Black Friday for students: what to buy now, what to wait for
By Ella Woodward · Updated 30 August 2026
Black Friday 2026 falls on 27 November, ten weeks into term. If you are starting university this September, you need to know which tech to buy now and which purchases can sit until the sales. This page answers that today, then turns into a live deal log when the sales start.
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What to buy now
Your laptop, if you need one for the start of term. A laptop you don't have for your first eight weeks of teaching costs you more than any November discount saves you, and the student-price routes that exist in September are the same ones that exist in November. We keep live price checks on the current picks in our student laptops guide and the by-course version. The same goes for anything your course actually requires in week one: the lab-spec calculator, the drawing tablet your design module lists, the external drive your film course tells you to bring.
Where waiting pays
Headphones and earbuds are the strongest case for patience. Big-brand audio discounts properly in late November, the older generations especially, and nobody needs noise-cancelling to survive freshers. Tablets drop too, usually the previous model rather than the newest, and monitors, portable speakers, smartwatches and games hardware all have real Black Friday form. There is also the family angle: a December birthday or Christmas sits close enough to the sales that the thing you want but don't need might be better name-dropped than bought.
How to read a "deal" when the emails start
A lot of Black Friday pricing is theatre against an inflated reference number. The "was" price is often the manufacturer's launch price from two years ago, not what anything sold for in October. We ran into a fresh example this week while price-checking laptops for the course guide: the cheapest MacBook Air M4 listing on Amazon, sitting right where a deal shopper would land, turned out to be a used unit at £753.70 mixed in with the new ones. Nothing on the price tag said so until you opened the listing.
My fix for this costs nothing. In early November I go through everything I might buy and screenshot the price, and on the day, a "deal" has to beat my own screenshot, not the retailer's "was" number. A price-history tracker like CamelCamelCamel does the same job for Amazon listings going back further. And check whether the student discount survives the sale before assuming it: some retailers suspend student codes during Black Friday week, others let them stack on top. The stacking retailers are listed in our student discounts guide as we confirm them.
The live deal log
From early November this section tracks student-relevant tech deals as they appear, each one checked against its October price before it gets listed. Until then there is nothing here, because the sales have not started.
The stuff that shifts once term is properly underway
It is aimed at right now, once the timetable settles and the money gets trickier than freshers week let on. You get an email before people sign for a house in November, and another when the January-to-April loan gap starts to bite. Leave whenever you like.
Every signup also enters our draw for the Beats Studio Pro (£349, UK, 18+). Terms.
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