How to tell if a Black Friday deal is actually worth it

I’ve spent the best part of a decade hunting down deals for Android Authority, and I learned very quickly that a big discount doesn’t necessarily mean you’re getting a bargain. Black Friday is a particularly good time to remember this, with retailers plastering huge percentage discounts over everything in sight. Contrary to the memes, some are genuinely excellent deals — I can assure you that some tech devices will hit their lowest price ever this month. But you’ll also see many ‘Black Friday deal’ labels on discounts at a price higher than three months ago. Thankfully, there’s a very easy way to tell the difference.

The key to assessing a Black Friday deal is to use a price tracker. These tools let you see what a product has cost over recent months or even years, so you can judge for yourself whether that 50% discount is really worth getting excited about. They’re so easy to use that it’ll barely be slowing your shopping spree down at all once you’re in the rhythm. I’ll walk you through it here.

One of my go-to tools for checking Amazon deals is CamelCamelCamel. I’ve probably used it thousands of times over the years, which is a slightly depressing thought, but it’s helped me avoid recommending some pretty underwhelming offers.

It’s free and very simple to use. I like the Chrome extension to check in a single click, but having the site open in a separate tab is no more complicated. Just copy the URL of the Amazon product you’re interested in, head to CamelCamelCamel, and paste the link into the search bar. You’ll get a graph showing how the price has changed over time, with options to view the past month, three months, six months, a year, or the product’s entire available price history.

The graph distinguishes between prices charged by Amazon itself and third-party sellers, while the table underneath shows the highest, lowest, and current recorded prices. You can also set up alerts to be notified when a product drops to a price you’re happy to pay.

I should mention that CamelCamelCamel isn’t always completely accurate. I’ve found that it’s usually close enough to give you a good idea, and it’s often marginally quicker to consult than Amazon’s own price-history feature. It can also show you prices going back much further. However, if you want a more precise picture of recent price movements, I’d recommend checking Amazon’s built-in tool as well. You can access it by clicking the Price history button next to the price on eligible listings, with graphs covering up to a year.

Let’s look at a couple of examples to see why this is useful.

A good deal versus a misleading one

First up is the Amazon Fire HD 10 tablet, which is currently selling for $72.99. Amazon advertises this as a 53% discount on its $154.99 typical price. That’s a pretty substantial saving, but does it stand up to scrutiny?

Yes, this one is as good as it looks. Looking at the CamelCamelCamel graph, you can see that the tablet spent much of its available price history at $154.99, with occasional drops to around $120 and $78. Its current $72.99 price is the lowest recorded since tracking began in July. Amazon’s own price history backs this up, confirming that $72.99 is also the lowest price over the past three months.

This is a genuine discount. It’s not a Black Friday deal as most of those haven’t started at the time of writing, and the tablet first reached this price in October. But that doesn’t make it any less attractive for bargain-hunters.

Now let’s look at the Sony WH-CH520 wireless headphones, which tell a rather different story.

Amazon currently has these headphones listed at $57.99, showing a 17% discount against their $69.99 list price. On the face of it, that’s a modest but respectable saving. You might reasonably assume you’re getting a good deal on a popular pair of headphones.

Then you check the price history.

The CamelCamelCamel graph shows that the headphones have regularly been available for around $38 over the past year, and they even hit $33 as recently as last month. That’s a huge difference from today’s supposedly discounted price. Amazon’s own tracker shows something a bit different, but confirms that they’ve sold for $38 within the past three months.

To be clear, the advertised 17% discount isn’t nothing. The list price is a different benchmark from the typical selling price, and $57.99 is indeed less than $69.99. But if you know these headphones have frequently been available for around $20 less, you’d probably think twice before buying them at the current price.

CamelCamelCamel is great for Amazon, but you obviously don’t want to restrict your Black Friday shopping to one retailer. Fortunately, there are alternatives that work across other stores.

One of the easiest is Google Shopping. Search for a product and, where available, you’ll find a Price Insights section showing how its price has changed over recent months. Google can also indicate whether the current price is low, typical, or high, based on pricing information gathered from sellers across the web.

If you’re in the US, Google also offers Shopping Insights directly in Chrome. When you’re browsing an eligible product listing, such as one at Best Buy, you may see a Shopping Insights icon in the address bar. Clicking it brings up a panel with the product’s price history and typical price range across retailers. You’ll need to be signed into Chrome with the relevant settings enabled, and the feature is only available in supported countries.

There are other trackers, but none of the options are infallible, and promotions involving coupons or particular product configurations can complicate the picture. But you don’t need to conduct an exhaustive investigation every time you buy something. A quick look at the price history will usually tell you whether you’re looking at an unusually good offer or just a fairly ordinary price wearing its Black Friday costume.

The biggest discount isn’t always the best deal, but hopefully you’re now well equipped to make the most of your Black Friday budget. We’ll be keeping an eye out for all the genuinely good offers on tech, so keep an eye on our Black Friday coverage.