Black Friday Chromebook deals 2022: early discounts available now

We're now less than a week away from the inevitable torrent of Black Friday Chromebook deals - but even today, there are some great discounts already cropping up for early-bird shoppers.

Black Friday takes place on November 25 this year, but you don't have to wait until then: now is the perfect time to start looking if you want to buy a new Chromebook.

We've always seen deals start to pop up throughout the weeks preceding Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and things are no different this year. On this page, you'll find the best deals we've been able to find when scouting through the early bird sales at a variety of retailers. Some of these deals will be just as good as the ones found over the Black Friday weekend, so if you spot a Chromebook you want, snap it up before it goes out of stock.

You can bookmark this page if you'd like to keep track of the deals; we'll be coming back regularly to add any new discounts on Chromebooks we'd recommend, and will naturally remove any that sell out. You can also check out our daily best Chromebook deals page.

Buying a new Chromebook on Black Friday doesn't have to be a confusing experience – keep on reading for the ultimate guide to getting yourself the best Chromebook for you this Black Friday.

Black Friday Chromebook sales (US): quick links

The best early Black Friday Chromebook deals in the US

Black Friday Chromebook sales (UK): quick links

The best early Black Friday Chromebook deals in the UK

Should you wait for a Black Friday Chromebook deal? 

With Black Friday still weeks away in late November, you might be wondering if it’s really worth waiting to buy a new Chromebook. If you think you can manage until the sales really kick off, though, we say yes: you’re almost guaranteed to get a better deal if you wait until November.

Naturally, we know that many of you need a Chromebook (or a Windows laptop) to navigate many aspects of our tech-powered society, so don’t sit around struggling if you need one right now - check the list above.

It’s a tricky game to play; some great Chromebooks will go on sale before Black Friday, and might end up selling out by the day itself. The sales will run through the weekend to Cyber Monday, but once they’re gone, they’re gone - don’t spend too long telling yourself something better will come up, if you see a stellar deal pop up the Wednesday before, grab it before it goes.

Buying tips: 3 of the best Chromebooks to look for on Black Friday

Chromebook specs to look for on Black Friday

(Image credit: Future)

When it comes to buying any laptop, whether it’s a Chrome-powered one or not, it’s important to consider the specs - and how they relate to the work you want to do. If you’re looking for a laptop for demanding tasks, like graphic design or running modeling software for an engineering course, you’ll probably want a Windows laptop or a MacBook with more grunt than a typical Chromebook.

If you just want a laptop for regular home and office work, though, like web browsing and word processing, a Chromebook could be just the ticket. These machines are generally low-powered devices that are perfect for carrying out simple, everyday tasks, and they usually carry appropriately lower price tags as a result.

That doesn’t mean that specs don’t matter here, though. Sure, you don’t need a powerful graphics card to surf the net or watch Netflix, but you’ll still find that you get a smoother, speedier experience with better components.

Memory is the big one here; ChromeOS isn’t quite as RAM-hungry as its browser counterpart Chrome, but a glance at our best Chromebooks list shows that most of the models we recommend can come with at least 8GB of RAM. 4GB is okay for a Chromebook (unlike Windows laptops), but 8GB is a healthy minimum if you want to avoid app slowdown.

Naturally, some higher-end Chromebooks can pack more memory, often up to 32GB, but that’s not really necessary unless you know you’ll be running RAM-intensive software - 8GB to 16GB should be sufficient.

You’ll also want to consider the amount of storage - while you can easily store your files to the cloud in Google Drive on a Chromebook, apps still need to be installed locally, so avoid anything with a small drive if you want to download lots of programs. Many Chromebooks use eMMC flash storage instead of more popular laptop PCIe SSDs, and while these are generally okay, it’s worth noting that they are slower to load apps from.

Lastly, there’s the processor. It’s worth remembering that many of the apparently great discounts you’ll see this Black Friday are just attempts to shift old stock. If a Chromebook deal looks almost too good on paper, research the processor to check that it’s not several years old. We typically recommend Chromebooks with Intel Core processors, but Intel Celeron, AMD Athlon, and Qualcomm Snapdragon 7-series are all decent too. MediaTek also has a huge range of effective processors found in cheaper Chromebooks.

