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Processors are usually one of the most expensive line items when purchasing or upgrading a PC so it is worth waiting for major sale events such as Prime Day or Black Friday in an effort to secure the best prices.

Right now, Amazon is offering the Ryzen 5 9600X at its all-time lowest price, which is quite a plummet from the $279 that it commanded for months at a time. This Prime exclusive deal brings the price down to a mere $165 which is a massive 41% saving. With Prime Day kicking off early this weekend, now’s the perfect time to get your hands on one of the highest-rated processors (4.8 out of 5 on Amazon) out there before it sells out.

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Impressive Rating, Powerful Processor

The Ryzen 5 9600X is one of the most powerful processors in its class and it currently holds the best rating on Amazon with an impressive 4.8 out of 5 from hundreds of users. To access this deal, you’ll need to be a Prime member but Amazon offers a free 30-day trial if you’re not already signed up. Given how quickly these deals can disappear, it’s not a bad idea to act fast if you want to grab this all-time low price.

This Ryzen 5 processor is that it’s a great gaming and multitasking machine: Fueled by AMD’s next-gen Zen 5 architecture, it boasts 6 cores and 12 threads for silky-smooth gameplay with over 100 frames per second in the most demanding games in the world. Whether you’re gaming or creating demanding creative workloads, the Ryzen 5 9600X provides you with the kind of speed and responsiveness you crave. The boost clock of 5.4 GHz maximum offers scorching-fast processing and the unlocked platform lets you overclock it for even faster performance if you want to push your system to the next level.

The Ryzen 5 9600X is designed for the next-gen Socket AM5 platform so it’s ready for DDR5-5600 memory and PCIe 5.0 on some motherboards. This proactive design ensures your system will be future-proofed to handle the quickest storage and RAM out there so your PC will remain at the forefront of performance for years to come. The 38 MB cache helps speed up data access and reduces latency, and contribues to smoother overall performance whether you’re gaming or working with large files.

For gamers, the Ryzen 5 9600X is a dream come true: It’s engineered to deliver pure gaming performance, and achieves high frame rates even in demanding titles. If you desire a system capable of playing today’s games smoothly, this AMD processor is the perfect option. It’s also great for creators who need ample processing power to edit video, render 3D, or have heavy multitasking.

Don’t wait too long: deals like this don’t last, and stock is sure to go fast during Prime Day.

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SAVE 40%: As of July 6, you can get the Hisense 55-inch Class U6 Series Mini LED 4K UHD Smart Fire TV (55U65QF) for $477.99, down from $799.99. That’s a 40% discount and a $322 savings.

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Fourth of July has come and gone, and now we’re gearing up for Amazon’s annual Prime Day sales event, where you can find thousands of items on sale, including TVs. This year, Amazon isn’t being stingy with its pre-Prime Day TV deals, as we’re already seeing some models get major price cuts, with some hitting new all-time lows.

On June 30, the price for this Hisense TV dropped to an all-time low, and the deal is still live. As of July 6, you can get the Hisense 55-inch Class U6 Series Mini LED 4K UHD Smart Fire TV (55U65QF) for $477.99, down from $799.99. That’s a 40% discount and a $322 savings.

The Hisense 55-inch Class U6 Series Mini-LED 4K UHD Smart Fire TV (55U65QF) is a 2025 model TV, so you’re really lucking out with this deal. It features Mini-LED technology, which uses smaller LEDs to create a brighter, more realistic picture (deeper blacks and brighter whites). It has a built-in subwoofer, is compatible with WiFi 6, and supports both Dolby Vision and HDR10+.

Mashable Deals

It’s also a Fire TV, so the smart home screen will feel familiar and has all the streaming apps you’d expect. For movie lovers, there’s a cool Filmmaker Mode that disables the TV’s extra processing effects, letting you see the film exactly as the director intended.

This LiDAR-guided mosquito air defense system may seem like overkill, but with how annoying those little bloodsuckers can be during the summer, you won’t catch me complaining.

That’s the pitch behind the “World’s First Portable Mosquito Air Defense,” dubbed the Photonmatrix, a crowdfunded gadget from Changzhou, China. It uses a LiDAR scanner to track any mosquito buzzing in a 6m (19.7 ft) radius and zaps them with a galvanometer-directed laser before they can bite. The Photonmatrix can be powered by a smartphone power bank for up to 16 hours and even works in the dark.

Well well well — one month with the Switch 2, and we’re still swimming in eShop games. Yep, it’s time for eShop Selects for June 2025!

Who needs Mario Kart World when you’ve got backwards compatibility, eh? Just because we have a new console, doesn’t mean we’re just looking at Switch 2 games. And going forward, eShop Selects will be looking at eShop games on both consoles.

