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Each year, Black Friday and Cyber Monday stand as the undisputed giants of the global shopping calendar—two back-to-back days that ignite unparalleled consumer enthusiasm. During the most recent shopping season, an astonishing 197 million individuals participated in the weekend’s sales events, taking advantage of immense price reductions that spanned across countless categories. Throughout the year, our team at ZDNET monitors price fluctuations and evaluates trends across industries, enabling us to affirm with confidence that Black Friday and Cyber Monday consistently deliver not only the highest volume of discounts but also the broadest diversity of brands, product types, and price cuts—especially on highly sought-after flagship items that rarely see markdowns otherwise.
Because we specialize in evaluating bargains and meticulously cover both Black Friday and Cyber Monday events, our editorial staff developed a comprehensive deal tracker designed explicitly for ZDNET readers. The tracker aggregates the most popular, reader-favorite products so that you can immediately discern which offers represent outstanding savings opportunities and which items might be more prudent to postpone purchasing. This system not only streamlines decision-making but also ensures that consumers can distinguish genuine discounts from those that are merely disguised as deals.
To gain a clearer, data-driven understanding of current pricing, we employed the CamelCamelCamel browser extension—a reliable tool that follows Amazon product prices over time. By comparing a product’s lowest historical price, its peak price point, and the active promotional price being offered during the Black Friday season, we were able to illustrate how today’s discounts measure up. This comparative analysis, represented through visual graphs in Figures 1 and 2, reveals that all the leading products among our readers currently sit at or below their historically lowest recorded prices. Notable items hitting their record lows include the MacBook Air M4, the FITVII Fitness Tracker, Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Ultra smartphone, and the ESR Aura MagSafe Wallet. With discounts at these levels, these featured products represent an exceptional opportunity for immediate purchase, as such pricing levels rarely persist beyond the short window of the holiday shopping surge.
Other products, while not at absolute record lows, are nonetheless marked down impressively—such as the Oura Ring Gen 4 at a considerable 29 percent off and the Dreame X40 Ultra Robot Vacuum and Mop at an astonishing 58 percent reduction. Given that Cyber Monday follows immediately after Black Friday, we advise making any intended purchases between today and tomorrow, since historical data strongly suggests that prices often rebound upward later in the week as promotional activities conclude and inventories tighten.
The holiday shopping period encapsulating these two hallmark events is reliably one of the best times to secure excellent deals on a diverse range of goods, particularly flagship technology and new-generation devices. Yet, shopping smartly requires discernment. Consumers must remain mindful of artificial markups or cleverly marketed faux discounts designed to simulate savings. Fortunately, precise price-tracking tools such as Keepa and CamelCamelCamel significantly reduce uncertainty by enabling shoppers to verify whether a markdown is legitimate based on documented pricing trends. Moreover, Cyber Monday tends to be a particularly strategic time to purchase slightly older but still high-performing tech, as continual product launches—ranging from smartphones and televisions to laptops and tablets—within the past half-year often lead to steep, genuine markdowns on last season’s models.
To determine which items to analyze for this comparison, we assembled a dataset spanning top-selling tech products across several categories for 2025. The data was curated from ZDNET’s comprehensive collection of editorial reviews, buyer’s guides, and curated deals. Importantly, this information is aggregated to maintain complete user privacy—no individual purchase details are visible or traceable, ensuring that your shopping behavior and identity remain fully secure.
At ZDNET, editorial integrity guides our recommendations. We write about deals we ourselves find desirable—products that we either already own, would genuinely consider purchasing, or would confidently suggest to others. Our evaluation process involves identifying discount thresholds of at least twenty percent or spotting items that almost never appear on sale. To guarantee that each featured offer qualifies as a true deal, our experts apply established price comparison algorithms and tracking tools, reviewing the frequency and depth of past discounts. In addition, customer feedback plays a crucial role: we examine authentic user reviews to identify real-world satisfaction factors, durability insights, and any recurring concerns that could influence a purchasing decision. In some instances, our recommendations stem not only from rigorous research but also from hands-on product testing, ensuring our advice reflects both data and lived experience. Ultimately, our overarching mission is to provide readers with the most reliable, fact-based shopping guidance available—empowering you to make informed, value-driven buying decisions throughout the shopping season.
This year, Cyber Monday falls on Monday, December 1. As always, Black Friday arrives immediately after Thanksgiving in the United States, and Cyber Monday follows on the subsequent Monday. These two cornerstone events effectively usher in the broader holiday shopping season, signaling the official start of end-of-year spending for millions of consumers worldwide.
If you’re searching for meaningful gift ideas this holiday season—whether you’re shopping for yourself or selecting the perfect technology present for family and friends—our editorial team has curated a selection of top-tier tech recommendations ideal for any recipient. To explore these handpicked suggestions, visit our comprehensive gift guides below, crafted to help you identify products that balance innovation, usefulness, and value.
For those with lingering questions or a desire for deeper insight into the broader shopping landscape, ZDNET’s Cyber Week 2025 Shopping Guide offers extensive coverage. Within it, you’ll find detailed breakdowns of everything you need to know about Cyber Week, including in-depth analyses of both Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions, insider shopping strategies, and expert commentary on maximizing your holiday savings experience.
Sourse: https://www.zdnet.com/article/is-that-cyber-monday-deal-legit-find-out-with-zdnets-deal-tracker/
