The Black Friday countdown heats up with the leaking of Best Buy’s ad, which features the most PC deals released so far — as well as some of the most aggressively priced.
Deal sites predicted that the lowest price for a new computer during Black Friday 2017 would come in around $99, which we haven’t seen in the handful of ads posted to date. Best Buy makes up for it with a pair — your choice of a Lenovo Ideapad (Intel Celeron CPU, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of built-in storage, 11.6-inch display) for $99.99 or an 11.6-inch Samsung Chromebook with Celeron processor, 2GB of RAM, and 16GB of storage for $99.
These are doorbuster specials, however, so you may need to arrange your turkey dinner around Best Buy’s Thanksgiving opening at 5 p.m. If the specs of the $99 Chromebook are a little meager, there’s another doorbuster of the same Chromebook with double the memory and storage for $20 more.
Other notable laptop deals at Best Buy’s event include a Friday 8 a.m. doorbuster for a $179.99 Lenovo portable with AMD A-6 processor, 4GB of RAM, 500GB hard drive, and 15.6-inch display. If you don’t want to rush out early, there’s also an 11.6-inch Acer R convertible Chromebook for $179 or a 15.6-inch Lenovo notebook with AMD A-12 processor, 8 gigs of RAM, and terabyte hard drive for $279.99.
If you’re willing to spend a little more for a faster machine, a Dell Inspiron is a $359.99 Thanksgiving doorbuster with a Core i5 chip, 8GB of memory, a whopping 2TB hard drive, and 15.6-inch touchscreen. A mid-range big-screen option is an HP laptop with 17.3-inch display, Core i5, 8GB of RAM, and 1TB hard drive for $379.99.
MacBook lovers looking for a deal can get $200 off their choice of the base 13.3-inch MacBook Air (Core i5, 8GB of memory, 128GB solid-state drive) or the version with double the storage for $200 less on Thanksgiving. You’ll also be able to score up to $250 off various MacBook Pro laptops throughout the Black Friday weekend.
Speaking of Apple, while Target is cutting the mini 4, Best Buy matches its competitor’s discounts on the full-size tablets ($249.99 for the iPad, up to $150 on the iPad Pro), and goes one further with a significant Thanksgiving doorbuster sale on the iPad mini, chopping $125 off to make it $274.99.
Best Buy will also feature Amazon Fire tablets as Friday doorbusters — $29.99 for the 7-inch Fire and $49.99 for the 8-inch Fire HD. (No doubt Amazon will offer the same prices for a longer time period.) It will discount a trio of Samsung Galaxy Tab Android slates as well: the 8-inch Tab A ($119.99), the 9.6-inch Tab E ($139.99), and the 9.7-inch Tab S2 ($279.99).
The retailer has its own Insignia brand Android tablet for far less — a 10.1-inch model for just $69.99. Finally, Best Buy has a Thanksgiving doorbuster on a Microsoft Surface Pro for $629.99 or a special on a Surface Laptop (Core i5, 128GB SSD, 13.5-inch display) for $899.
Desktop PC shoppers won’t get off as cheaply as those grabbing the laptop doorbusters, but you can grab an HP Pavilion tower with AMD A-12 processor, 8GB of RAM, and terabyte hard drive for $349.99 or an HP slimline system with Core i7, 12 gigs of RAM, and 1TB hard drive for $499.99. There are also a pair of HP 23.8-inch touchscreen all-in-one specials — one with Core i3 and 8 gigs of RAM or a version with Core i5 and 12GB of RAM for $699.99.
If you prefer Apple’s iMac all-in-one instead, there’s a Thanksgiving doorbuster for the base 21.5-inch desktop with Core i5 and 8GB of memory for $899.99 ($200 off) or if you need more screen size, the 27-inch edition (also with Core i5 and 8GB of RAM) is available throughout the Black Friday weekend for $1,599.99.
Best Buy promises to unveil more doorbusters on Thanksgiving and Black Friday so we’ll see what else they will have to offer. We’re also awaiting Walmart’s ad to see how its PC prices compare so stay tuned.