bookworm, you might consider picking up a Kindle for them at a discount. Specifically, this one is the Kindle Paperwhite, a waterproof device made especially for readers. This is the lightest and thinnest Kindle and it features a 300 ppi glare-free display that is easily readable even in bright sunlight. Although the 32 GB storage capacity might seem small compared to most smart phones and tablets, if you’re just planning on using the device for eBooks (as most do), that should be more than enough, as 32 GB of space should be able to store several thousand eBooks without issue, depending on the size of the files.

If you want to store audiobooks on the device, you can do that too and take advantage of its bluetooth capability by syncing a pair of bluetooth headphones. Perhaps the best part of the device is that you’ll almost never have to worry about the battery as a single full charge should last most people several weeks rather than several hours.

Last but not least, grade school or college, every student should have a backpack. In this day and age, why not make it a tech-friendly one? This bag not only looks pretty stylish, but it’s also water resistant, durable, lightweight and has a steel frame with reinforced edges in the main compartment, perfect for laptops or other tech. There’s also a USB charging port built into the side of the backpack, with a charging cable inside, but you’ll need to provide your own power bank. Finally, this backpack also has an RFID protection pocket that’s great for protection against RFID scanners trying to steal your info.