We’re Tracking Black Friday Deals and Trends Live—The Best Didn’t End At Midnight

This hefty, beautiful knife from Material quickly became my go-to knife for bigger cutting tasks. This chef’s knife is well-made and efficient, from cutting dense veggies to finely chopping herbs quickly. I noticed vegetables don’t stick to the side as much as other models I’ve tested for the guide, and it was able to make ultra-thin cuts with control despite its very large size. The sturdy Japanese high-carbon and stainless steel blade is hand-polished, heat-treated at 300 degrees Fahrenheit, and cryogenically tempered at -250 degrees to make the steel harder and more durable. It’s already cheap for a chef’s knife of this caliber, but at less than $100 right now, it’s a steal.

Good morning and happy Shopping Day That Will Likely Be Named Soon Saturday to all.

This weekend is still prime shopping season, and most of the deals we saw yesterday are still live. But what to call it? I heard a radio ad for “Black Saturday” the other day, and I’m fighting against that for now. They were selling Chevys, I believe, and I’m not in the market for any Chevys.

Either way, good luck on your holiday shopping, we’ll be here for a bit to help!

Thanks for hanging out with us today! We won’t be back to liveblog until Cyber Monday, but WIRED Reviews will continue finding the latest, greatest deals all through the weekend. Enjoy your turkey (or brisket, if you were smart) holiday, and see you soon!

After sleep comes coffee. It is the eternal cycle. I sometimes look forward to tomorrow’s coffee long before I go to bed. And the Fellow Aiden (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is the coffee machine that will get you thinking this way.

The Aiden was last year’s blockbuster coffee maker and still WIRED’s favorite drip coffee machine overall. It is a cross between minimalist design and maximalist function, easy to use but able to be customized out the wazoo. And like a lot of last year’s blockbuster devices, it’s finally on a big sale: $80 off. It is a truly morning-changing machine, whether your choice is drip or pour-over or cold brew. All three are beautifully brewed.

Unlike Matthew, I do not get to go to bed. I have committed to playing Family PlayStation for at least an hour or two after my shift ends. PlayStation is having a big Black Friday sale and in a desperate attempt to get out of having to play Sackboy any more, I’ve decided to get Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

I’ve just recently persuaded my kids to be interested in Indiana Jones (which is wild, because I loved Indy when I was their age!). You can either grind it out getting all the collectibles in the different set pieces, or just zip through the map filling the core objectives. Troy Baker also plays the Indy character, which, IYKYK (this is WIRED, you probably K). Fun! You can check out the rest of our gaming deals here. Hmm, the PlayStation Portal is also discounted.

If you’re like me, you’re already thinking of bed. Is it a pleasant thought? Or is it a somewhat limp or lumpen or rickety proposition? Black Friday is when mattress deals happen—some of the biggest deals of the year, including nearly $1,000 off this Bear Elite Hybrid mattress that’s WIRED’s pick for those with back pain.

Or heck, go for the big guns. If sleeping’s a painful ordeal, this Tiami Luxury Hybrid offers memory foam layers and foam-capped coils that help relieve pressure around your joints. It’s also discounted by a solid $1,000 and change, the lowest price we’ve seen.

For more mattress deals, check out our round-up of the best Black Friday deals we’ve found on mattresses and bedding—a list that’ll keep growing over the weekend.

I am doing my best to continue patronizing local bookstores and buying paper books, mainly because I concentrate better when I’m holding a physical book in my hand and I like for my kids to see me reading a recognizable book, than just staring at another screen.

However, both Kindles and ebooks are so accessible and so cheap now—I mainly just borrow ebooks from our local library—that it’s becoming harder and harder to stick with my commitment to paper. Paper books are expensive and hard to store and carry. I bought my daughter a beautiful boxed set of Colin Meloy’s Wildwood Chronicles and they got all crinkly from the damp when she left them in my car. It was tragic.

All that is to say, Kindles are unbelievably cheap nowadays, they come in cool colors, and they last forever. I am perpetually amazed that Amazon hit a home run with this ereader device; I guess it makes sense, since the company started out as a bookstore.

You know what’s great about mowing the lawn? That’s right: absolutely nothing! It sucks. It’s boring, you get covered in grass, and the damn stuff just grows again. I’m old enough to remember those push lawnmowers without engines, but from wrestling with a heavy gas guzzler that was near impossible to start, to trying to avoid running over the cable with my electric mower, it has always been a tedious task. We may not have the domestic robots we dreamed of just yet, but the best robot mowers can cut the grass for you pretty effectively, and you don’t have to lift a finger. Those cheap mowers that require you to run wire around your garden are a pain, but the satellite navigation models have come down in price over the last couple of years, and the Anthbot Genie 3000 is a great example. It’s discounted at Amazon, but if you buy directly from Anthbot, you get a free garage, an extra year of 4G service, and a couple of other extras thrown in.

There is just something about sitting at my desk for a full shift that makes me want to run for the hills. (I’m not the only one.) If you’ve never checked out this website, Garage Grown Gear is a fun place to look at small cottage brands for ultralight backpacking. I’ve heard a lot of good things about FKT sunglasses, so I might get this pair for myself. But there are a few daypacks and backpacking stoves that we’ve also written about that are for sale. Check out other outdoor deals here.

Lord, isn’t it satisfying when style meets function? When a simple thing is plainly beautiful—and can give pleasure for the simple reason of being so perfectly what it is? When, for more than 80 years, no fundamental changes are needed or desired? This KitchenAid stand mixer, with its planetary mixing motion and elegant modern silhouette, isn’t just a design classic. It’s as current today as it ever was, and it’s known to last. Sales do crop up often on retail tentpoles, so there’s no rush to buy—but also little chance of regret. Get it for $150 off, and it’ll be an investment for potentially decades.

