As someone who’s covered the annual Black Friday sales for over five years, I’m no stranger to recommending a deal or two. In fact, I’ve recommended thousands of products over the years.
So, you can imagine my curiosity with the stratospheric rise of ChatGPT and other LLMs recently. People use ChatGPT for everything from simple shopping lists to holiday planning, so why couldn’t you use it for Black Friday shopping? A tool that can both search the internet for deals, reviews, and buying guides at the same time sounds like the perfect Black Friday shopping assistant.
Case study one: laptops
For my first test, I settled on laptop deals as a case study. Not only is this an area that I personally cover here on TechRadar, but we review laptops all year round so we’ve got an excellent grasp on the market.
Things like operating system, brand, and configurations are all key considerations that I look for when recommending a laptop, so I was keen to see what kind of information ChatGPT would provide. I’m pretty technically-minded, but I decided to keep it simple and vague for my first query – essentially, role-playing as a complete newbie.
I opened with: “I need a new laptop for working from home, can you recommend some early Black Friday deals?“.
So far, so good. ChatGPT immediately recommended three decent laptops with Black Friday discounts at the relevant retailers. We’ve had hands-on time with all three of these models here at TechRadar, and they’d all do the job admirably.
ChatGPT also summarized some fantastic buying advice a little further down the page, including a basic overview of how much RAM and storage you may need. If you’re a complete laptop beginner, then this would be a fantastic place to start your research.
When I looked at my initial results, however, I couldn’t help but think – these suggestions are a little pricey – and, they also don’t include any suggestions for MacBooks. It felt like part of the picture was missing here, so I followed up with a prompt to include some budget options.
Another three solid options from ChatGPT, although perhaps a little too cheap. It really took the prompt and ran with it here by suggesting some sub-$200 ChromeBooks. If I were recommending a basic machine for working from home, I’d probably go for something a little more powerful than these. I’d also recommend a Windows 11 machine for greater app support; something you’d likely require for a flexible working-from-home setup.
The Asus Aspire Go 15 is a fine choice, but I wouldn’t take it over something like the Dell 15 laptop at the official Dell Store for $299 (was $449), which is my favorite “super cheap” Windows laptop right now. I’d also highly recommend the Dell 14 Plus for $749 (was $1,099) at the official Dell Store and the Apple MacBook Air M4 for $749 (was $999) at Amazon. You can check out these deals in more detail here:
I would say, arguably, that all three of these deals offer better bang for the buck than the options returned by my initial ChatGPT experiments. I ran the queries a few times, and in every case, found better options by cross-checking both editorial sites and major retailers like Dell, Best Buy, and Amazon.
That’s not to say that ChatGPT isn’t a fantastic springboard for ideas, however, and the buying advice it returned was definitely solid.
Case study two: phones
Phone deals are another area of expertise for me, and they can be tricky to recommend, too. There are a lot of various hoops, T&Cs, and caveats with the best phone deals. They usually require a super-pricey unlimited plan or a trade-in to be eligible for a discount.
The thing that I’m really looking for with ChatGPT’s phone buying advice is not just the biggest savings, but also contextual information around how much these potential Black Friday deals could cost with the attached plans, and the various eligibility criteria.
For my opening query, again, I choose to keep it relatively simple and straightforward: “Can you recommend some good early Black Friday iPhone deals in the US?“. Here’s what it returned:
My top three suggested deals were, to be frank, a little weird. The iPhone 16e deal at Walmart is quite good, but it fails to mention that it’s tied to the prepaid carrier StraightTalk. All the other suggestions are either similar prepaid deals at Walmart or deals on refurbished devices. Refurbished iPhones can be good value, but it’s a strange thing to recommend without any specific prompting. Things got a little better further down the page, however.
Now, these are the types of iPhone deals that tend to be genuinely popular over Black Friday; namely big carrier promotions. ChatGPT did a pretty good job here of summarizing what could be available at AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and smaller carriers, too.
If I had to critique the selection of deals, however, I’d say that they are pretty out of date. ChatGPT states that these are early Black Friday iPhone deals, but they’re actually promotions from a few weeks ago, before the major carriers updated their sites with new seasonal offerings. For reference, here are a few iPhone deals from my Black Friday iPhone deals page.
You can see there’s a slight difference in the criteria with these promotions. Yes, they are similar, but in both cases the carrier is offering a little bit more with this week’s deals. For example, T-Mobile has waived the trade-in eligibility for the free iPhone 17, whereas Verizon is throwing in a free iPad and Apple Watch; two excellent freebies that you’d definitely want mentioned if you were looking to upgrade.
So, can ChatGPT save you cash?
Well, yes, it might, but, as always, you’ll want to cross-check its results with other sources. It’s another tool in the shopper’s back pocket, but you’ll still want to look at multiple retailers, news sites, and so on, before you lay down some cash.
Initially, I was impressed with the results that the tool was returning. It seemed to list the various sources for more information, prices were up-to-date, and it referenced models from well-known brands. After a bit of digging, however, I did come to the conclusion that there were better deals elsewhere.
For one, while ChatGPT is fantastic at summarizing various reviews, buying guides, and roundups, its recommendations tend to be pretty generic. It also tends to lack the immediacy of a freshly published page from a news site. Again, you need to double-check to make sure the prices and information are up-to-date. To be fair, that’s a criticism that I’d level at news sites too (in fact, the deals on this page may be out of date by the time you read it).
The contextual advice you get with your deal suggestions on ChatGPT is also superb. Prompting the tool for further bespoke suggestions is one key advantage over traditional editorial sites, for sure. If I were spending my own cash, I’d just make sure to reference both the LLM, recent news, and expert reviews on TechRadar (and other sites, too).
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alex.whitelock@futurenet.com (Alex Whitelock)
