Most Black Friday ‘deals’ aren’t really deals at all. These tech deals truly are.
Here we go! The deal madness is upon us, and it’s time to get your shopping game on. Once again we’ve searched high and low to come up with the 10 best Black Friday deals for PC users and all around tech addicts. This year’s selection offers Chromebooks, fitness bands, regular laptops, gaming machines, and other treats to please tech conoisseurs everywhere.
Once you’ve taken a look at our top deals don’t forget to see our best smart home deals, our best home theater deals, and our best graphics card deals of the season.
Sale starts Thursday, November 23 at 5PM local time
Best pre-Black Friday price: $169
There are several Chromebooks available on Black Friday, but few are as good as this Samsung 11.6-inch Chromebook for $119 at Best Buy. That’s $50 cheaper than the pre-Black Friday sale price, and $81 cheaper than Best Buy’s typical price. The laptop packs a 1366×768 resolution display, a 1.6GHz Intel Celeron processor (don’t worry, it’ll be enough), 4GB of RAM, and 32GB of onboard memory. There’s also Bluetooth 4.0, one USB 3.0 port, one USB 2.0, one HDMI out, and a microSD card reader.
Sale starts Thursday, November 24 at 5PM local time
Best pre-Black Friday price: $439
HDTVs are nice, but 4K ultra high definition is the future—actually 4K HDR is the future but we’ll get to that later. Best Buy will have an in-store only deal for a 50-inch Sharp 4K UHD TV with Roku built-in for $180 (time above). Doorbusters like this are extremely limited. To get it, you’ll need to be lined up at least two hours beforehand. Best Buy employees hand out doorbuster tickets— i.e. the right to get the deal—up to two hours before the store opens.
Sale starts on Thursday, November 23 at 5PM local time
Best pre-Black Friday price: $150
The Fitbit Charge 2 HR fixes some of the problems with the original, such as the weak wristband that was susceptible to tearing and faster syncing. It’s got the usual features you’d expect from a modern wristband: heart rate and sleep tracking, smartphone alerts, killer battery life, and reminders to move. You’ll find this deal at Best Buy, Dell, Kohl’s, Target, and Walmart. We like the Kohl’s deal the best since it includes $30 in Kohl’s cash. There are other Fitbit deals around, including the Fitbit Blaze for $150 at Kohl’s, Meijer, and Target.
Sale starts Thursday, November 23 at 5PM local time
Best pre-Black Friday price: $260
This is a great time of year to get a cheap travel PC. One of the best budget choices is the Lenovo 80TJ00LRUS for $179 featuring an AMD A6-series processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 500GB hard drive. It has a 15.6-inch display with 1366×768 resolution and Windows 10. This laptop won’t be a powerhouse, but it will get the job done. The laptop has one USB 3.0 port, one USB 2.0, HDMI, and Bluetooth 4.0. It weighs 4.85 pounds and is just under one inch thick.
Sale price available at this writing
Best pre-Black Friday price: $125
The Samsung Gear VR with controller is available directly from Samsung for $90. That’s a savings of about $35 off the usual prices you can find online. This is the Galaxy Note 8 version, but it’s compatible with devices all the way back to the Galaxy S6. If you know someone who’d like to try out virtual reality with their Galaxy device, this is a great price for the headset.
Sale begins on Thursday, November 23 at 6PM
Best pre-Black Friday price: $26
SD storage isn’t the most exciting deal you can get, but $14 for 64GB of microSD storage makes a nice stocking stuffer. Because it’s microSD, you may need to use the included adapter for devices that usually takes a larger storage card. There really isn’t much more to say. It’s 64GB. Throw it in your laptop or smartphone and enjoy the added storage at nearly half off.
Sale begins on Thursday, November 23 at 5PM
Best pre-Black Friday price: $247
Video game consoles are always a great gift choice for the holidays. This year the official sale price for the Xbox One S is $190 for a 500GB console and controller. There are also a ton of game bundles where you can get a game or two in addition to the console and controller. There are too many of these bundles to cover here. As for the console-only bundle our pick is to go for Target since you also get a $25 gift card. You’ll also find the deal at Best Buy, Dell, and Newegg to name just a few places.
Sale is available at this writing
Pre-Black Friday price: $1,100
This HP Omen 17T gaming laptop is available at a good price, but keep in mind that upgrading your graphics card is basically not happening with a laptop. This clamshell has an Nvidia GTX 1050, which is still our favorite budget graphics card. It will probably give you a few good years of console-level gaming, hitting about 60fps on medium or 30fps on high or ultra depending on the game. The laptop also has 8GB of RAM, 1TB hard drive, 2.8GHz Intel Core i7-7700HQ, and a 17.3-inch 1080p display.
Sale is avaialable at this writing
Best pre-Black Friday price: $440
Choosing a processor for a new PC build can often be a personal thing, but unless you’re determined to go Intel, the Ryzen 1800X at $320 is a great choice. It’s an 8-core 3.6GHz processor, with 16 threads, and a 95W TDP. If you want to see what you can expect gaming-wise from this chip with a high-end graphics card, check out our 1800X PC build from March. Newegg has also dropped the price of the newer Ryzen 1950X down to $800—the best pre-Black Friday price was $970.
Sale begins on Thursday, November 23 at 6PM
Best pre-Black Friday price: $650
Another possibility for PC gaming gifts, this HP desktop for $500 at Walmart is rocking an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060, which is the step-up from the 1050 on the Omen laptop. But it falls a little short in the processor department as it’s only got a 3.0GHz, quad-core Core i5-7400 with no hyperthreading. Still, it should get the job done. For RAM you’ve got 8GB, and storage is a 1TB hard drive.
Sale starts Friday, November 24 at 4PM Eastern/1PM Pacific
Best pre-Black Friday price: $560
The price of Vizio’s M50-E1 —a 50-inch 4K high dynamic range (HDR) TV with Dolby Sound—has been dropping over the past month to around $550-$600.
