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Should you buy an Apple TV on Black Friday?

By
Phil Nickinson/Digital Trends

There’s never a bad time to buy an Apple TV, seeing as how it’s one of the most all-inclusive platforms not just for streaming video, but also for home automation. But Black Friday deals may well be the best time to buy an Apple TV this year, for a number of reasons. And an important thing to mention out of the gate is that we’re really talking about Apple TV 4K, which is the only model you should consider not just on Black Friday, but on any shopping day.

Black Friday is the best time to buy an Apple TV

There’s no bad day to buy an Apple TV 4K. But Black Friday may well be the best time to buy an Apple TV 4K in 2021. It also may be one of the last times to buy an Apple TV in 2021 if you want to have it in time for the holiday season, thanks to the global shipping crunch.

Amazon has a rare discount on the Apple TV 4K today, dropping the streaming device from $179 to $169, its lowest-ever price at the retailer. Sure, there’s a chance it could be a bit cheaper on Black Friday 2021, but wait until then to order, and you could just find they won’t arrive in time for the holidays. What’s worth more —  taking them home with a discount and having them for December, or saving a few more bucks and them arriving in January? Of course, you can always order them now, set them aside, unopened, and return them for a full refund if you manage to find them cheaper on November 26, with shipping in time for the holidays.
$120 from Best Buy $110 from Woot!

That’s all pretty advantageous if you consider that there’s a better than average chance that we’re going to see Black Friday Apple deals, whether it’s from Apple directly, or one of its retail partners. How much of a discount remains to be seen, but we’ve already seen drops of $10 or so leading into any Black Friday sales on Apple TV 4K.

In fact, you might not even want to wait until Black Friday deals on Apple TV 4K to go ahead and grab one, if only so that you know you’ve got one on order in plenty of time for the holiday shipping crush.

Why buy an Apple TV?

Probably the most important question when it comes to any sort of Apple TV deals is this — why, exactly, should you buy one?

One of the biggest reasons is that it’s one of the best experiences you can get when it comes to home theater and streaming. Apple TV 4K (as the name implies) supports 4K resolution. It has support for Dolby Vision for HDR and Dolby Atmos for audio, both of which are top-notch video and audio standards.

And for those who are all-in on the Apple ecosystem, Apple TV also serves as a HomeKit hub, helping to bring all of your supported smart devices under one roof.

A couple more bonus benefits of Apple TV — regardless of any sort of Apple TV Black Friday deals — are the inclusion of gaming features, as well as the ability to take advantage of Apple Fitness+, for working off any of that extra holiday feast you might have consumed ahead of Black Friday.

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Phil Nickinson
Section Editor, Audio/Video
Phil spent the 2000s making newspapers with the Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal, the 2010s with Android Central and then the…
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