The Ultimate Black Friday Guide: What you should know ahead of the 2022 sale

We’re officially less than a month away from Black Friday 2022, meaning an avalanche of deals is just around the corner.
While Black Friday started over in the US as a way to profit off the Christmas shopping rush that followed the country’s Thanksgiving holiday, the sale has since established its presence around the world, including here in the UK. Over the years, Black Friday has grown to be one of the busiest retail periods of the year and (more importantly) a fantastic occasion to secure a deal ahead of Christmas.
However, with almost every retailer seemingly cashing in on the looming sale with competing offers, codes and cashback, it can be hard to sort the great deals from the just okay ones. Then there’s Cyber Monday, another sale that proceeds Black Friday just days later, making the whole weekend blur into one overwhelming event.
Luckily for you, we’ve broken down everything you need to know about Black Friday in this guide. Keep reading to discover everything you should know about the November sale, including what days it’ll take place this year, where you can go to find the best Black Friday deals and how Cyber Monday fits into the weekend.
Black Friday Deals
If you’re already feeling like a Black Friday aficionado and want to get to the best Black Friday deals as quickly as possible, then simply follow that link and you’ll be taken to our page dedicated to compiling the Black Friday sale’s best offers.
That page will continue to be updated right up until the end of November, so be sure to keep it bookmarked as the Trusted Reviews team tracks down the biggest discounts on all your most desired tech.
When is Black Friday?
Black Friday takes place on the Friday after Thanksgiving, which means this year you can expect the sale to kick off on November 25.
Of course, that doesn’t mean the sale is restricted to this day. Over the years, Black Friday has evolved into a weekend-long affair concluding with Cyber Monday. Some retailers – such as Amazon – have even started dropping offers days or weeks before the sale “officially” begins.
What is Black Friday?
As we know it today, Black Friday is the biggest sales event of the year and has grown into a worldwide phenomenon, but Black Friday started out as a simple term to describe the beginning of the holiday shopping season once the Thanksgiving festivities were out of the way.
The origin of the term is still speculated to this day, but one of its earliest uses dates back to the 1960s, referring to the obscene amounts of traffic that occurred once the Christmas shopping frenzy began.
Which retailers are taking part?
It might be easier to ask which retailers don’t take part in Black Friday, as you could probably count those ones on one hand. That number gets even smaller when talking specifically about tech retailers, with all the major stores taking part as they try to best the competition with better deals on phones, laptops, TVs and more.
For a look at which retailers have been involved in previous years, just scroll through the list below.
- Amazon
- AO
- Aromatherapy Associates
- Argos
- ASOS
- Aspinal
- Beauty Bay
- Benefit
- Boden
- Boots
- Curry’s PC World
- Dell
- Disney
- eBay
- Ebuyer
- Feelunique
- Fonehouse
- GAP
- GiffGaff
- Ghost
- Hamleys
- John Lewis
- Joules
- Karen Millen
- Lakeland
- Liberty
- Microsoft
- Mobile Phones Direct
- Ninja
- Now
- OnBuy
- Panasonic
- Plusnet
- Shark Clean
- ShopTo
- Simba
- Smythson
- Three
- Very
- VOXI
- Wayfair
- Wex Photo Video
- Zavvi
Editor’s Note: We’ve included links to stores that don’t sit in our traditional coverage areas in a bid to help general shoppers who have landed on this page.
What is Cyber Monday?
Compared to Black Friday, Cyber Monday is more of a recent phenomenon but it’s become a true staple of the November/December shopping experience.
As you can probably guess from its name, Cyber Monday was designed as an online-only sale to capitalise on the appetites for online shopping the week after Black Friday. With its online-only slant, Cyber Monday also focuses primarily on tech, which is handy for our readers as it tends to offer some of the year’s best tech deals.
Just as with Black Friday, the Trusted Reviews team will be covering all the best Cyber Monday deals as they appear.
Black Friday guides
If there’s something we’ve missed or a Black Friday topic that you’d like to know more about then fear not – our tech experts have written up several additional guides to help you buy the right products this Black Friday:
- How to find a good mobile deal this Black Friday
- How to find iPhone 13 deals on Black Friday
- Buying a home security system this Black Friday? Here’s what we recommend
- How to find a good TV deal this Black Friday
- 6 essential shopping tips to know for Black Friday
- What you need to know about buying a PS5 this Black Friday
- How to find out price history on Amazon this Black Friday
- These are the TVs to look out for this Black Friday
- How to find a good laptop deal this Black Friday
- Should you wait until Black Friday to buy the Samsung Galaxy S21?
- If you buy one thing this Black Friday, it should be a pair of Sony WH-1000XM4
- How to avoid scams online: Protect your new gadgets this Black Friday
- If you want a great Black Friday tablet deal, don’t look for an iPad
Why stick with Trusted Reviews this Black Friday?
For longer than any of us probably care to remember, Trusted Reviews has been at the forefront of the Black Friday sale, bringing you the best offers as they appear, and this year will be no different.
Throughout the Black Friday sale and beyond, we will be scouring the internet for the absolute best tech deals so that you can save a serious amount of cash on your next purchase. Think of it as being able to enjoy the Black Friday sale without all the stress of it all (we’ve got that part sorted).
Black Friday questions
If you have any questions about the Black Friday sale or even topics that we may have missed, please send us an email at editor@trustedreviews.com and we’ll post a response right here on this very page.