Black Friday Chromebook deals: our predictions

(Image credit: Future)

When will the best Black Friday Chromebook deals start in 2022?

Black Friday will be on November 25 this year - but we’ll probably see some good Chromebook discounts before that date. Although Black Friday itself (and the weekend, including Cyber Monday) typically see the most discounts active, that doesn’t mean that some of the biggest discounts won’t arrive a little earlier.

Looking at the trends from previous years, sales start to trickle out at the beginning of November, then climb sharply from the beginning of Thanksgiving week (sometimes including the preceding weekend), so you’ll likely see the best deals begin to drop from November 21.

It’s also good to keep an eye on early bird sales that retailers will no doubt run throughout November. Not all of these will be as good as the deals on Black Friday, but you can still keep an eye out for a bargain.

Where can I find the best Black Friday Chromebook deals?

Believe it or not, you can find them in the article you’re reading right now! If you bookmark this page, we’ll update it with a tonne of deals once Black Friday hits and keep adding the best discounts we can find throughout the weekend.

Read on for a short list of the retailers we think are the best to look at - you might want to do a bit of research on these sites before the sales event itself, to get an idea of the products you’ll be able to buy and see which stores you think will have the Chromebook you want on sale.

US:
Amazon: hand-picked Chromebooks starting at $129.99 (opens in new tab)
Best Buy: save up to $300 on selected Intel-powered Chromebooks (opens in new tab)
Dell: savings to be made on enterprise and personal Chromebooks (opens in new tab)
HP: save on both premium and budget Chromebooks (opens in new tab)
Walmart: record-low prices from $98 on Chromebooks and Windows laptops (opens in new tab)

UK:
Amazon: up to 47% off Chromebooks (opens in new tab)
Argos: budget Chromebooks starting from just £199 (opens in new tab)
Currys: save up to £200 on Chromebooks from HP, Asus, and Acer (opens in new tab)
Dell: up to £200 off already-cheap Chrome-powered laptops (opens in new tab)
Laptops Direct: a range of UK-specific Chromebook configurations (opens in new tab)

Is it better to buy a Chromebook on Black Friday or Cyber Monday?

Black Friday is on November 25, and then only a few days later Cyber Monday lands on November 28, so with those two big deal events so close to each other, should you buy a Chromebook on Black Friday, or hold on until Cyber Monday?

Back when Black Friday started, the biggest deals involved home appliances like TVs. So, Cyber Monday was created, and that was saved for more high-tech deals, such as laptops and computers. In those days, then, it would have been wise to hold on until Cyber Monday for the best Chromebook deals. However, in recent years, that distinction no longer applies, and you'll see some great Black Friday Chromebook deals that will then continue over the weekend into Cyber Monday.

So, if you see a brilliant Black Friday Chromebook deal, we suggest you go for it, as it'll be a fantastic chance to get a Chromebook for less. However, if Black Friday rolls around and you've not seen any Chromebook deals that take your fancy, you can hold on until Cyber Monday - as new deals will arrive and you should find a Chromebook deal that's more suitable.

What Black Friday Chromebook deals do we expect in 2022?

The fantastic Google Pixelbook line might have sadly met its end this year, but there were still plenty of great Chromebooks released in 2022 - plus a tonne of really good ones from 2021 and 2020 that will still be worth a purchase.

Now that the 12th generation of Intel Core processors is here, there will likely be a bunch of 11th-gen Intel-powered Chromebooks up for grabs this year as retailers and manufacturers attempt to clear stock. While that might sound like a bad thing, many 11th-gen Intel chips are still great for everyday work, so you could potentially nab a bargain on a previous-generation Chromebook like the Acer Chromebook Spin 713.

However, we might see some more recent 12th-gen Intel Chromebooks go on sale too, because we’re not too far off from the release of next-gen ’Raptor Lake’ Intel CPUs. Then there’s the leagues of Chromebooks running on mobile processors from the likes of Qualcomm and MediaTek, which don’t have direct desktop PC analogues and as such are harder to gauge.

As usual, we expect to see big discounts from the most popular Chromebook brands: Acer, HP, Lenovo, and Dell are the ones to watch here in our opinion. There’s also Samsung and Asus, which may be a bit pricey normally, but could see some solid price cuts as a result.