ENTERTAINMENT

Hold onto your butts because this seemingly idle Wednesday is actually brimming with exciting bargain opportunities. I’m particularly all about From’s mech-tastic Armored Core VI going for 61% off and Persona 3 Reload for 42% less. And I’ll always holler the praises of a cut price Red Dead 2 (especially when it’s at a new historical low, pardner). Without much more ado, let’s all discover the best Aussie deals for Wednesday, February 12, below:

This Day in Gaming 🎂

In retro news, I’m getting an Armacham Black Ops Pyro to light 16 candles on a cake baked for F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin. I loved this nerve-shredding (at the time) sequel that continued the supernatural suspense story of Alma “just call me the chick from The Ring” Wade.

The tense atmosphere and jump scares from the original were ramped up with more intimidating enemy types and actual, physical interactions with ol’ Beelzebedhead herself. All talk aside, my most enduring memory of this whole thing was spamming an automatic nail gun to hang dudes like picture frames with 14mm depleted uranium spikes. How did that ammo go out of style?

Flexispot is running an early President’s Day deal on its workhorse Flexispot C7 ergonomic chair with built-in footrest. It’s normally listed at $429.99, but there’s a $201 off coupon code “CVSGFG7229” that drops it to only $229. We generally like the Flexispot brand because it includes electric standing desks and ergonomic chairs with solid build quality and a plethora of practical features at a fraction of the price compared to other more well-known models. We rated the Flexispot C7 is the best budget-friendly ergonomic chair and the Flexispot E7 Pro as the best overall standing desk of 2024.

Flexispot C7 Ergonomic Chair with Footrest for $229

When it comes to sales events, Presidents’ Day might not be on your radar. It’s just another federal holiday that happens to be right in the middle of February. Nevertheless, retailers are starting to drop prices on plenty of items ahead of the weekend. The Amazon Presidents’ Day sale may not be as big as Black Friday or Prime Day, but if you’re looking to do some online shopping right now, we’re seeing some of the best prices of the year so far.

If you want to take a look at the full sale, Amazon has an official Presidents’ Day landing page with all of its discounts. To help you find the very best savings within this, however, I’ve sorted out the popular products that are actually good deals. Each discount featured below is either the lowest price, or matches the lowest price it has been all year.

The Best Amazon Presidents’ Day Deals Today

A good portion of the best deals in this Amazon sale are on Amazon devices. The deal on the Kindle Paperwhite is the first discount we’ve seen since Black Friday, which especially notable since Kindle deals in general are few and far between. The Apple Watch SE discount we covered last week as part of the Valentine’s Day sale is still noteworthy at its current price. There’s also a pretty good sale on sleeping Pokémon plushies that brings these adorable toys down to their lowest price of the year so far.

There are generally a lot of discounts that Amazon has brought onto its sale page that we’ve either seen before in 2025 or were much lower during sales events last year. If you’re looking to save as much money as possible, it’s probably worth waiting for better price cuts on any bigger purchases.

Should You Shop the Amazon Presidents’ Day Sales or Wait?

One of the advantages Presidents’ Day sales have are the time of year they take place. If you look at our calendar of upcoming sales events, there aren’t really any big shopping holidays again until Memorial Day weekend at the end of May. So while a lot of these discounts will likely be better during main events like Prime Day and Black Friday, if you’re looking to buy something right now, this sale is likely your best bet.

That being said, you can still be smart about your purchases. If you don’t need a Kindle or a TV right this moment, it’s still worth waiting until later in the year. You can also check historical pricing on CamelCamelCamel to make sure any of the deals listed are actually worth it. This is a helpful trick we consistently use to ensure we’re recommending things at the right price point.

More Presidents’ Day sales live now

Sony has never been one to shy away from pushing the boundaries of home theater innovation, and with the Bravia Theater Quad, the company is making its latest bold statement in the world of immersive audio. The Theater Quad is a four-speaker ensemble that takes the plug-and-play simplicity of a soundbar and blends it with the spatial prowess of a traditional home theater setup, making for a system that is both physically and audibly different from anything else you can buy today.

