If you’re going to get the most out of this shopping extravaganza, you might as well do it right.
It’s that time of year again.
Your feeds are cluttered with deal posts. Your local stores are inundating you with sale ads. Commercials are hawking wares to festive tunes. It’s the holidays, and with that comes huge mark downs across retail, especially on Black Friday.
Also: Best Black Friday deals 2018 CNET
Though the specific day — and its infamous incidents (trampled customers, fistfights over sale items, etc.) — has lost its singular cachet, the idea of Black Friday as the time to grab the best deals of the year has become firmly entrenched in the mind of the consumer.
To help you wade through the chaos and suss out the real deals, we’ve combed through all the Black Friday ads for you and compiled this rundown of all the basic information you need to do holiday shopping the right way. Think of this as a 101 guide to Black Friday in 2018.
Amazon gave ZDNet a sneak peek at the deals it has planned for its own devices over the next couple weeks. Everything from Fire TV Cube to Echo Show will be on sale.
See the full list of best deals here:
Best Buy will open at 5pm local time on Thanksgiving and stay open until 1am on Friday, Nov. 23. Doors will reopen at 8am on Black Friday. Select deals are already live now through Sunday, Nov. 11. For all other online deals, prices are valid through Saturday, Nov. 24.
See the full list of best deals here:
Costco will close its doors on the Wednesday evening before Thanksgiving and reopen at 9am local time on Black Friday. Many of Costco’s deals will be available both in stores and online — though some are exclusively online.
See the full list of deals here:
Jet (only online) posted its Black Friday preview, with sales starting Nov. 21 at 10pm ET.
Newegg is online only — it has no retail shops. Some of its deals are already live and are limited-time only. Many other promotions don’t start until Nov. 20, while others begin on Black Friday. We’ve included information about start and end dates where possible.
See the full list of deals here:
Office Depot and OfficeMax stores will be closed on Thanksgiving Day, but it will do online sales from 12:01am ET Thanksgiving Day and in-store at 8am local time on Friday, Nov. 23.
Sam’s Club is planning a one-day-only for Saturday, Nov. 10.
For Black Friday, most of the discounted prices below should be available on Thanksgiving Day, and picked up or purchased in-store starting at 7am local time on Friday Nov. 23.
See the full list of deals here:
The retailer’s doors open at 5pm on Thanksgiving and close that night at 1am. Then it will reopen on Black Friday, Nov. 23, at 7am. Online prices are valid through Saturday, Nov. 24.
See the full list of best deals here:
Walmart’s store event kicks off at 6pm local time on Thanksgiving, and the online deals start at 10pm ET on Wednesday, Nov. 21. Prices are valid through Friday, Nov. 23 while supplies last.
See the full list of deals here:
See it now: Wellbots Black Friday 2018 sale hub
Wellbots.com is online-only site for all things IoT related. Here are some exclusive Black Friday 2018 deals it is offering ZDNet readers this holiday season:
Google and Google-owned Nest have announced a bunch of deals that will extend through Cyber Monday, with some sales starting as early as Nov. 18. You may have noticed but these same discounts will be available from other retailers, including Best Buy, Target, and Walmart.
Lenovo’s Black Friday sale will see hourly sales starting at midnight on Thanksgiving and continuing through 8pm local time on Black Friday.
The deals below are current as of Nov. 9, and include Target,amazon, and Best Buy.
See CNET’s guide for the best sales:
Nov. 23,2018: As always, Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving, but that hasn’t stopped retailers from using turkey day to get a head start on the festivities (though not without a backlash from some stores and shoppers).
Also: Best Holiday gifts 2018 CNET
Among computer/electronics retailers, Dell has jumped the gun over the last few years with its ads (both consumer and small business), which “typically leak” right around Nov. 1.Last year some deals from them started almost immediately. You’ll usually see ads from the big boys — Best Buy, Target, and Walmart — made public about a week later.
Also: Best TVs to give for the holidays CNET
Apple has been notoriously stingy when it comes to any kind of sales on its products in general, and not even the yearly mania around Black Friday gets it to budge much. In fact, the tech giant abandoned discounts at its Apple Stores on Black Friday years ago, only attempting to entice shoppers with free iTunes gift cards with iPhone, iPad, and Mac purchases.
Also: The do’s and don’ts of giving holiday gifts to your coworkers TechRepublic
It’s a tactic that other Apple partners have adopted as well — you’re now much more likely to get a store gift card from Target and Walmart when you purchase an Apple product than any kind of savings from the normal price. You’ll generally need to rely on retailers like MacMall and B&H Photo for actual deals, particularly on MacBooks.
Chromebooks helped usher in the era of the $100 PC, forcing Microsoft to respond by slashing the price it charged manufacturers to license Windows in order to stay competitive in the budget market. That seems to be the floor for the cost of a new computer, though you may see one or two deals for $89 systems. Of course, at this price point, you are getting the barest of specs — no HD screen, 2GB of RAM, a minimalamount of built-in storage, a slower processor — that can handle Internet browsing and basic productivity tasks.
Also: Photos: Cool gifts for bosses to buy for employees TechRepublic
For an additional $100 to $200, you should be able to locate a deal on a more powerful computer with a few better specs that won’t require as many compromises.
There definitely will be a handful of legitimately great prices on items during this extended shopping period, often as a “doorbuster” special that may be available in limited quantities or for a short window of time. But despite retailers’ promises to the contrary, Black Friday prices aren’t always the best of the year. In fact, product review site Wirecutter recently pointed out that of the more than 78,000 deals it tracked for Black Friday 2017, only about 450 were worth highlighting.
A big reason for that can be found if you look closely at how the percentage off figures trumpeted in Black Friday ads are calculated. You may notice that stores use the original or list price as the starting point, but that often isn’t the price they are currently using to sell a product.
