Wait till Black Friday to buy a TV?

I must admit, I've never participated in Black Friday or Cyber Monday shopping. Just never seemed like a fun thing to do. Though I've heard there are great deals to be had, particularly in technology. Today I find myself in a pickle, however, because my family's old, old TV has finally died and we have people staying over on Thanksgiving. TV is not essential, but it certainly would be nice to have for movies and such. So here's the quandary: do I wait till the day AFTER Thanksgiving to take advantage of potential deals on televisions (means no TV for guests), or are the deals nearly the same right now (family has TV on time)? In addition, I'm not even sure where to look for a good TV! 

Any thoughts?   Greatly appreciate the assist, thanks.    

Generally the insane Black Friday deals are limited, so you can expect for there to be a few good deals, but there are good deals all of the time.

I find it helpful to use a price tracking site like camelcamelcamel.com to see what the realistic bottom on an item is at various online retailers. Generally a non-limited sale will fall in that area.

Having a TV can take some of the entertainment burden off of you, so if probably try and see what's out there. Amazon or Costco or Best Buy should be decent places to buy a tv. If you haven't bought one in a while you may be shocked at how cheap and big they are these days. 

qrysdonnell said:

Generally the insane Black Friday deals are limited, so you can expect for there to be a few good deals, but there are good deals all of the time.

I find it helpful to use a price tracking site like camelcamelcamel.com to see what the realistic bottom on an item is at various online retailers. Generally a non-limited sale will fall in that area.

Having a TV can take some of the entertainment burden off of you, so if probably try and see what's out there. Amazon or Costco or Best Buy should be decent places to buy a tv. If you haven't bought one in a while you may be shocked at how cheap and big they are these days. 

Thanks qrysdonnell. Sounds like good advice, and I did see some decent "looking" Samsung brands at Best Buy for under $400. Will continue my search and check out your link. Thanks.

For what it's worth our household had 3 Samsung TVs in it. It's a pretty safe brand as far as I'm concerned. Our newest one we got at Costco in Feb when we moved here. The price there for the class we were looking at was similar to Amazon at the time. Costco has slightly different models, but there are Amazon equivalents. We were getting a 55 inch TV and didn't want to deal with delivery on that. It was somewhere around $600-$700, so pretty affordable seeing as it's a pretty gigantic TV and has all the SmartTV stuff. (Useful for us for YouTube and Plex.)

plus I think costco doubles the warranty for a year.

Black Friday - other than special limited deals that are hard to get - can be a good deal of hype. There are good prices now. I bet the differential is small. 

Are you really willing to wait over let's say $50?

Kind of along the same lines, but smaller -- I haven't bought a TV for almost 10 years. I'd like a little (23-inch?) smart TV for a tight space in a small kitchen. What's the least I should pay for a decent one?

I've always avoided the Black Friday madness but I have a good friend who approaches it like a sport - she and her "teammates" wear matching shirts and park themselves outside Best Buy early. I know, ridiculous. The deals she gets are good, but not worth the effort. 

Good TVs can be found at reasonable prices all year - though not $50. You'll find good deals after Black Friday leading up to Christmas. So my advice would be to enjoy the extra day off and avoid the mayhem.

a lot of places are starting black friday early....and the black friday ads are usually leaked...i know I have seen staples and target.....just google 2015 black friday ads and see what you find..

you can try asking on freecycle for a temp TV...likely an old clunky thing...but I still use a 13 inch TV/VCR

www.gottadeal.com/blackfriday has all the ads so you can decide if its worth it to you.  We always find tvs and laptops t be the absolute cheapest you'll see them all year- the difference is usually far greater than $50. 

PC richards is advertising they have black friday sales now

Don't wait unless you want to entertain your guests with shopping for the tv on black Friday and then installing the new set.

Kidding aside, Costco, Amazon, etc.all have sets available at reasonable costs.  I recently got rid of our old tv and bought new.  An added bonus is that these tv's don't weigh much so you won't need a team of weight lifters to get it in your car and home.  If your guests are young you can put them to work moving the old, bulky tv that weighs at least a zillion pounds. 

If you know the exact TV you want, add it to your Amazon cart and check back periodically. Mine dropped by 40% one day, so I printed it out, brought it to Best Buy and picked it up the same day. Just one option.

Wow, thanks everyone for all of the great ideas! What I took away from your responses was to start looking NOW and see if I can find a good deal. I think that works best for me.

and check todays prices against those Black Friday ads and you can decide if Black Friday is "worth it" for the tv you want.

guitar dad- just pm you with an alternative

rowerg said:

guitar dad- just pm you with an alternative

Thanks much!