The 12 Best Things to Buy During Black Friday

Black Friday is mostly manufactured urgency around mediocre deals. But certain product categories consistently see their genuine lowest prices during this period. Focus your spending here and ignore everything else—the doorbusters on random electronics are usually last year's models being cleared out.

Premium headphones see reliable 20-30% discounts. Sony WH-1000XM5 and Apple AirPods Pro 2 typically drop to their lowest recorded prices during Black Friday week. If you've been waiting on either, this is the rational time to buy rather than paying full retail in March.

Kitchen appliances from brands like KitchenAid, Vitamix, and Breville see substantial markdowns. The KitchenAid stand mixer regularly drops from $350 to around $230, and Breville espresso machines see $100-150 off. These are investments that last decades, making the savings meaningful.

Mattresses are genuinely discounted during this period—not the fake 70%-off sales they run monthly, but actual additional markdowns on already-reasonable prices. Brands like Casper, Purple, and Tuft & Needle typically offer their best-ever pricing during Black Friday week.

Fitness equipment, particularly Theragun and Hyperice products, sees consistent 30% reductions. The Theragun Pro dropping from $600 to $400 is a recurring pattern. If you want recovery tools, this is the time to buy rather than January when everyone else remembers their resolutions.

Streaming service annual plans often offer their steepest discounts during this week. Spotify, YouTube Premium, and various cloud storage services run promotions that save substantially over monthly payments. Committing to an annual plan at Black Friday rates saves real money over twelve months.

What to avoid: TVs (most deals are on off-brand or previous-generation models), clothing (better sales happen in January and July), and anything sold exclusively through flash-sale countdown timers. If the pressure to buy is the primary selling point, the deal isn't that good.

The reason some TV deals look impossible is that they are not the same television. Manufacturers build retailer-specific derivative models with a digit or a suffix changed, running cheaper panels, fewer dimming zones or a lower refresh rate than the review you read. Check the exact model string, character for character, against the review before you buy. If you cannot find a review of that precise string, there is a reason.

Verify with price history rather than with the sticker. CamelCamelCamel and Keepa graph Amazon prices back several years, and for other retailers the same product almost always turned up cheaper in some unremarkable April promotion that a comparison site still remembers. A simple rule: if it has already hit this price twice this year, waiting costs you nothing. Set an alert and go and do something else.

Two things make this period less risky than it looks. Most large retailers extend the returns window on November purchases into early January so gifts can go back, but ask before you buy and keep the receipt. And check the refurbished channel first: Apple's Certified Refurbished stock carries the same one-year warranty and AppleCare eligibility as new, at a discount that runs all year rather than for one weekend, and it frequently beats the Black Friday price on the same machine.