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I can't believe she's finally dead.

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Yep. Guess I'll need a new one then, but my budget for a tablet is only $300, I'd like to spend

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less if I can. Don't worry mom, I'm here for you.

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Thank you.

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And it's a good thing I am because the budget tablet market is a veritable jungle, full

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of predators. There's scummy manufacturers selling last decade's tech at this decade's pricing.

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There's devices loaded up with adware and spyware masquerading as deals.

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And sure, iPads are really great, but sadly iPads aren't $300.

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Or are they? We scoured the bargain bins to find the best deals, and we've come up with five tablets

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that won't waste your money or your time.

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And we found some big surprises. For one thing, Budget Tablet Kingpin Amazon is nowhere on our list this time around.

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And for another, there's the surprise segue to our sponsor.

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Let's kick things off with our sub $100 contender, Walmart's O&N 10.1 inch tablet.

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The last time we looked at a Walmart tablet, we called it the eWaste Special.

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They've upgraded their creaky plastic and plastic build with metal and glass.

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It not only feels significantly more premium than their older tablet, it even feels, I'd

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say, as good as Samsung's entrance in this roundup, which is twice as expensive.

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But while the build quality is excellent for the price point, the screen resolution is

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just $1280x800, which is pretty low for this size.

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It also isn't very bright, and it's not that pretty.

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Wait, where did you guys get my grade 4 report card?

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Making matters worse, the O&N has only 3 gigs of RAM, which slows down multitasking to the

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point where even updating apps in the background can render this tablet sluggish for minutes

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at a time. The O&N also lacks a headphone jack, though it does come with a slot for expandable storage,

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which you'll probably want to use because this thing only comes with 32 gigs of storage,

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10 of which are consumed by a surprisingly bloat-free Android 14-based operating system.

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That is a refreshing chain from the ad-ridden experience of most inexpensive tablets, which

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is probably the biggest argument for this thing. For all of its flaws, it's just $98.

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So at the very least, we have got to give Walmart a most improved award, even if it

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doesn't score an outright recommendation. If you know that your workload will be light and your eyes aren't too judgmental, or you

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want something that you can throw in the backseat to shut the kids up on a road trip, then this

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could be a perfect solution. Just be aware that Walmart doesn't seem to offer any promise of future software updates.

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And the same goes for our next pick, the AldoCube iPlay 50 Pro Mini.

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We decided to look at this one after seeing a surprising amount of enthusiasm for it on

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Reddit, and you know what? It is pretty slick, at least on paper.

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Basically, every aspect of it is significantly improved over our $100 tablet, making it better

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at multitasking, gaming, well, everything.

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However, while the internals might wow, the performance improvement really is very noticeable

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here, the externals are a little less impressive.

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The construction, while metal, lacks refinement, with parts that aren't flush, even the screen

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we actually measured is a little off-center. There's no biometrics of any kind, even if that is true of most budget tablets.

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And the single speaker is truly awful.

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Thankfully, though, you can at least plug some headphones in with the 3.5mm jack.

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And there are other things to like. It comes with a combo SD and SIM card slot, and the screen, while off-center, isn't half

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bad and includes a screen protector.

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It does suffer a fair bit when viewed off-axis, but its higher density than our last tablet

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making it much better for reading and watching and is a huge upgrade overall over the ONN.

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That is, assuming you care about more than just raw size.

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Like many unknown budget brands, I wouldn't expect much by the way of customer support,

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device updates, or accessories. We're running Android 13 with a year old security patch, which is a yikes.

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But that's kind of par for the course, and we were very pleased to find that unlike other

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budget tablets, we had no issues with Widevine support.

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What's Widevine, you ask? It's a form of digital rights management that's used by most major streaming services.

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It's what makes it so that when you try to screen record Netflix, it shows up black.

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Anyway, the part that matters is that we were only considering devices with Widevine level

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1. That's the level that will allow you to stream in HD rather than being stuck at 480p on Netflix.

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Moving on, if software support matters more than best hardware for your buck, you might

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want to take a look at our next contender. Now, I'm going to be real with you guys.

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Samsung's tablet lineup is large and confusing, ranging from excellent and expensive to complete

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dog s***, and they seem to go out of their way to make it darn near impossible to figure

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out which is which. For example, there's the Galaxy Tab S6 Lite, and you might think, hmm, okay, that must

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be a tablet version of the Galaxy S6 phone that came out over 9 years ago.

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But you'd be wrong. The S6 Tab actually came out 4 years after the S6 phone, then a year after that it was

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cut down a little bit to become the Tab S6 Lite.

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But the story is hardly over. That tablet was refreshed as the Tab S6 Lite 2 years after that, and then it got refreshed

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again this year and is still called the Tab S6 Lite.

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But enough about that. It's the A9 Plus that we're looking at today, specifically the 8GB RAM version, which we

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chose in hopes of getting a better multitasking experience.

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Like the competitors we've seen so far, the A9 Plus has a metal construction, but unlike

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those, it's lighter weight, which is kind of refreshing, a refreshing feeling that fades

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once you start using the thing. See, in spite of its name brand Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, it performs no better than the

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AldoCube and even manages to chug when just swiping between pages on the home screen.

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I think this has got to be a software issue. I mean, it has a high refresh rate 90Hz display that looks butter smooth when you're doing

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other things. But now that we're spending over $200, I don't really care whether it's the hardware

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or the software. I'm a lot less willing to make excuses for any kinds of issues.

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Maybe it's the infamous Samsung bloat? I mean, even if we exclude the 16 Superfluous Samsung apps, we got six random apps from

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third parties that were preloaded on this thing. Look, Samsung, I invited you into my home.

