Apple Store vs. Amazon: Who Has the Best Black Friday Deals?

While most big retailers started their Black Friday deals weeks ago, Apple continues to take a more traditional approach. Never one to follow the crowd, the company’s retail stores are only offering Black Friday deals during the holiday weekend — from today until Cyber Monday on December 1.

As it’s done in past years, Apple provided a teaser last week on what to expect, which means there aren’t any real surprises here. As usual, Apple isn’t offering any actual discounts on its products; instead, customers can get a form of “cash back” in the form of Apple Gift Cards.

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There’s a good chance you’ll find better deals elsewhere (and we’ll get to some of those), but if you’re an Apple fan who prefers to pick up a new iPad or Mac directly from the company, Apple’s offers aren’t bad — especially if you plan to buy some accessories or digital subscriptions to go along with it.

While the Gift Cards that Apple is offering can’t be used to reduce the purchase price of the item you’re buying, they’re good for anything else an Apple retail store sells, from accessories like the Apple Pencil and Magic Keyboard to third-party cases and speakers.

What’s more, Apple merged its physical and digital gift cards a few years ago, which means the card you’ll get when buying an eligible product can also be used to pay for a subscription to a service like Apple Music or iCloud+ storage, or even to pay for in-app purchases and subscriptions in your favorite apps — basically anything that uses Apple’s in-app purchasing system.

This makes the gift card offer a pretty good deal for anyone steeped in the Apple ecosystem. For instance, even though you’ll pay the full price up front for a new set of AirPods Pro, the $50 gift card you get back will pay for nearly five months of Apple Music. That makes it almost as good as cash for most Apple fans, since it can almost always be applied to something you’re already paying for.

While the value of the gift cards varies, this year Apple has increased the maximum value, offering $250 gift cards for its highest-end MacBooks — the M4 Pro and M4 Max MacBook Pro models. That’s likely because, unlike the past two years, Apple hasn’t updated those to M5 Pro/Max versions yet — only the base M5 MacBook Pro debuted this fall.

This brings us to the other catch with Apple’s Black Friday promos. You’ll rarely find the offers on any newly-released products. The iPhone 17 lineup, M5 MacBook Pro, and M5 iPad Pro aren’t on the list. The closest you’ll come is the AirPods Pro 3, Apple Watch Series 11, and Apple Watch SE 3, each of which will net you a $50 gift card.

Here’s the full rundown of what Apple is offering:

Still, even though these gift cards are likely to offer you tangible value, there’s a good chance you can find better deals at other retailers — some of which may even be on the latest products that Apple hasn’t included this year.

Other Apple Black Friday Deals

First off, this year’s Black Friday sales have some of the best prices we’ve ever seen on AirPods.

For example, Amazon is offering the base AirPods 4 for $69 and the AirPods 4 with ANC for $100. That’s an upfront savings of $60–80 off the normal price, which makes Apple’s $25 gift card look pretty paltry. Ditto for the AirPods Max at $400 — a $149 markdown that works out to nearly twice as much as the $75 gift card that Apple is offering.

• AirPods 4: $69 at Amazon
• AirPods 4 with ANC: $99.99 at Amazon
• AirPods Max: $399.99 at Amazon
• AirPods Pro 3: $219.99 at Amazon
  

That said, there’s at least one product where Apple’s deal is still better: the best price we’ve seen for the AirPods Pro 3 is $219.99 on Amazon, which is only $30 off compared to Apple’s $50 gift card offer.

Amazon also has the Apple Watch Series 11 for as little as $339 — a $60 savings that slightly edges out Apple’s $50 gift card offer. However, the $199 deal on the Apple Watch SE 3 matches Apple’s offering.

Still, those are outliers. In nearly every other case, deals from Amazon, Best Buy, and other retailers will at least net you the same up-front discounts as Apple’s gift card offers, but most of them are doing slightly better. Here are just a few of those out there:

• 15-inch MacBook Air: $949 at Amazon ($250 off)
• 13-inch MacBook Air: $749 at Amazon ($250 off)
• M4 Mac mini: $479 at Amazon ($120 off)
• 11-inch iPad Air: $449 at Amazon ($150 off)
• 13-inch iPad Air: $649 at Amazon ($150 off)
• iPad (A16): $274 at Amazon ($75 off)
  

Then there’s Apple’s latest MacBook — the base-model M5 MacBook Pro — which isn’t included in Apple’s offers at all, while Amazon has it on sale for $1,349 — $250 off the regular price.