6 Items Worth Buying on Black Friday (and 4 You Should Skip)

Of all the items that go on sale on Black Friday, TVs tend to be the most sought-after. Retailers consistently drop television prices to draw in shoppers, and you'll usually see the best offers of the year on this day. Still, the type of TV you’re looking to buy matters. This year, you can expect to score the biggest savings on 4K sets with some doorbuster deals as low as $170, but expect to find most prices in the $200 to $400 range.

From cookware to small appliances, you'll find big discounts on kitchen necessities come November. On Black Friday, Amazon, Macy's and Bed Bath & Beyond will be the prime spot for top deals on items like Instant Pots, Nespresso machines and KitchenAid Stand mixers. Also worth snapping up: Everyday culinary essentials like Pyrex containers or 10-piece cookware sets.

Black Friday is prime time to invest (at a hefty discount) in big-ticket home appliances that you’ve been waiting on all year. Case in point: Dyson. Last year, almost half of the vacuum deals listed hit annual price lows with Dyson models going for as little as $200.

Big-brand, French door refrigerators will fall as low as $750 while dishwashers could go for as little as $200 at Samsung and Home Depot, both of which will host their best sales of the year on appliances (sometimes up to 40 percent off).

You’ll find the best deals on more basic builds. For example, in previous years, Best Buy's doorbuster sale offered $300 off Microsoft Surface laptops and you can expect more of the same savings this year.

In prior years, fitness equipment was something that you'd be much better off waiting until January to buy. But given the ongoing pandemic, people are staying out of gyms and turning to stationary bikes, HIIT mirrors and treadmills more than ever. Because of this, brands will likely be discounting said items as early as possible so people can reap the benefits for holiday gifting.

Black Friday will have a handful of special offers on tools, but you’ll actually see deeper discounts—and much more variety—in December.

Valentine’s Day is the best time to score marked down jewels (up to 60 percent off), so hold out for that rose-gold pendant necklace.

It’s not that the deals on 1080p TVs won’t be good, but remember the discounts on 4K TVs we told you about? On Black Friday, they’ll pretty much match the cost of a 1080p TV, which means that even if you don’t care about 4K content right now, you might as well go with the “better” option, since the cost is roughly the same.

We repeat: Black Friday is all about bargain tech. When it comes to high-performance machines (we’re looking at you, Apple), it’s better to time your investment to coincide with the release of a new model or next year’s back-to-school discounts.