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I didn't say that you could bring all your friends. Don't get me wrong, it's a pretty decent tablet once you remove that crap.

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I mean, the display is kind of ghosty, but I would describe it as adequately sufficient.

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The lightweight build really is easier to hold for an extended period than our cheaper

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devices and the cameras are the best we've seen yet.

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Same goes for the speakers.

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It includes microSD expansion and it's even slated to get four years of software updates.

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However, it's still clear that Samsung has cut some corners in order to hit this price

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point. There's no real biometric authentication, no in-screen digitizer for S Pen stylus support,

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no support for decks with a monitor thanks to the USB 2 charging port, and it also has

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no headphone jack. Also, like our other budget options today, it supports only Wi-Fi 5.

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But if you can get over the Samsung isms, you've got a pretty well-priced tablet that

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will satisfy pretty much anyone who's using the device for primarily content consumption,

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and you also get a robust accessory collection that could even help you get a little bit

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of work done. Speaking of work done, check out the BBL on this Lenovo.

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Like, damn girl, she's a thick boy.

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With a large 11.5-inch display, eight speakers, and a built-in kickstand.

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The Lenovo Tab Plus is positioned as a media consumption monster, and I gotta say, it kind

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of delivers. The screen, while not the brightest, has great contrast and handles motion well, not to mention,

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gives plenty of room to multitask, and the speakers, wow, do they ever get loud, and

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not just loud, they're even good.

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They're probably the best ones in our roundup, which, spoiler alert, does include an iPad.

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Let's put a pin in that for now though, lttstore.com, and come back to the Tab Plus.

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The all-metal housing contributes to a very premium feel, but also results in a heavy

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tablet that can be a bit unwieldy to single hand.

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The integrated kickstand does help with this a lot, because you can just put it down, and

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OK, this is really cool. It opens up all the way to nearly 180 degrees, allowing for a nice drawing or note-taking

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angle with the sold separately stylus. It also comes with ample onboard storage, and RAM, and expandable storage too, and with

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their media focus, they also included a headphone jack.

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But you knew there was going to be a but. The processor, which it shares with the much cheaper AldoCube, is a bit of a downer, especially

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because of the way that it holds back an otherwise well-rounded desktop mode.

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My biggest issue though, is not the processor, it's the bloatware.

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Lenovo aggressively tries to trick you into installing unneeded games and apps while you're

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setting up the device, and even if you cleverly navigate their dark pattern obstacle course,

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you will still find that the device has automatically dumped a bunch of garbage on your home screen.

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I'm talking 17 additional apps, plus an apps-for-you folder on the home screen where you can download

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even more apps that you never asked for. It's confusing, and honestly disrespectful.

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But with that said, the worst offenders can be easily removed, and Lenovo is promising

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two Android version updates and four years of security updates, a pretty compelling value

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proposition at the usual street price of under $300 and sometimes as low as $250.

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Let's just hope they don't use those updates to cram even more ads into the user experience.

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Now, it's time for the big surprise. At the top of our price range, we've got the iPad 10th Gen, which, unlike last time,

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is brand new rather than recertified and is also, get this, pretty good.

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It's not without flaws, I mean, let he who has never removed a headphone jack throw the

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first stone. It's got stupid Apple Pencil support, a stupid Folio keyboard, stupid slow USB 2 speeds,

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and a stupid lack of expandable storage.

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But now that the cost of entry has dropped to $300, even below that in some recent sales,

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a lot can be forgiven, making the iPad maybe the easiest recommendation on the whole list.

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I mean, sure, the SoC in here is four years old, but unlike the rest of them, at least

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at some point it was a flagship tier SoC, which makes it more than enough for all but

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the most hardcore of tablet computing, and there's the screen.

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It's still an LCD, but it is a darn fine LCD.

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It's a nice LCD panel. And while Apple doesn't provide details on product support for the iPad, they have an

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excellent track record of OS and security updates, with most iPads getting anywhere from six

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years or more of full OS upgrade support.

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And thanks to Apple's battery replacement service, there's a solid chance that you

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will actually get that kind of lifespan out of the hardware.

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On the subject of battery life, while no tablet here struggled with every one of them

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managing what I would consider to be all-day battery life, the Walmart tablet surprisingly

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beat everyone else by a decent margin in our tests.

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Speaking of margins, if you're in the market for a cheap tablet, now is probably a pretty

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good time to pull the trigger, at least if you're an American.

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There is a strong possibility that tariffs are coming and you the consumer will be the

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one paying the price. One study showed that overseas produced tablets, so all of them, could go up in price by $200

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on average. I don't know that this will actually happen, and I doubt that it would hit this price point

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quite that hard, but what I'm getting at is cheap tablets might not be getting cheaper,

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so if you need one, now might be a good time. The question is, which one?

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For the money, the O&N tablet is pretty hard to beat.

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For the money. Then, my next best contenders have got to be the Tab Plus and the iPad 10th Gen, whichever

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one you can get for cheaper. If you're tech savvy, I do think the AldoCube iPlay 50 Mini Pro offers phenomenal value

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for what it is, but it's not the kind of thing that I would recommend for a normie

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relative like these ones are. And on the subject of being tech savvy, this is by no means an exhaustive list.

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The budget sector is a fickle beast with sales and price drops, part swaps and more, so let

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us know in the comments what options you tech savvy folks recommend, and in return, I'll

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let you know about our sponsor. If you guys enjoyed this video, why not check out our Holiday PC Buyer's Guide.

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It's got a build for every budget for the gamer on your list.