It’s also more expensive than most flagship offerings on the market today. But for its gargantuan $2,500 retail price, the Quad creates a soundstage that, thanks to its Dolby Atmos capabilities, spatial sound technologies, and overall detail, is one of the best we’ve heard to date. It’s not perfect, especially when it comes to bass. But it’s an experience that you truly have to hear to believe.

Sony Bravia Theater Quad – Design and Features

First, let’s address the elephant in the room. The Bravia Theater Quad is physically different from any competing soundbar system on the market today. Instead of an ensemble built around a long, hefty soundbar with most of the system’s drivers tucked inside, the Quad features four distinct speakers – two accompanying your TV up front, and two filling out the rear of your listening space. Each of the four speakers are wall mountable, but will otherwise work best sitting on speaker stands, so be sure to factor that into how these fit into your room.

The previous version of the Quad, Sony’s HT-A9, had a cylindrical look to its quartet of speakers. With the Quad, Sony opted for a flattened-out iteration that presents a far more sleek aesthetic that blended subtly into our living room. The drivers inside the enclosures are also new and improved, moving from a two-way design to a three-way setup that includes a dedicated woofer, midrange driver, and tweeter. Plus, each of the four Quad speakers has its own upfiring driver for Dolby Atmos content and other 3D formats.

There is no included subwoofer in this system, which seems like a miss at this price point (and from a performance perspective – more on that later). The good news is that the Quad is compatible with either of Sony’s wireless subwoofers, the SA-SW3 or the larger SA-SW5, though that will cost you an extra $400-700 depending on which model you opt for. Additionally, each speaker in the Quad communicates with the system’s control box, which connects to your TV via HDMI and only HDMI. If you have an older display that needs an optical connection, you are out of luck with the Quad.

Setting the Quad up was just as simple as getting a soundbar system up and running. Each speaker needs to connect to a power outlet, and the control box needs that aforementioned HDMI connection to your TV or display. From there, though, the speakers automatically sync with each other. All that’s left is to download the Bravia Connect app to adjust aspects of the system to your personal tastes. The only bothersome part of the set up for some may be finding spots to place each of the Quad speakers; you won’t be able to put the front speakers on your TV stand like you would a soundbar, and if you don’t have speaker stands, you may have to get a bit creative with placement.

As Sony’s flagship home theater system, the Quad has absolutely no shortage of features in store. It uses Sony’s 360 Spatial Sound Mapping technology to virtually place sound around your entire listening space, something we’ll talk more about in a moment. It supports Dolby Atmos, DTS:X and 360 Reality Audio, and has streaming support for Spotify Connect, Apple AirPlay 2, and Bluetooth. Plus, when paired with a compatible Sony Bravia TV, the Quad can use its Acoustic Center Sync technology to outfit the TV’s speakers to act as a center channel for the system. There’s tons more to explore in the realm of features – including the Quad’s video format support for 4K HDR, 8K HDR, and Dolby Vision – but we’ve buried the lede long enough. Let’s dive into how the Quad sounds.

Sony Bravia Theater Quad – Performance

I originally unboxed and set up the Bravia Theater Quad in my office, only to realize that this system needed a lot more room to breathe. So I relocated to my living room, which afforded the ability to properly place the system in the space – the front speakers to the left and right of my TV, and the rear speakers at the back of the room. I set up the Quad in the Bravia Connect app, ran the speakers through the app’s Sound Field Optimization feature (which adjusts the speakers to the environment they’re in), and went to work.

Cards on the table: the Quad beats every soundbar system I’ve ever heard. The three-way speakers are incredibly balanced and extremely detailed, and the soundstage that the system creates is absolutely unmatched. Part of it chalks up to being able to space out those front speakers to foster a wide, encompassing front stage, a feat that has proven far harder to achieve with soundbar systems. Perhaps the ace up the Quad’s sleeve, though, is the masterful way it virtually places sound. I watched The World’s Greatest Beer Run – which is starting to become a favorite for testing Dolby Atmos, both for its compelling audio mix and because Apple TV is one of the few remaining streaming services that doesn’t reserve Atmos content for its highest-paying subscribers – and was blown away by how the Quad adds three-dimensional sound to Chickie Donohue’s travels through the heart of the Vietnam War. Atmos aside, the Quad handles standard surround sound far better than every soundbar I’ve tested. With four speakers and Sony’s 360 Spatial Sound Mapping technology, it uses the entire space to virtually send sound from movies like Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire all around you with powerful precision, with the sounds of the mega monsters brawling it out perfectly matching their path across the screen. It’s hard to quantify with words, but it’s an experience that will change the way you think about surround sound.

