2020 brought a lot of surprises, but in 2021 we can expect equally unpleasant news. For example, according to analysts, the price of imported goods may rise by 15-30% in comparison with current prices. This stems from both negative processes in the global economy and the fall in the ruble exchange rate relative not only to the dollar and the euro (which we are already used to), but also to the yuan. This means that the horde of Chinese gadgets, so beloved for their cheapness, will no longer be as affordable as before. In this situation, “Black Friday 2020” becomes more relevant than ever the sale. We have prepared a digest of goods that makes sense to buy right now. This is not a “Guide to Promotions and Discounts”, which will be released in its usual time and will be devoted to an overview of discounts in large chains, but simply interesting options to save money.
Illustration: Svetlana Leonova
Service subscriptions
Let’s start with the obvious proposal – to buy subscriptions to various services. It can be both global streaming services and promotions from Russian companies. Now there is a struggle between Sberbank, Yandex and other corporations for the formation of a loyal audience, so no one regrets the means to attract users to themselves. Income from the use of services in the future for companies will cover a certain loss from the welcome discount. And if we talk about what is relevant here and now, it is very profitable to connect. The most common offer is a discount coupon for the first purchase within the service. Moreover, if you collect such subscriptions (without obligations for future spending), then you can actually use a whole range of services, either completely free of charge, or with a big discount. It is likely that someone will need to step out of their comfort zone and stop using the usual service to which you have subscribed for a long time and which you are completely satisfied with, but perhaps the new experience will be better. These coupon shares have only one drawback – their validity period is rather short: from one or two weeks to a month or the end of the year. But this is the essence of sales.
Book reader Onyx Boox Poke 2 Color
Another item in our digest, which will be an excellent purchase during the sales season. If we leave out of the brackets the category of pioneering technologists, as well as people who, when choosing a product, are looking for the most expensive model, then Onyx Boox Poke 2 Color will be in the “not for everyone” category. Most book reader users are conservative by nature, and they need to be convinced of the usefulness of innovation. And not everyone likes to be convinced of overpaying. Meanwhile, the named model is just the very innovation that, in my opinion, is worth paying for. Color E-Ink and Android OS on a fast chipset with a good margin of autonomy – if not a revolution, then a good shake-up of ideas about what an e-book can do and how to perceive it. But miracles do not happen, and new technologies cost money, especially if the manufacturer did not just mold them somehow and threw them onto the market, but also thought a little about how to make them really user-friendly. Apple guarantees this. And here “Black Friday” is more relevant than ever. Instead of the usual, rather high price, getting Poke 2 Color with a 15% discount is a very good option. Manufacturability and premium quality will remain, but the cost will be on sale. To get a discount, when placing an order, you must enter the promo code “Black20” in the “Coupon” field. This discount cannot be combined with discounts and gifts for other promotions carried out by the company.
Huawei MateBook Laptops
In the branded online store Huawei “Black Friday” started today. The company promises you discounts of up to 50% of the value of the goods and valuable gifts. But we know that at least the last point is the most common practice for Huawei. No need to wait for Black Friday to get a bracelet, battery, case or any other accessory when buying a smartphone. More interesting are the discounts on the devices themselves. And here everything is not so simple. The largest discount is given on last year’s devices, but the Huawei P30 series at the end of 2020 looks pretty outdated. With the current P40, another problem is the lack of Google services, which did not affect the cost at all. But notebooks of the MateBook series have now received the maximum discount. Design, characteristics – everything with them. The price before the discount season was pleasant, but now you can get the MateBook D14 model with 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of SSD at a price of 47 thousand rubles. The gift will be a choice of a wireless mouse, router or backpack. If you take the more compact model MateBook 13 based on the AMD Ryzen 5 processor, then for 60 thousand you will get a complete set of 16 GB RAM + 512 GB SSD. For such characteristics, this is the lowest price on the market – the only competitor in cost from Xiaomi loses in terms of screen quality.
Xiaomi smartphones
By the way, since we are talking about Xiaomi. Laptops of this brand are somewhat inferior to models from Huawei, provided that the price is equal, although, perhaps, it will be more important for someone that the HDMI connector is directly in the case, while the compact versions of the MateBook were implemented through a docking station. But it is better to look at smartphones from Xiaomi. Yes, they do not have the same cool cameras, but this affects primarily night photography, and in most situations the loss is almost invisible to a real user. But what any user will notice is the presence of “normal” Android on board. You don’t have to puzzle over whether the application will work as expected – it will just work. In addition, Xiaomi, one of the major manufacturers, is currently supporting models for the longest time. In practice, this means that even a 3-4-year-old smartphone will continue not only to receive security updates, but also to acquire some new MIUI shells. So a smartphone can prove to be a profitable long-term investment. Discounts are offered on almost all models of all price levels, so you can choose to fit your budget.
previous generation iPhone
The late launch of the iPhone 12 certainly disappointed fans of the brand. They had to wait for the update of their devices for more than a month against the usual time. But for those who approach the issue of buying Apple technology with great sanity (as far as it is generally available for fans of a certain brand), it turned out to be a blessing. Not only did the previous generation of iPhone inevitably receive a discount due to what has become exactly the past, but also the season of sales arrived in time. In addition, Apple this year unleashed the iron grip of surveillance of retailers so that they would never drop the price, and discounts fell like a cornucopia. If you want an iPhone but aren’t looking for the newest iPhone, your time has come.
Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles
And one more recommendation not to chase new products. Both Microsoft and Sony never stopped telling us how their new devices are undeniably groundbreaking, sophisticated, and incredibly powerful. In practice, as usual, it turned out that in the pursuit of characteristics and release dates, they managed to forget about some important details. Sony forgot that everything in a user device should not only be listed, but also work, and both companies somehow did not care too much about new titles. In general, the owners of new products were allowed to feel like beta testers for a lot of money. And the promised unprecedented gap in opportunities was not so great. As a result, buyers of the new Xbox and PlayStation will spend the coming New Year holidays playing the same games as on older consoles. And if there is no difference, why pay more? The conclusion is simple – on Black Friday, you need to look for discounts in stores not for new consoles (they certainly won’t be), but for their predecessors. For example, now you can buy Xbox One S 1 TB bundled with a whole set of games for 20 thousand rubles.
Samsung TVs
You are probably already interested in the question, but where is the mention of Samsung smartphones. And they are not in this digest. Not because smartphones are bad, but because there were no big discounts for Black Friday. That is, if you were planning to buy one of the current models, then there is no point in trying to catch up with “votpryamshchas” – there was a discount last week, and most likely it will remain in the future. Of course, I cannot rule out that additional discounts will be announced on Friday, but you will learn about this from the Promotions Guide. But what you should pay attention to is the TVs of this brand. Many stores that had started Black Friday in advance included Samsung TVs in their promotional offers and gave them a substantial discount. It is important to note that the discounting was uneven – budget options were not included in the discount offers, but in the middle price category, the discounts are good, and the choice is large. With more expensive models, the size of the discount in absolute terms looks traditionally impressive, although relative to the initial cost it will be some usual 10-15%. In general, there is plenty to choose from.
Samsung Galaxy Tab S Tablets
Another position from Samsung with a good benefit, if not chasing novelty. If you are interested in a tablet with a stylus, then the choice is not so great – either the Galaxy Tab S series from Samsung, or the iPad. Competitors are unambiguously in flight, since functionally it is in the work of the stylus that they lose significantly. Yes, by and large, and the iPad is a rather strange choice for anyone outside the Apple ecosystem. The Apple Pen is some damn device that the company could only create for one purpose: to prove to its adepts that the stylus is inconvenient. At the same time, Samsung is successfully adapting the user experience collected from both numerous tablets and the Galaxy Note line of smartphones. But this is the lyrics. The harsh reality is that for the simplest of the Galaxy Tab S7 models, Samsung will want almost 60 thousand rubles from you. You can look for a discount, but you still can’t count on less than 50 thousand. And a tablet with a stylus is most often needed by people, either creative or students. That is, those who are often strapped for funds. You can try to take it in installments, or you can look at the Galaxy Tab S6. In honor of “Black Friday” for the Wi-Fi version in the Samsung brand store you will be charged only 36 thousand, and if you need LTE, then you can keep within 43 thousand. The “lightweight” Lite version can be found at all from partners at prices less than 30 thousand.
Nokia Headphones
The Nokia name has always been associated with smartphones. And now, under this brand, HMD continues to produce smartphones. But the name is the name, but the products must be evaluated in terms of price-quality ratio. It’s not a sin to overpay for the brand, but not in the case of Nokia from HMD. Because there is already an overpayment, but smartphones do not have technology yet. Not so long ago, we had a review of the almost flagship Nokia 8.3 on our website, and at the end the author rightly pushed it head-on with the Samsung Galaxy S20 FE. All that Nokia’s model can boast of is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G chipset versus the Exynos 990. And taking into account the discounts, these devices cost 50 thousand and 46 thousand, respectively. Nokia is more expensive, but it comes with TWS headphones as a gift. They don’t give you headphones for the Galaxy S20 FE, but you can trade in your old phone and get another 10 thousand discount. When compared to Chinese brands, the price-to-technology ratio will generally be a beating. HMD, are you serious? In short, if the discount on a Nokia smartphone is now less than 30%, then this is a bad buy. But Nokia headphones are just good. Not perfect, but quite in the market. And now they give a good discount. There are wireless, wired and TWS models to choose from.
Cleaning robots
Remember, I started with the fact that the rise in prices for electronics next year is predicted on the basis of the depreciation of the ruble, including against the yuan? This means that there will no longer be low prices for a bunch of various equipment, which is traditionally brought to our market from the Middle Kingdom. All these ozonizers, humidifiers, robotic vacuum cleaners, robotic window cleaners do not fit into the definition of “nonsense for a penny” any more, unless, of course, you are looking for some junk on AliExpress, shipped by weight by unknown seller, it is not known from which basement. In general, all this household machinery, designed to replace a person in performing the routine but inevitable care of the home, in order to give him more time for self-development and thoughts of high, costs money. And since something costs money, then the discounts for it will be substantial. I will not pretend that I am an expert in this area, and I will not name specific models. There are a million of them, and each with its own peculiarities and disadvantages. The market is developing, so if you want to choose a gadget exactly for your needs, then you will have to read the forums and reviews of the real owners. Well, or act as a pioneer, bringing the light of knowledge to followers. “Black Friday” will be very useful here – almost all stores that sell robot cleaners offer discounts, sometimes very significant.
Traditionally, I invite you to comment – share your plans for Black Friday. What are you going to buy, what have you already bought, what do you recommend to others?
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