Black Friday 2020: When the deals start, how to get the best prices on tech, and where to shop

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In another lifetime, Black Friday was a single day of shopping excess. People woke up early the day after Thanksgiving, headed to malls, and fought over deeply discounted sweaters and TVs.

Then Black Friday gradually morphed into a vaguely defined period in November that mixed together incredible loss-leader discounts, solid price reductions, and a slew of questionable “bargains.” The time creep is dramatically worse this year, with “Black Friday” sales beginning in October, right after Amazon’s later-than-usual Prime Day deals. On top of that, some major retailers (like Walmart) say they’re releasing their best Black Friday deals in staggered waves in the lead up to the day proper.

Between the even longer run of sales, potential supply issues, and likely shipping delays, knowing when to buy an item or wait for a better deal can be hard—so we’ve stepped in to simplify deal hunting and offer strategy tips. With our help, you’ll know how to spot a juicy bargain. Let’s dig in!

When is Black Friday this year?

By strict definition, Black Friday is always the fourth Friday of November—the day after Thanksgiving. For 2020, that’s November 27. (It’ll be followed by Cyber Monday on November 30—a shopping holiday that online retailers cooked up to get some of the attention physical stores had.)

But the real answer to the question is that Black Friday’s lavish, over-the-top discounts have already begun. Right now they’re just drips and drabs, but blink and you could miss a sale on the exact item you’ve been waiting on.

That said, most of the best deals have historically appeared during the week of Black Friday—so we’re not ruling it out as a period of hefty discounts. But more so than previous years, waiting until that final week of November may not pay off for your individual buying plans.

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How to get the best Black Friday tech deals

Option 1: Let us do the hard work

The easiest way to score rock-bottom prices is to let us find them for you. You can jump to the bottom of this article for details on our coverage plans, but here are samples from last year for now:

• Black Friday 2019: The best tech deals at Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, Newegg, and more
• Best Amazon Black Friday deals 2019
• The best Apple Black Friday deals of 2019: Apple Watch, AirPods, iPad, and more

Option 2: Wade into the fray with our help

The other option is to strike out on your own. It’s not hard if you’re prepared—you just need to set aside time for it. You can zip pretty fast through all websites, circulars, forum posts, and email newsletters if you follow these tips, though:

Make a plan (and a budget)

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To actually save money—and not blow that cash on just more stuff—you need to make a plan. Whether it’s in your head or written out concretely, know in advance what you plan to shop for, the price you prefer to pay, and the max price you’re willing to pay.

This list will look different for everyone. For me, the price I prefer to pay usually involves a hefty discount, and my max price usually isn’t too much higher. I also make note of products I use regularly and should stock up on, items I might need to replace soon, and stuff I’ve considered buying if deeply discounted.

Bargain hunting doesn’t always go predictably, of course. Some years, you’ll nail nearly every major thing on your list. During others you’ll find a deal on just a few things, but also unexpectedly snag five stackable 1-year licenses for Microsoft Office 365 Personal for $15 each. (Please bring that one back, Newegg!) But having a plan means you’ll know exactly what to keep an eye out for, and what’s worth zeroing in on.

Research prices in advance

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Not all deals that crop up during Black Friday are good discounts. Many are mediocre and designed to lure you into parting with your money because you think you’re getting a bargain.

Doing research on the products you want to buy can save you some serious cash, whether or not you make a spending plan. A few different sites can help provide the background knowledge you’ll need:

• Camelcamelcamel.com or Keepa.com: These sites show historical price information for products on Amazon. Because there’s a graph showing the trend over time, you can tell how often a product goes on sale, what the most common sale prices are, and what the lowest price was.
• BlackFriday.com: More retailers have begun releasing their circulars early, but for those that haven’t, sites like BlackFriday.com publish scans of leaked Black Friday ads for major retailers (Best Buy, Target, Newegg, Fry’s, Micro Center, etc.) While none of these prices are guaranteed to go live, these scans provide early reconnaissance on which retailers will have which products on sale, and what the prices will roughly be.
• Slickdeals.net: This set of forums crowdsources deal-hunting. Frontpage deals are supposed to be the absolute crème de la crème of the bunch, while a fire hose of daily deals lives in the Hot Deals forum. Search for a product name or model number to see any posts related to it. Not all products will have results (or relevant results), but sometimes you can find the last best price on a product and when that was. Tip: Keep your search term as simple as possible (just one or two keywords specific to the item) to improve your results.