On the music side of things, I employed Spotify Connect, my wife, and a living room that now fully resembles a demo space to do a bit of a blind listening taste. Using Spotify, I asked Mrs. Woodard to close her eyes as I swapped between the Quad, the Sonos Arc Ultra, and my personal home theater system consisting of Fluance towers, a Yamaha receiver and a JL Audio subwoofer. I didn’t tell her which was which, but instead auditioned tracks like Chris Stapleton’s Joy of My Life, Macklemore’s Good Old Days, and Jelly Roll’s I Am Not Okay among other songs on all three systems in succession until she felt confident to try and identify each sound source. She got the Arc Ultra right, since its great, but more centralized sound sticks out compared to the other two. But she mistook the detailed, full sound of the Quads for our bulky tower speakers, and ultimately said that the Quad’s sound signature was above and away her favorite of the three.

I tend to agree, with one caveat. The Quad’s big missing puzzle piece is bass. It tries, and earnestly so, but it falls significantly behind in the bass department to both the Sonos Arc Ultra and my personal home theater. A dedicated subwoofer would definitely fill the gap here, and the Quad is compatible with both Sony’s SA-SW5 subwoofer and its smaller SA-SW3 counterpart. But that would mean a substantial added cost to a system that’s already one of the most expensive routes you can take, leaving me to wonder why such a high-end option is notably incomplete.

Sony Bravia Theater Quad – The Competition

For as unique of a product as the Quad is, it’s a bit difficult to pin down who, exactly, this powerful lineup of speakers is standing against. Sony almost undoubtedly built the Quad to be a soundbar killer, and it wears that hat extremely well. I prefer the sound of the Quad to both the Sonos Arc Ultra and Samsung HW-Q990D, although the bars themselves are punching out of their weight class in this instance. I would wager to say that pairing a Sonos Sub 4 ($800) and a pair of Sonos Era 100 speakers ($470) to the $1000 Ultra would create a system that rivals the sound quality of the Quad and easily eclipse it in terms of bass. But for the sake of standalone systems? It’s the Quad, and it’s not close.

Sony may have another, slightly more unintended competitor in this space: the traditional home theater system. As a longtime fan of the “old school” home theater, complete with dedicated speakers, a receiver, and a subwoofer, I came into testing the Quad skeptical of its ability to justify its price, which (give or take) rivals the total cost of my own system. I left testing having told my wife that if we could commit to the Quad, I would happily sell off my theater system and get rid of the towers that may not be the most aesthetically pleasing part of our home decor. The Quad is that good, from the way it blends detailed vocals and impeccable instrumentals in music to the unmatched way it places sound in your space for movies and TV. Don’t get me wrong, I love the sound of my system. But it simply cannot do what the Quad is capable of. If Sony added a subwoofer output to its control box to allow folks to use their own subwoofer, I would be selling my speakers as we speak.

The next Mortal Kombat movie is on its way and we just got our first look at one of the film’s new faces: Johnny Cage.

Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon shared a poster of Karl Urban (The Boys, Judge Dredd) as the Hollywood actor and Mortal Kombatant, Johnny Cage. The poster is designed to look like a fake Johnny Cage movie, complete with two whole motorcycles jumping out of flames.

Mortal Kombat 2 is a direct sequel to the 2021 reboot movie starring Lewis Tan as Cole Young, Hiroyuki Sanada (Shogun) as Scorpion, and Joe Taslim (The Raid) as Sub-Zero. Urban is one of several new actors joining the cast that will also include Adeline Rudolph as Kitana, Tati Gabrielle as Jade, and Damon Herriman as Quan Chi.