So, let’s run down the rules quickly; Game Key-Card and Code In Box releases won’t be included here, only eShop exclusives (at least in the West). Where a digital-only game has a Switch 1 and Switch 2 version, we’ll be focusing on the Switch 2 version. And we know some of these are and might get a limited physical down the line, but for now, they’re digital only, so they do count.

Okay. Other than that, things are basically the same — we ask our writers and contributors to pick their top three eShop games from June 2025 from what we reviewed, and the games with the highest total scores will make our top three. It’s a strong month this time around, too.

Windows Terminal is a modern replacement for the classic PowerShell and Command Prompt consoles, offering features that significantly enhance the command-line experience. Unlike the standard PowerShell console, which was quite limited in both interface and functionality, Windows Terminal provides a more advanced, customizable, and feature-rich environment.

Microsoft introduced Windows Terminal as a terminal emulator in 2019, during the Windows 10 era. It can emulate the behavior and functionality of command-line shells, including Command Prompt and PowerShell, while offering features that make it superior to both.

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Work in multiple tabs

No more juggling multiple windows

One of the most useful upgrades in Windows Terminal is its support for multiple tabs within a single window. In standard PowerShell, you’re limited to one session per window. If you need multiple sessions, you have to juggle several separate windows. Windows Terminal addresses this by allowing you to open new tabs for different sessions within the same window, much like a browser.

For example, you can run multiple instances of Command Prompt alongside PowerShell, Bash, or Azure CLI, all within the same window. This level of flexibility simply isn’t possible with the classic PowerShell console.

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Split panes for side-by-side tasks

See beyond tabs

Beyond tabs, Windows Terminal also introduces split pane functionality, which the standard PowerShell interface lacks. Split panes allow you to view multiple console instances side by side within the same window.

This is especially useful for real-time comparisons and monitoring. For example, a developer might run a build process in one pane while tailing a log file in another. Similarly, a system administrator could run PowerShell in one pane and Bash in another to execute commands simultaneously.

Instead of manually resizing and arranging separate windows, as you would with the classic console, you can split the Terminal screen using a simple keyboard shortcut.

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Multiple profiles

Windows Terminal is a central hub for all command-line tools

Windows Terminal works like a central hub for all your command-line tools. You can set up different profiles for different shells and launch them easily in the same window. Right out of the box, it supports PowerShell, Command Prompt, and any WSL distributions you have installed. So you can open an Ubuntu Bash session, fire up Azure Cloud Shell, or even connect over SSH in new tabs without ever leaving Windows Terminal.

The old PowerShell console, on the other hand, is pretty limited. It mostly sticks to just PowerShell or cmd, with no real way to bring in other environments easily. Switching between setups in Windows Terminal is super simple, and you can even give each profile its own color scheme or icon so you can tell them apart at a glance.

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Better customization and theming options

Take full control over how things look and feel

No one really asked for themes and customization in command-line tools, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth having. Windows Terminal gives you full control over how things look and feel. You can change the color scheme, pick custom fonts, adjust text size using Ctrl plus scroll, and even set background images or transparent acrylic effects.

Standard PowerShell is pretty barebones in comparison. You’re stuck with basic colors and a fixed font. Windows Terminal, on the other hand, makes it easy to create or import clean, polished themes. All the settings are stored in a JSON file, so you can tweak things exactly the way you want, and it’s not just about looks. Customization can help with usability, too. For instance, you can assign a specific color profile to admin sessions to avoid mixing them up with your regular ones.

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You get Unicode support and other handy features

UTF support, Quake mode, and more

Windows Terminal has strong Unicode and UTF-8 support, which means it is much better at handling international text and special symbols. PowerShell also has Unicode and UTF support, but you may run into problems with encoding issues, such as bugs and limitations with specific characters.

Windows Terminal handles Unicode by default, so scripts like Chinese or Arabic, mathematical symbols, and emoji display properly without any extra setup. This is especially helpful if you work with non-English data or use cross-platform tools that output Unicode.

Plus, Windows Terminal introduces several conveniences that the standard PowerShell does not offer. One popular feature is Quake mode. Inspired by the drop-down console in games like Quake, it lets you pull down a terminal window from the top of your screen with a single key press.

It also includes a command palette that allows you to search and run commands from a simple pop-up, similar to what you find in Visual Studio Code. There is also a focus mode that hides the title bar and tabs for a cleaner, distraction-free workspace.

Embrace the command-line

Command-line tools like Command Prompt and PowerShell can help you get more done in less time. For example, these six PowerShell commands are useful for troubleshooting Windows issues, while others can help automate tasks and speed up your workflow.