Welcome to the “Winter Sale” season, that magical time of year when retailers desperately try to offload the inventory they couldn’t bribe you to take during the holidays. Today’s spotlight shines on a collection of “deals” that are being framed as life-changing opportunities, but a quick look under the hood reveals the same old tech industry smoke and mirrors. Let’s dive into why your wallet should probably stay in your pocket.

First up, we have the **Apple M4 Mac Mini**, now discounted to a “staggering” $499. The tech press is salivating over this “economical” choice, but let’s be real: $499 buys you a very fast, very small paperweight. Apple’s “bring your own everything” philosophy is the ultimate bait-and-switch. By the time you add a monitor that isn’t a blurry mess, a keyboard that doesn’t feel like typing on a sponge, and a mouse that isn’t the ergonomic equivalent of a pebble, you’ve spent enough to buy a MacBook Air.

Furthermore, bragging about 256GB of storage in 2025 is an insult to the consumer. That’s barely enough space for the operating system and three 4K videos of your cat. To get a usable amount of storage, you have to pay Apple’s “luxury tax”—where NAND flash memory is priced like it was harvested from a meteorite. Calling a base-model Mac Mini a “daily driver” is like calling a tricycle a “daily commuter”—sure, it moves, but you’re going to look ridiculous trying to get anything serious done.

Then there’s the **Iniu 45W Power Bank** for $18.86. The author replaced a recalled Anker model with this, which is a bit like replacing a faulty toaster with a discount flamethrower. We’re supposed to be impressed by a built-in braided cable that doubles as a lanyard. Because nothing says “sophisticated tech enthusiast” quite like swinging 20,000mAh of potentially volatile lithium-ion batteries around your wrist like a medieval flail. It’s “not particularly fancy,” which is code for “it’s a plastic brick that will live in your junk drawer until the built-in cable inevitably frays, rendering the lanyard feature—and your dignity—useless.”

Moving on to the **65-inch LG C5 OLED**, currently “discounted” by over $1,500. Let’s talk about that MSRP of $2,699.99. No one—and I mean absolutely no one—has ever paid nearly three grand for a 65-inch C-series LG. It’s a phantom price designed to make a $1,200 tag look like a heist. While the C5 is a great TV, claiming it’s a “steal” because of a massive discount off an imaginary price is the oldest trick in the retail playbook. Plus, buying a high-end OLED through an eBay coupon code is a bold move for anyone who enjoys the peace of mind of a straightforward manufacturer warranty and a return process that doesn’t involve three weeks of disputed claims.

And who could forget the **Beats Fit Pro** at Woot? The claim here is that there’s “little difference” between these and the newer models, except for the $110 price gap. Here is a fact: the Beats Fit Pro used a proprietary wing-tip design that is notorious for tearing after a year of heavy use. Buying “last-gen” earbuds from a clearance site like Woot means you’re likely getting stock that has been sitting in a warehouse long enough for the battery chemistry to start questioning its life choices. But hey, at least you’ll have “Apple ecosystem tricks” to distract you while the left earbud dies 20 minutes into your workout.

Finally, we have the **Elgato Stream Deck Plus** for $159.99. For the price of a mid-range smartphone, you get eight buttons and four knobs. Unless you are a professional Twitch streamer or an aspiring air traffic controller, spending $160 to “automate tasks” like opening Spotify or muting your mic is the pinnacle of “solving problems you don’t have.” It’s a desk toy for people who want to feel like they’re piloting a starship while they’re actually just procrastinating on an Excel spreadsheet.

In short: the Mac Mini is a storage trap, the power bank is a lanyard-shaped hazard, the TV discount is a mathematical fiction, and the Stream Deck is an expensive way to turn a knob. Happy shopping, folks—don’t let the “Winter Sale” frostbite your common sense.