is a commerce reporter for The Verge writing about the best deals and gadgets. He previously wrote for Business Insider, Rolling Stone, Futurism, and Popular Science.
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Black Friday is still a week away, but Sony has already slashed the price of three PlayStation 5 models. The PS5 Digital Edition (slim) is down to around $399 ($100 off) — its lowest price of the year — at Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart. The standard PS5 (slim) is also on sale for around $449 ($100 off) at Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy.
If you want a more powerful console, the PlayStation 5 Pro is now available at Amazon, Walmart, and Target for around $649 ($100 off), matching its lowest price to date. These deals are particularly noteworthy because Sony raised the price of every PS5 console in late August due to U.S.-sanctioned tariffs. These deals are available now, and the sale runs until December 18th.
The PS5 Digital Edition is the least expensive version of Sony’s latest console. It has a slightly rearranged port configuration compared to the standard PS5, and lacks a disc drive, so you can only play digital games. If you want the option to play physical games or Blu-rays, you can pick up an external disc drive designed to work with the system for $79.99. The PS5 Digital Edition comes with 1TB of internal storage, but you can swap out its NVM M2.0 SSD with a higher capacity drive if you run out of room. However, the PS5 will only work with a drive that has a heatsink, like this variant of Samsung’s 2TB 980 Pro.
The standard PS5 Slim has the same basic design as the Digital Edition of the system, but has a built-in disc drive, so it can play physical games or Blu-rays right out of the box. The console is less expensive than the combined price of a PS5 Digital Edition and the PlayStation external disc drive, so it’s a better choice if you have a stack of PS5 games and movies ready to go.
As for the soup-ed up PlayStation 5 Pro, it features a better GPU, faster memory, improved ray tracing, Wi-Fi 7 support, and AI-powered upscaling. These technical improvements allow it to play some games at higher resolutions or frame rates than a standard PS5, though no games are exclusive to it. Our reviewer didn’t notice a noticeable graphical improvement between playing a game on the PlayStation 5 and the PlayStation 5 Pro unless he sat closer than 10 feet away from his TV. Additionally, only “PS5 Pro Enhanced” games can take full advantage of the console’s additional horsepower.
The console lacks an internal disc drive, but is compatible with the same external disc drive as the PS5 Digital Edition. The PS5 Pro also comes with 2TB of internal storage, which is double the amount you’ll find in non-Pro versions. You can still swap out the system’s internal SSD for a higher capacity drive, but you may not need to as quickly.
Even more PlayStation Black Friday deals
Discounts on PS5 consoles are the main attraction of PlayStation’s Black Friday sale, but you can also score a discount on accessories. The selection includes the PlayStation Portal and a PlayStation VR 2 bundle, which are both at their lowest prices ever. The DualSense and the more premium DualSense Edge controllers are also on sale, with up to $30 off. These deals are also available until December 18th — or while they remain in stock.