Black Friday is traditionally the best time of year to buy big-ticket items, like a new TV. I’m old enough to remember when a new TV was a big, big purchase—enough for your dad to go to Best Buy and spend the day contemplating the giant wall of TVs—but honestly, as a parent of two kids, I think you don’t really need to spend all that much.

We currently have this Roku Pro Series and it’s great! It’s still bright enough to view easily in lighted rooms (not always the case with the older OLEDs) and it has a 120-Hz refresh rate, so no stuttering when playing faster video games. (After this, I will be trapped playing Sackboy for another hour or two. Please, does anyone have video games that 8-year-olds like??? Not too scary?) Email me!

If you want to scoot your way to the office, or anywhere further than your neighborhood grocery store, the Segway Max G3 is the way to go. I was able to hit 19 miles on a charge in Drive mode (16 mph), allowing me to ride from Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, all the way to Midtown Manhattan. The suspension is great, so your teeth won’t chatter going over rough roads, and at 54 pounds, it’s not so heavy that you’ll break your back trying to carry it up two flights of stairs (though it is still pretty heavy). Read more about it in our Best Electric Scooters guide.

A few different paper planners are now on sale for 20 percent or so off. I just had parent-teacher conferences and now apparently have to buy my son a paper planner because the school stopped providing them this year. (Budget cuts!) The Roterunner is reviewer Nena Farrell’s go-to planner, but the Happy Planner looks a little more kid-friendly (and cheaper).

Look, I have not lived in a place for a long time where Xmas lights made sense. But now, down the street from my city’s designated standing winter traffic jam/street of lights, I might finally be in the market for something to light up my life, and make me feel like part of the neighborhood. Might as well be my colleague Simon Hill’s favorite lights, which can do all sorts of fancy animated stuff and are on a good deal right now.

They might not give me hope to carry on, or fill my nights with song. But when it feels so right, it can’t be wrong.

I am a Bag Person (TM) if no one has noticed yet. And as I was cruising around looking at bags, I noticed that the yellow version of Moment’s tech tote is weirdly half off! Granted, this bag has been around for quite awhile (we’ve featured it in our Best Totes roundup for years) but this yellow colorway is very peppy. Reviews editor Julian Chokkattu uses it as a beach bag in the summer and for camera gear in the winter.

Google’s Pixel 9a is what most people looking for a new smartphone should buy, especially if you’re price-conscious. It still has all the bells and whistles, from wireless charging to flagship-grade performance, not to mention an excellent dual-camera system that just might be the best you’ll find for the money. The flat-back design may not look like other Pixel phones, but if you’ve complained about ginormous camera bumps, you’ll love it. Read more in our Best Pixel Phones guide.

Because we’ve spent so much time together today and I feel so safe with you, I’m going to confess that I’ve spent much of this time pondering on the small Parallelle Traveller, which editor Kat Merck says is the best toiletry bag for women. Parallelle is 25 percent off sitewide today with the code BF2025 and look, I don’t need it. I just don’t! I barely do my hair, I don’t wear makeup—my toiletry bag is literally just my asthma inhaler, deodorant, Doc Bronner’s and hair gel in a Ziploc bag, but I want it!

This toiletry bag will turn me into a person who shows up at work events looking chic and composed, and not frizzy and sweaty! Someone who knows how to use a makeup brush and keep it clean! Although probably not, sigh. Beis, makers of the viral carry-on suitcase that everyone has, is also holding a sitewide sale, as is Travelpro and Tumi. Any other bag people around looking at bags? I feel like I should get a new one. (I should definitely not get a new one. I have plenty. Argh.)

If you do this job a while, you start to get used to certain sales. You know they’re coming. You might even know what the price will be. And so the WIRED Reviews team knew to expect that the current model of iPad (A16) would hold a $300 sale on the 11-inch A16 tablets. But then Apple totally overshot the mark, and offered a better deal than we expected, fully $75 off.

At this price, it’s a nice little amenity—a screen that can basically function as a “third-place” somewhere between your phone and your home setup. It’s great for watching movies on planes, or reading in bed without reaching for your glasses. This A16 is generally what WIRED recommends for most people, but feel free to check out our other iPad recommendations as well. They’re nearly all on sale.

I have a Garmin Forerunner 970, and obviously it’s the best running watch, but it’s also one of the few Garmins that connects to the Oakley Meta Vanguard. You can use the Garmin to autocapture highlight reels from when you’re out running, hiking, or biking. Meta is running an unusual Black Friday deal on the Forerunner 970; if you buy it on Meta.com, you get a $50 credit for the Vanguard.

Honestly, you should get these sunglasses if you like any outdoor sports at all. They’re so much easier and better than trying to put a GoPro on your helmet or chest strap. They don’t cost that much more than the regular Oakley Sphaera sunglasses, and you can also swap out the lenses.

It’s fall. It’s cold. You’re going to stay in. You’re going to need something a little bit interesting to look forward to. And what I’ll say is that during my months of testing well over a dozen meal kits, I’ve learned there’s something nice about having a plan for a home-prepped meal. It makes a gray afternoon indoors into a little bit of an adventure, without the indigity of having to go outside and drive to the grocery store.

Anyway, HelloFresh has evolved drastically to become one of the most cosmopolitan and broadest-ranging meal kits. And during Black Friday, they’ve evolved into being the kind of place that gives you 10 free meals plus a free Misen chef’s knife if you stick around for three weekly orders. No code needed, just sign up during Black Friday and you’ll get the freebies.

HelloFresh’s organic wing, Green Chef—also my pick as the best gluten-free meal kit—has a different but still quite legit deal going on for Black Friday. Sign up by the fist week of December, and you get half off the first box and 20 percent off for the next two months of orders.