How to Score Great Deals on Tech During the Holidays

Believe it or not, the holiday season is just around the corner. Pretty soon the temperatures will begin to drop, the stores will be filled with snowflakes and Santas, and we will start to prepare for some serious shopping.

If the friends and family members on your list are all clamoring for tech gifts this holiday season, it’s important to know where and how to get the best deals.

While you want to give everyone a nice present, your wallet is not a bottomless pit and you need to score good prices whenever possible.

Fortunately, by doing your holiday shopping homework and thinking outside of the regular retail box, you can find great deals on the hottest and most current tech like smartphones, tablets and more. Check out the following ideas:

Consider Home Shopping Networks

If you have never checked out a home shopping channel like QVC, you will be in for a pleasant surprise. QVC offers a huge variety of top quality merchandise at outstanding prices, including a wide range of laptops from name-brand companies like Dell and Microsoft. The company also offers “Easy Pay” options on most of their items, which allows even first-time customers who use a qualifying credit card to spread their payments out over several months; this can help make holiday shopping more budget-friendly.

Check out this fun article about “How many Black Friday finds can you fit in your car?” from finder.com.

If you use “Easy Pay,” the laptop or other items will still be shipped out right away, but you have months to pay it off. For example, if you hope to treat your spouse to a Microsoft Surface Pro that doubles as a tablet and laptop, you can currently find the Intel 128GB SSD model on QVC for a clearance price of around $900 or six Easy Pays of around $150.

It comes with a keyboard and a one-year subscription to Office 365. As a bonus, you don’t have to wait for the tech item you want to show up on TV; you can use the QVC website to search their inventory and find great deals.

Shop at Non-tech Places

Another way to find great deals on tech devices for the holidays is to shop at places that are not known for their electronics. For example, Cabela’s, which most people think of for their hunting and fishing needs, has a surprisingly nice selection of tech items — which are often extra rugged and built to be outside.

You can sign up at the Cabela’s website to get email updates on their Black Friday sales, and you can also search the site at any time to see what tech goodies they offer.

For example, the Wildgame Innovations Trail Pad Trail Tablet is currently on sale for under $135, which is a perfectly decent price on an innovative tablet. The tablet is both water and weather resistant so it can handle being outdoors with no problems, and it features a 7-inch screen, Android 4.1 operating system, 8BG of internal memory and built-in Wi-Fi technology.

Harness the Power of Black Friday and Cyber Monday

As you are probably well-aware, the day and Monday after Thanksgiving offer outstanding opportunities to get amazing prices on certain types of tech, including TVs, smartphones and more.

Start by bookmarking a Black Friday website like BestBlackFriday.com; it will post 2017 sale ads as they come along, so you can see who will have the best prices.

In addition, sign up early for emails at a number of stores that sell tech — this includes Target, Best Buy, Wal-Mart and more, and also “Like” and follow their pages on social media, so you can get updates on their holiday sales.

Once you have an idea of who is offering what, you can plan your shopping attack — either by mapping out a number of stores to visit on Black Friday or by focusing your energies on Cyber Monday and shopping from the comfort and quiet of home.

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