Black Friday 2026: what to buy now, what to wait for, and the traps to avoid

Black Friday 2026 is on Friday 27 November, with Cyber Monday on 30 November. In practice, UK retailers now start their 'Black Friday' sales weeks earlier, so the deals are already trickling out.

The catch is that plenty of them aren't deals at all. Consumer group Which? has repeatedly found that around nine in ten Black Friday 'deals' were the same price or cheaper at other times of the year. This guide will help you avoid paying for hype.

The three traps

The inflated 'was' price. A product sits at a higher price for a few weeks so the sale price looks like a huge saving. Always compare against what it has actually sold for recently.
The Black Friday-only model. Some TVs and appliances appear with model numbers you won't find anywhere else. That makes them impossible to compare, and they're often a cheaper spec.
Buying early because of a countdown timer. Most big retailers price-match each other within hours, and many run the same prices for the whole of late November.

Buy now

Advent calendars and seasonal gifts. These sell out rather than get cheaper.
Heaters, electric blankets and dehumidifiers. Prices tend to rise, not fall, once the cold weather properly arrives.
Anything already at its lowest recorded price. If a price tracker shows it's as cheap as it's ever been, waiting rarely saves much.

Probably wait

TVs, especially big-brand OLEDs, where the biggest cuts usually land in late November.
Cordless vacuums, air fryers and kitchen gadgets. Shark, Ninja, Dyson and Tefal discount heavily across the season.
Amazon devices (Echo, Kindle, Fire TV), which almost always return to their best prices during Black Friday week.

Snapped Up target prices

These are the prices we'd be happy to pay, based on the lowest prices Which? recorded over the six months before October. If you see these or lower, it's a genuinely good deal. We'll update this list as the sales go on.

Apple 11-inch iPad (2025): about £399. Which? found it at Laptops Direct for that at the start of October, the cheapest since Apple's June price rise.
Dyson V15 Detect Absolute: £450 to £470. The six-month average was over £600.
Tefal Easy Fry Mega air fryer: £79. Argos had it at that price in early October, a match for the lowest Which? recorded.
LG OLED48C5 48-inch TV: under £700. It has averaged over £1,000.
Samsung Galaxy S25: about £430. It's been replaced by the S26, so prices keep sliding.

How to check a deal in 30 seconds

Search the exact model number, not the product name.
Check a price-history tool such as PriceSpy or CamelCamelCamel (for Amazon).
If the 'deal' price has appeared before, or the price was lower a month ago, it's not special. Keep your money until it is.

We'll post the genuine Black Friday deals here every day from now until Cyber Monday, so you don't have to do the digging.