Most of the deals you’ll see for Black Friday and Cyber Week aren’t worth your time. This week, we reveal how to actually get a deal that’s worth your money.To listen to more episodes, please search for The Wirecutter Show wherever you get your podcasts. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Chapter 1: What is the significance of Black Friday?
Hey, it's Michael. Today, as you know, is Black Friday, a day that looms oddly large in my life. For years, I was this newspaper's retail reporter.
And so every Friday after Thanksgiving, I would wake up at four in the morning, print circulars in my hand, and dash from store to store reporting on the latest doorbuster deals and the bleary-eyed shoppers literally climbing over each other in order to buy them.
And what I came to understand and ultimately to appreciate is that Black Friday is this strange, endearing, wild, and quintessentially American holiday. And today, we are celebrating it with a special episode from our colleagues over at Wirecutter, who started their own podcast earlier this year. You probably know Wirecutter. Product reviews, gift guides, they're very good at what they do.
And they put together a comprehensive guide to Black Friday that we're now going to share with you. So, without further ado, here is today's special Black Friday episode from Wirecutter.
From The New York Times, you're listening to The Wirecutter Show. I'm Christine Cyr-Clessette. I'm Kyra Blackwell.
And I'm Rosie Guerin. And today is a big day for Wirecutter. It's Black Friday. This year, tens of millions of people are expected to go online or on foot to shop for Black Friday deals. And as is the case every year, people are going to spend money, a lot of it. This year, the National Retail Federation is projecting over $900 billion will have been spent in November and December alone.
These days, Black Friday has come to refer to an almost entire week of deals, today through Cyber Monday. And while it's the single biggest shopping weekend of the year, it's also a day that's become increasingly confusing for shoppers. More days of advertised sales, bigger pile of things to sift through.
Plus, retailers have gotten really good at the game, to the point where much of what looks like a deal that's too good to be true disappears. actually is too good to be true.
So every year, our entire newsroom, about 100 journalists across dozens of beats, scours the internet to find true bargains. And every year, there's one person whose job it is to oversee all of this. And he's here with us today. Senior deals editor Nathan Burrow.
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Chapter 2: How do Black Friday deals work?
That's slightly less the case with small kitchen appliances, but the margins on kitchen appliances are such that I think they can really afford to discount them by quite a bit during a Black Friday or Cyber Monday.
Nathan, I am a renter, so I'm not really looking to buy appliances right now. What else is good to buy on Black Friday?
Black Friday is unexpectedly a great time to get deals on regular stuff, those everyday essentials. It might be strange to see an amazing deal on, you know, toys for your dog alongside deals on a MacBook, but it does happen.
I love Black Friday for the regular stuff. I actually one year bought, I don't know, something like 240 pounds of kitty litter because it was six 40 pound bags of kitty litter and it was seven dollars off each. And I was like, I'm going to snap these up. So, yes, it's a great time to buy things like, you know, just batteries, kitty litter, you know, the normal stuff.
Are there any categories specifically to avoid, like categories that just never have a good deal?
So if you're somebody who is always looking for the latest and greatest tech, Black Friday might not be great for you in that respect. Laptops with M4 chips, the newest iPhone, stuff like that, they may see small introductory discounts, but most of the time, they don't see discounts that we're going to see later as we get farther away from those release dates.
The other product categories that don't see discounts on Black Friday itself are from brands or retailers that do not participate in the event. And those do exist. They are usually outdoor retailers we've found. So REI does not have Black Friday sales. Patagonia also does not participate in Black Friday.
But they also have annual events of their own, like REI's anniversary sale, that will allow you to get the best deals of the year on their stuff.
So, Nathan, another part of doing your homework as someone who's shopping for a deal is to understand the model that you're looking for, the model number specifically, and to try to find that model when you're doing your shopping, right?
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