If you’re in the market for a new Apple Watch, a pair of AirPods, an iPad, a new Mac or even an iPhone 12 this holiday season, you should know that the Apple Store is actually the worst place to shop. That is, if you’re looking for Black Friday or Cyber Monday deals. Instead, we recommend checking competing stores’ sale prices — Amazon, Target and Walmart, for instance. (They’re all authorized Apple resellers, so your warranty will be in good standing.) As we move into Thanksgiving weekend, inventory and price cuts are fluctuating quickly. Right now, we’re seeing solid discounts on the Apple Watch, AirPods and older Intel MacBook Air models. We’re hoping to see iPads drop in price as the week progresses, too. Stay tuned — we’ll update this page as soon as we see a notable deal.
Note that prices and availability are accurate at time of publication, but they tend to fluctuate.
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The latest Apple Watch with even more features is now on sale. In addition to an always-on display and ECG, the Series 6 monitors blood oxygen levels (though you shouldn’t expect medical-grade results there). Regularly $399, Target recently dropped prices to $350. That deal has since disappeared, but Sam’s Club has now dropped the price to as low as $330. Even better, Amazon is matching that price, at least on some colors. This is the first time this watch has gone on any sort of sale, so if you’ve been thinking about snapping it up, now is the time. Read our Apple Watch Series 6 review.
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Note this is not the brand-new MacBook Air that runs on the company’s M1 chip and will become available later in November. That model starts at $999. This one is the March 2020 Intel Core i3 model with the improved Magic Keyboard, and Amazon is selling it for $100 off — that’s not as good of a deal as its earlier all-time low price of $850, but we might see another price cut by Black Friday. Read our 2020 Intel MacBook Air review.
Amazon
The GPS-only Series 3, which came out in 2017, remains the least expensive model in Apple’s watch portfolio — and, in light of its age and humble feature set, also the most dubious value. With the Apple Watch Series SE most recently selling for $260, it’d be hard to recommend buying the Series 3, even at its current sale price. (The 42mm version is also $20 off.) But that will change on Nov. 25, when this model drops to a new all-time low at Walmart: $119 for the 38mm and $149 for the 42mm version. Read our Apple Watch Series 3 review.
Vanessa Hand Orellana/CNET
The Apple Watch SE, which was just introduced back in September, got its first big price cut recently thanks to sales at Target and Walmart which chopped $50 off the retail price of both sizes. That was later matched by Amazon, but as of Nov. 23, those discounts — $230 for the 40mm and $260 for the 44mm in some colors — have disappeared. Now we’re back to a much more modest $20 discount at Amazon. Read our Apple Watch SE review.
Walmart
Apple’s 10.9-inch iPad Air has 64GB of storage, and it’s a solid device for the price. In fact, it delivers a good chunk of the iPad Pro experience for far less money than that model. Walmart was offering $40 off its usual $599 price tag, but that seems to have disappeared. In the meantime, we’re seeing $31 off at Amazon.
Apple
Normally $799, the current iPad Pro gets a 9% (ish) price cut at Amazon. That’s still about $170 more than the new iPad Air — which is a Pro in all but name — but this model includes the lidar sensor and twice the storage.
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The eighth-gen iPad features a 10.2-inch display powered by the A12 chip. The 32GB model has a list price of $329, but many retailers sell it for $299, which is also Apple’s education discount price. That said, we’re holding out for a return to the $249 price of its 2019 predecessor. Read our 10.2-inch iPad first take.
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