Black Friday Electronics Deals and Buyers Guide- Phoenix, AZ

So with Black Friday fast approaching us, It's time to grab your caffeine, wake up bright and early (even camp out if you're really determined) and then burst through the doors of retailers everywhere as you make a dash through the store reminiscent of Supermarket Sweep! Personally, the biggest mistake that I think people make during the Black Friday rush is the fact that they buy poor quality items because they have visions of savings dancing in their heads, only to find out a few weeks after Christmas that they got taken for the fool.

Being an electronics nut, I've gathered some of the various deals on what I consider to be quality items at great prices. One thing to keep in mind this holiday season; when you are shopping for an HD TV, cheaper is not better. A trick that is played often when you see a great deal on an HD TV is the fact that the cheaper version is only 720p. Most people do not know the difference between 720p and 1080i or 1080p except that they are bigger numbers with a cool letter after them. At this point in time, if you are going to spend the money for an HD TV, spend the extra $50-$100 to get a nice 1080p model, you will be getting almost 50% more quality from your HD experience.

On another HD note, there are lots of specials out there for Blue-Ray DVD players that all run right around $399 or so. If you have anyone that is even a partial gamer in your house, or a guy that has never grown up, use that money on a Playstation 3. You will have the same functionality of the Blue-Ray player, with the added bonus of room to store your pictures and home movies, a web browser that works on your TV, and of course the fact that there are more and more games coming out that you can play on it, all of this for the EXACT same price as a plain old Blue-Ray Player.

The last thing I'll touch on with electronics is digital cameras because I know these are becoming more and more popular. The biggest issue people get into with digital cameras is that they seem to think the more mega-pixels the better the camera. While this is true in some sense, 90% of the people that use the digital cameras on sale during Black Friday will never need anything greater than about a 4 mega-pixel camera. A 4 mega-pixel camera takes a good enough quality picture that you can print it out as a 11x13 photo without ANY loss of image, let's face it most people are going to be printing a ton of 4x6 pictures, so why worry about greater mega-pixels. Also, less mega-pixels means you can fit a lot more pictures on a single memory card. So unless you're shopping for a photo professional (in which case expect to be paying around $1000 to get them the camera they would need) spend your $200 on a well made 4-6 mega-pixel camera instead of a poorly built 8-9 mega-pixel camera.

Now that you know how to buy a few of the hotter gifts this year, I'll give you a great list of the Black Friday specials that are coming our way here in Arizona.

Best Buy
- HBO TV DVD's 1/2 off
- King Kong $2.49!
- Various Full Season TV Series $14.99 (this is a great deal, these normally run $35-$50 per season)
- HP Laptop AMD X2 w/ 160GB HD + 1GB RAM + DVD-RW Burner $449.99
- Adobe Photoshop and premiere elements - $89.99 (Perfect for someone just starting off in photography or video.)
- dynex 100 pack dvd - $6.99
- Logitech MX Revolution Wireless Laser Mouse $49.99 ($50 off, a great mouse for graphic designers and gamers alike.
- RocketFish Bluetooth Keyboard and Laser Mouse $39.99
- Seagate 320GB 3.5" Internal SATA Hard Drive $59.99 (beats circuit city)
- SanDisk 2GB SD Memory Card $14.99 (cheaper than circuit city)
- Dynex 7" LCD Digital Photo Frame $49.99
- TomTom ONE LE GPS $119.99
- HP 42" 1080p LCD HDTV - $996.99
- New games from $4.99-$24.99

Wal-Mart
- Assorted DVD $ 2.96
- HP 5MP Camera & Printer Bundle $119.00
- 8" Portable DVD Player - $49.98
- Polaroid 42" 1080p LCD HDTV $798.00

Circuit City
- 24 - Seasons 1-5 (DVD) $18.99 (beats walmart)
- Southpark - Seasons 1-10 (DVD) (buy season 10 at best buy)
- Canon 8.0 MP Camera w/ 6x Optical Zoom $209.99 (A series, great camera)
- Zenith 50" Plasma HDTV (Z50P3) $999.99
- Super Mario Galaxy (Wii) $34.99 (Amazing price for a recently released video game)

CompUSA (most of Comp USA's deals are all rebate based, I don't consider these true sales so I did not list them.)
- 50-pk. Double-Sided DVD-R Media $9.99

Target
- 300 DVD $5.98 (cheaper than best buy)
- Family Guy - Volume 3 $14.98
- Western Digital 500GB External Hard Drive $87.00 (beats best buy and circuit city)

Hopefully these help you get a head start on your holiday shopping. Be Sure to check my side link for sources and links that will show you Black Friday's deals right now so that you can start your planning and pick out your campgrounds!