Should you buy tech now or wait for Black Friday?

What the forecast says

The most detailed forecast comes from Adobe, which bases it on more than a trillion visits to US shopping sites. It expects deals of up to 14% off in early November, up to 21% just before Thanksgiving, and up to 30% during the five days from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday. In December they fall back to 10% to 15%.

For comparison, Adobe expected discounts in Amazon's October sale, on 6 and 7 October, to peak at 19%. So the October event you may have just skipped was not the low point of the year.

Two cautions. This is a forecast, not a measurement. And these are peak discounts off the listed price, which is not the same as the lowest price a product has sold for.

Where the cuts are deepest

Electronics are forecast to get the deepest cuts of any category, peaking at 30% off, with TVs and computers at 23% each, on Adobe's numbers. All three are close to what Adobe measured last year, so do not expect a better Black Friday than 2025's.

The best day depends on what you are buying. Adobe expects the deepest discounts on TVs on Black Friday itself, and on electronics and computers three days later, on Cyber Monday, 30 November.

Why "up to 30% off" is not the whole story

A discount is only a saving if the price really is lower than before. Last year WalletHub compared prices in 2025's Black Friday ads with the lowest price the same item had on Amazon between late October and mid-November. It found that 36% of items offered no saving at all. The ones that were genuinely reduced averaged 24% off.

A British study points the same way. The consumer group Which? tracked 208 products through a Black Friday sale and for six months either side, and found 98% were the same price or cheaper at some other time of year. That is UK data from the 2022 sales, so treat it as a pattern, not a figure for US shops today.

There is one more risk this year. List prices have been going up: Apple raised Mac and iPad prices in June, telling the Associated Press it had reached the point where it needed "to begin raising prices on a number of products". A discount in November off a higher list price can leave you paying what you would have paid in October.

How to wait without losing out

You do not have to choose between buying now and gambling on November. Two big shops will refund the difference if their own price drops after you buy.

• Best Buy says it will match its own lower price, on request, during the return period. That is 15 days for most products, and 60 days for paying My Best Buy Plus and Total members, counted from the day you receive the item.
• Target will match its own lower price on items bought in the past 14 days.
• Other shops' prices are a different matter. Best Buy stops matching competitors from the Thursday before Thanksgiving to the Monday after, which this year is 19 to 30 November. Target's page describes matching Target's own prices only.

Put together, that gives a simple plan. If you can wait, buy during the week of Black Friday, and check the price against a few weeks earlier before believing the discount. If you want it sooner, buy from mid-November at one of these shops, so that Black Friday still falls inside the refund window. If you need it now, a paying Best Buy member's 60 days run past Black Friday and into December; everyone else should assume the price they pay is final.

Exclusions apply at both shops, and neither had announced a longer holiday window for 2026 when this was written. Ask before relying on a refund.