Elden Ring and many other games are buy two, get one free at Amazon and Target

The week is nearly half over, but the deals are already vast. If you have time this summer to sink your teeth into some meaty video games or tabletop games, we’ve got just the right discount for you to check out. Amazon and Target are both running a buy two, get one free sale from now until Saturday, June 18th. It’s another mix and match-style promotion, where you buy two video games, board games, movies, or even some toys and get a third of equal or lesser value for free.

The current promo is a great opportunity to stock up on some excellent games that came out this year, like Elden Ring or the recently released Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, and you can even throw in a modern classic you might have missed, like Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. The choices are yours and yours alone, but one thing for certain is the fact that you have a whole lot of options here. Just add the three qualifying items to your cart at either retailer, and the discount will automatically take effect at checkout.

Is that the sound of the summer breeze gently enticing you with the warm embrace of the great outdoors? No, it’s the sound of some powerful ray tracing-capable video cards whirring away in a desktop PC and actually selling for a discount. After many shortages and rounds of limited restocks, it’s finally not a fool’s errand to build a PC now that GPUs are occasionally getting notable discounts — that is, unless you want to be on the bleeding edge and plan on picking up the next-gen 40-series when it launches next month.

If you’re in the market for a top-tier video card for your build right now, Antonline is selling the EVGA RTX 3080 Ti FTW3 graphics card for $1,129.99 (about $300 off) and the EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti XC3 for $1,099.99 (about $230 off). These are some beefy, 12GB cards that support 4K gaming at 120Hz with ray tracing and DLSS without breaking much of a sweat, and both are coming in at cheaper prices than Nvidia’s base-model reference 3080 Ti card — which currently runs $1,199.99. Read our review.

EVGA RTX 3080 Ti FTW3 Ultra Gaming

EVGA’s RTX 3080 Ti FTW3 PCIe 4.0 video card has 12GB of GDDR6X video memory, support for ray tracing and DLSSS AI scaling, and a bright strip of RGB lighting across its metal housing and three-fan array.

EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti 12GB GDDR6X XC3 Ultra Gaming

EVGA’s RTX 3080 Ti XC3 PCIe 4.0 video card has 12GB of GDDR6X video memory, support for ray tracing and DLSSS AI scaling, and a slightly smaller frame compared to the pricier FTW3 model. It sacrifices a bit of boost clock speed and has a more modest LED lighting setup.

Amazon’s latest Echo Dot is currently available for $27.99 in all colors at both Amazon and Best Buy, which matches the smart speaker’s lowest price to date. It doesn’t get much better than this $22 discount on the base-model Dot, though if you are new to the world of smart home tech, you may want to consider buying the $32.99 bundle that pairs the fourth-gen Dot with an Amazon Smart Plug. The discounted combo gives you easy access to Alexa in the room of your choice, with the smart plug lending some extra functionality to even an old-fashioned device. In addition to playing music or asking for the weather, for example, you can tell Alexa to turn on a traditional light you have plugged into the Smart Plug — or even set up some advanced timers using the Amazon Alexa app on your phone or tablet. Read our review of the Echo Dot here.

Echo Dot (fourth-gen)

The latest Echo opts for a spherical build and better sound while maintaining its approachable price tag.

Another great deal currently available in the smart home space is the Amazon Smart Thermostat, which is on sale direct from Amazon right now for $47.99 ($12 off). The current deal price matches the thermostat’s lowest price to date and makes it an even better value than it normally is — which is saying a lot given the excellent device ticks most of the boxes the average person needs, even at $59.99.

Amazon’s Smart Thermostat is the cheapest smart thermostat you can buy and easily syncs with the Alexa, allowing you to set timers, program schedules, and heat or cool your home more efficiently than with a traditional thermostat. Of course, since this is Amazon’s ecosystem, you won’t get any Google Assistant functionality or Apple HomeKit compatibility. Amazon wants you to use its services, and a handsome thermostat that’s cheap and still good at its job is a clever way of accomplishing that. Read our review.

Amazon Smart Thermostat

Developed in partnership with Resideo, the Amazon Smart Thermostat allows you to control the temperature of your home through Alexa voice controls and remotely via an app.

A few more Wednesday deals to check out

• LG’s 27-inch 27GN800-B Ultragear — which is currently on sale at Amazon for just $276.99 ($73 off) — is a very affordable gaming monitor with a 144Hz refresh rate that’s capable of QHD resolution. If you don’t mind 1080p resolution, Amazon is also selling its 240Hz counterpart, the LG 27GN750-B, for a new all-time low of $226.99 ($123 off).
• The preorders for volume one and volume two of the upcoming Elden Ring Official Strategy Guide by Future Press are both discounted to $29.99, making owning the complete set cost $59.98 as opposed to the original list price of $49.99 per volume. This isn’t just a strategy guide for the massive game, however, but an intriguing lore repository that is sure to turn heads when the first installment arrives later this summer.
• Satechi is offering a sitewide discount in the lead-up to Father’s Day, knocking 20 percent off USB hubs, multi-port dongles, and other accessories with promo code FATHERS.
• One of our favorite laptops, the 13.5-inch HP Spectre x360 2-in-1, is on sale for $1,479.99 ($250 off) right now at Best Buy. It’s the best 2-in-1 Windows laptop you can get for your money, and it’s configured with an Intel Core i7 CPU, 16GB of memory, and a 1TB SSD. Read our review.