Black Friday buyers are about to be bombarded with bargain news for the biggest shopping day of the year, but those seeking tablets, digital cameras and brand-name HDTVs may want to resist the temptation.
One tablet worth holding off on and not buying on the day after Thanksgiving is Microsoft’s Surface. The reason? If sales of the tablet remainmodest and it continues to have quality problems, better deals on the slate will appear early in the new year.
Such discounts could occur around the time that the Surface models running a full-blown version of Windows 8 start arriving on retail shelves.
As iPad maker Apple does with its Black Friday pricing, Microsoft may offer token discounts on Surface. But waiting may make more sense. Microsoft has some room to move on Surface pricing because the tablet is sold at a hefty margin.
Another tablet that you might want to pass up on during the Black Friday shopping frenzy is the iPad Mini — not because you won’t get a good deal on one that day but because a better deal on a bigger iPad may be available during the holiday season.
Bargain watcher website DealNews has been saying for weeksnow that pricing on one of the Mini’s big brothers, the iPad 2, will briefly fall to $299 on Black Friday, which would be a better deal than paying $329 for the smaller iPad Mini.
The latest digital cameras and brand-name HDTVs are also worth delaying a purchase on during the holiday season, according to DealNews.
While they’ll be lots of digital camera deals on Black Friday and beyond, most shutterbox models are at the end of their product cycles. The latest and greatest cameras are usually announced at the beginning of a new year. So what appears to be a good deal on some camera models now will be a ho-hum deal early next year.
The same is true for brand-name HDTVs.
There will be good deals on TVs on Black Friday and beyond, but those deals will be on third-tier sets. The real discounts on brand-name HDTVs occur in January and February, as manufacturers try to move product to make room for their new models typically introduced in the spring.
Nevertheless, DealNews reminds shoppers: “While we advise against purchasing the above products around Black Friday, keep in mind that nothing is written in stone, and we may still see some stellar deals within these categories; however, it’s more likely that we’ll encounter so-so offers, so it’s best to temper your expectations.”