Black Friday, the deal-drenched marketing blitz that kicks off the holiday shopping spree, might feel more muted this year.
That’s because just about everything is getting more expensive. As the global economy reckons with challenges from the AI industry’s memory crisis and the ongoing war in Iran, prices for many products have risen, especially consumer electronics like smartphones and gaming consoles.
While many sales have already begun, the prices on offer may feel less like a deal than in years past. Weaker deals will likely revolve around products that use a lot of memory (RAM). Gadgets like robot vacuums, headphones, and other products that don’t rely as much on memory may see better prices.
“Things are getting more expensive, and they'll probably continue to get more expensive well into 2027, maybe even 2028,” says Jitesh Ubrani, director of Consumer Devices Research at IDC. “When it comes to PCs, tablets, those kinds of devices, that's where everyone's going to struggle.”
Case in point: Amazon, the absolute behemoth of Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, has hiked the prices of its latest Kindles, tablets, and Echo speakers, meaning its next sale on those devices likely won’t impress compared to years past.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday remain the best shopping days of the year, says Edgar Dworsky, a consumer advocate who has long used his website Consumer World to call out companies that stealthily raise product prices.
“However, just because an item is advertised with significant savings claimed, doesn't mean it is a good deal or the best price,” Dworsky wrote in a message to WIRED.
Dworsky recommends tracking Amazon’s prices by monitoring price-history websites like CamelCamelCamel. Google has a built-in price-tracking tool in the Chrome browser, but many other third-party extensions do the job as well.
“Because of high memory prices, laptops, desktops, and SSDs will still be on sale,” Dworsky predicts. “But not nearly as low-priced as previously offered.”
It might be a good move to buy a used or refurbished gadget. Sean Cleland, vice president of Mobility Tech at the product resale company BStock Solutions, says some manufacturers are leaning into selling refurbished units more than ever, even buying them from resellers like BStock. They're filling gaps in the budget phone market by offering up refurbished products.
“The new trend that we're seeing is the [manufacturers] buying back their own stuff in the secondary market so that they can refurbish it and sell it as authorized refurbished or certified renewed,” Cleland says. “They're trying to get anything and everything back.”
What Black Friday will be good for, it seems, is the companies selling all this stuff. They get to set the costs, after all. With all the economic turmoil in the market, companies have been adept at passing additional costs to consumers.
“There's no good news right now for consumers,” Ubrani says. “It's unfortunate that the consumers are the ones who are going to struggle because of all this.”
So maybe the deals won’t be great. But they might be the best you can get for a while. The memory crisis isn’t ending anytime soon, so now might be the time to get something you need. If you do that, Ubrani recommends making sure it’s something you actually need. And something that will keep working for a long time.
“They should be purchasing the most amount of performance that they can afford today,” Ubrani says. “We're going to face elevated pricing for years. You want that device to last you for a while.”