If you plan to take advantage of Amazon’s Lightning deals, which don’t reveal the sale price until the deal starts, doing this research in advance is particularly useful. When a Lightning deal goes live, you’ll know immediately if it’s worth your time.

Set deal alerts on Slickdeals and Amazon

IDG

If you sign up for a free account on Slickdeals, you can set up to 200 different deal alerts that can ping you via email, the Slickdeals mobile app, private message through the site, and/or desktop browser notifications. (You’ll receive a notice whenever a member posts a deal that matches your keywords.) These alerts can be customized based on popularity and forum.

Amazon offers a similar service for its Lightning deals, which are available for only a limited time on the site. (They expire at a certain time or when the allotted inventory runs out, whichever comes first.) If you use the Amazon app on your phone or tablet, you can get alerts when the deal starts by “watching” the deal.

Sign up for email newsletters at specific stores

Email newsletters can be a good source for deals, for a few reasons.

Some deals are only available if you’re already on the store’s email list. Newegg, for example, often creates coupon codes that only work for email subscribers.

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Other sites offer codes for discounts and free shipping through their email newsletters that don’t always show up on deal and coupon sites.

Then there are the places with niche items that rarely go on sale (like Apple products). Even if the product still stays at normal price during Black Friday, some vendors will at least provide a gift with purchase.

Note: If inbox clutter is a concern, you can use either a filter or a junk email address to collect all the email in one spot. You usually don’t need to use the same email address at checkout for the code to work.

Keep an eye out for bundle deals

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Shopping for PC parts? Pay attention to the retailers that favor bundle and combo deals. That’s typically Newegg and Micro Center, but on occasion other stores offer them as well.

You can save quite a bit this way—for example, Micro Center often offers a combo discount for buying a CPU and a motherboard at the same time. That’s in addition to already-reduced prices on both components.

(You can see how we made the most of those types of deals in our Cheapest Black Friday Build articles from 2019, 2018, 2017, and 2016.)

Where to find good Black Friday tech deals

Curious to know which stores we frequent the most? These are the places we make our own personal purchases at:

• Amazon
• Best Buy
• Newegg
• B&H
• Micro Center
• Target
• Walmart
• Costco / Sam’s Club
• GameStop
• eBay*

We also shop directly on the manufacturers’ websites as well: Dell, Microsoft, HP, Apple, Google, etc.

(*We only buy from established retailers with eBay storefronts, like Adorama and Best Buy)

How to get free shipping during Black Friday

Best Buy

Over the last few years, free shipping had become an increasing given—last year, next-day and 2-day shipping was dangled out as incentive. Don’t expect that this year, given the increase in online shipping as everyone remains stuck at home.

Instead, anticipate a mix of free shipping incentives plus curbside pick-up for purchases made at major retailers (as applicable). We recommend signing up for newsletters now, so that you’ll get notified of any free shipping promotions between now and the end of December. You can unsubscribe after you’re done with your shopping.

How to return Black Friday purchases

Return policies vary across stores, but most U.S. retailers have already extended their windows for returns and exchanges for items purchased in November and most of December. Be sure to read the return policy for each site you shop at. One particularly novel one this year is Newegg’s price-match guarantee: Purchase an eligible item between November 1 through November 22, and if it drops in price on or before November 30, you’ll automatically be refunded the difference.

Also, before making a purchase, check to see if it’s easy to return the item and if it will cost you anything (like a restocking fee or shipping). If you’re not careful, and you end up not needing the item, you could lose money on the purchase.

Our picks for Black Friday deals

We’ll have several curated lists for Black Friday tech deals, which we’ll release as the deals reach critical mass. (We’ll add the links below as they go live.) You can expect to see our picks for the best early deals first. Here’s to hoping for a year of decent bargains!