As mentioned a couple of weeks ago, Dell has been the first tech retailer to have its Black Friday plans disclosed over the last couple of years — and this year is no different. The PC giant has “leaked” its deals for the Thanksgiving weekend shopping period, including a 14-inch laptop for a budget price as a turkey day doorbuster.
Similar to previous years, Dell will offer doorbusters as early as 11 a.m. on Thanksgiving morning and shift to hourly specials throughout Black Friday itself. (Other sales will be available starting November 15 and running through November 24.) If you’re eating your holiday meal at 6 p.m. on Thursday, you’ll need to excuse yourself from the table to jump online for the cheapest PC Dell is putting on sale: the Inspiron 14 3000 laptop, which will be discounted to $129.99 during the doorbuster period. As with many budget notebooks, it features bare-bones specs — Intel Celeron processor, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of storage — but makes an affordable gift if you need to buy a laptop for the holidays.
You’ll have to go Dell’s small business site if you want the company’s other sub-$200 PC special, as it will have an Inspiron 15 3000 laptop with Celeron CPU, 4 gigs of RAM, and 500GB hard drive for $199.99 as an 11 a.m. Thanksgiving doorbuster. Dell’s consumer site will offer a pricier but better spec’d configuration as an 8 a.m. Black Friday doorbuster — for $299.99 you get upgraded to a Core i3 processor and a terabyte hard drive. Alternatively, Dell Small Business will offer a similarly spec’d system as a doorbuster at the same time, but throw in a year of ProSupport for the higher price tag of $334.99.
You won’t get off as cheaply on the desktop side, with a $379.99 Inspiron desktop (Core i5, 8 gigs of RAM, 1TB hard drive) doorbuster at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving as Dell’s lowest price. For $399, Dell Small Business has a similar Inspiron desktop with ProSupport, though you get an older Core i5 processor. If you’re looking for an all-in-one PC instead, the Inspiron 24 3000 Touch comes with a Core i3 CPU, 8GB of RAM, terabyte hard, and 1080p 23.8-inch touchscreen will be $549.99 throughout Dell’s sale period.
Tablets are a no-show in Dell’s ad this year, a sign of their fall from the Black Friday perch not so long ago, but a 9 p.m. Thanksgiving doorbuster can give you their functionality in the form of an Inspiron 11 3000 2-in-1 laptop. For $299.99 the convertible notebook includes an Intel Core M3 CPU, 4GB of RAM, 1TB hard drive, and 11.6-inch touchscreen display.
The first doorbuster Dell has scheduled, however, is from its Alienware gaming arm, with its 15-inch laptop (Intel Core i7 processor, 8 gigs of RAM, terabyte hard drive, Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 graphics) selling for $1,199.99 and its 17-inch version (Core i7, 16GB of RAM, 1TB hard drive and 128GB SSD, GeForce GTX 1060 graphics) on sale for $1,599.99. At the same time, an Alienware Aurora desktop configuration with Core i5 CPU, 8 gigs of RAM, terabyte hard drive and GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card will be specially priced at $799.99.
Dell is emphasizing gaming in its Black Friday deals, a shrewd move as gamers are one of the biggest niches in the PC market today. Hence, another doorbuster at 10 p.m. on Thanksgiving evening is the Inspiron gaming desktop with an AMD Ryzen 3 1200 processor, 8GB of RAM, 1TB hard and Radeon RX 560 graphics for $499.99 or a slightly beefier version (upgraded with Ryzen 5 CPU and Radeon RX 580 graphics) for $699.99 as a 9 a.m. doorbuster on Black Friday.Other gaming sales available throughout Black Friday include the Inspiron 15 5000 gaming laptop (Core i5, 8GB of RAM, 1TB storage, GeForce GTX 1050 graphics) for $699.99 and the more powerful Inspiron 15 7000 gaming edition (Core i5 CPU, 8GB of memory, 1TB hard drive and 128GB SSD, GeForce GTX 1060 graphics) for $899.99.
As Black Friday and Cyber Monday morph into a month-long shopping frenzy, retailers are adding wrinkles to their sales to push some deals out earlier in November. Dell has announced that some of the doorbusters listed above will be available from today (November 1) through Friday (November 3). In addition, the company’s loyal customers (Advantage Loyalty Rewards, Member Purchase Program) will be able to access the doorbusters starting on November 15. Now that Dell has kicked off the Black Friday deal reveal cycle, expect plenty more news from other tech retailers in the coming days.