What's good in the Best Buy Black Friday ad? Everything.

Best Buy's Black Friday ad has a slew of great deals, from big screen TVs to tablets and headphones. 

|
Mark Lennihan/AP/File
A Best Buy store in New York. Best Buy has scores of great deals in its Black Friday ad for 2015.

Honestly there are so many really great deals in the Best Buy Black Friday ad that we had a hard time narrowing it down just to a top few.

A few notes before we jump in. When putting together our returning deals lists, we generally steered clear of most TVs and laptops. The ever-shifting array of features, components, and technological improvements from one year to the next render most comparisons almost meaningless. If an item in one of these categories is a good buy, we added to our list of top Black Friday deals.

Likewise, this is one ad where we're not doing a side-by-side cover comparison. Best Buy has released their ad online for the last few years, so the format isn't exactly a traditional circular.

That said, Best Buy really has turned up with one of our favorite Black Friday ads of 2015.

Our Favorite Best Buy Black Friday Deals:

Beats by Dr. Dre Powerbeats2 Wireless Bluetooth Earbuds - $99.99 (was $199.99)
This is easily the lowest price we've ever seen on a new pair of these madly popular Beats by Dr. Dre earbuds. In fact, the only lower price we've seen was on a refurb. And most of the time even the refurbs are priced higher. This one gets top marks. They also fit very nicely in a stocking.

60" Samsung 4K Ultra HD Smart TV - $799.99 (was $1,499.99)
The price $799.99 price tag here is the lowest price we've seen for a 60" 4K TV. Really, you can't go wrong with any of the 4K televisions listed in the Best Buy ad, all of which are listed at all-time price lows. The first draft of our list had no fewer than four before we took a deep breath and cut the field down to one to represent the whole. The $700 discount on this model gets it well under $1,000 and is very generously sized for the price.

49" Toshiba LED 1080p HDTV - $149.99 (was $429.99) 
If you're not ready to shell out for 4K, this 49" Toshiba gives us an unheard of price for a TV of this size and quality.

24" LG LED 720p HDTV - $79.99 (was $149.99)
We have never seen this particular TV below $130 until now, and it's the cheapest TV we've seen anywhere so far this Black Friday. Also, note that it's an LG, not some no-name brand too embarrassing or insignificant to even mention like we've seen so many retailers do with cheap TV doorbusters over the years. Take all that together and not mentioning it on a list of best deals would just be wrong.

iPad Air 2 - up to $125 off
While the 16GB and 64GB match last year's Black Friday price from Best Buy, the 128GB model gets a $125 discount, which beats last year's price by $25. Even better is it looks like it's a proper discount, not just another gift card bundle - something that's fairly rare with Apple products on Black Friday.

iPad mini 4 - from $399.99
Deals on the iPad mini 4 are so rare that we've literally never posted one before. So we're very, very pleased to see Best Buy taking $100 off the 64GB and 128GB models for Black Friday.

13.3" Apple Macbook Pro 4GB Memory 500GB HD - $899.99 (was $1,099.99)
We saw this same Macbook at this price in July during Best Buy's Cyber Monday in July event, so it looks like Best Buy wasn't fibbing about the pricing being close to what you find on Black Friday. In this case it definitely is. The drop may not represent a new low price, but it matches the lowest we've seen.

HP DeskJet 2545 Wireless All-In-One Printer - $19.99 (was $79.99)
It's pretty common to hear people joke that printers have gotten so cheap that replacing the printer costs less than replacing the ink. In this case it's literally true. You really can't even replace the ink for so little, and it's a wireless all-in-one.

Jawbone UP2 Activity Tracker - $49.99 (was $99.99)
The fitness tracker trend shows no signs of slowing. The low price of this Jawbone UP2 beats our last mention by $18, making it an especially good entry-level option.

15.6" Asus Laptop 4GB Memory 500GB HD - $139.99 (was $249.99)
We won't labor under the illusion that this is going to be an incredible laptop. In fact it's going to be light on frills. But the $139.99 price tag here is too low to ignore.

11.6" Acer Chromebook 2GB Memory 16GB - $99.00 (save $70)
Chromebooks are cheap for a reason. Relying heavily on cloud storage to make up for its teeny tiny 16GB hard drive, it's really just an internet machine. That said, seeing any laptop under $100, even one as stripped down and basic as a Chromebook, is a major milestone.

Insignia Portable Bluetooth Stereo Speaker - $9.99 (was $39.99)
When a portable bluetooth speaker is this cheap, buying one for every room in the house suddenly seems like a good idea.

Nest Learning Thermostat 3rd Generation + $50 Gift Card - $249.99
Discounts on the highly praised Nest Thermostat are rare. The effective price of $199.99 once you consider the value of the gift card matches the best price we saw last Black Friday. This is generally one of the only discounts we see all year, so make your move.

Nikon Coolpix L840 16.0-Megapixel Digital Camera - $169.99 (was $299.99)
It's hard to argue with 56% off a great camera. And it's purple! (Yes, you can get it in black, too. Or red.) Last year, the L830 sold for the same price, in the same shade of purple, but it's a reliably good price on a reliably good camera.

Keurig K40 Elite Coffeemaker + $15 Gift Card - $79.99
The addition of the $15 gift card makes the effective cost of this Keurig bundle $64.99 and soundly beats the best price on this model we found anywhere last Black Friday.

Better Than Last Year:

More Returning Deals:

This article first appeared in Brad's Deals. 

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to What's good in the Best Buy Black Friday ad? Everything.
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Saving-Money/2015/1121/What-s-good-in-the-Best-Buy-Black-Friday-ad-Everything.
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe