Whats the best time of year to buy a TV? Yes, theres an answer.

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On any given day, poking around for TVs on sale is all but guaranteed to turn up at least some decent steals.

Of course, retailers don’t casually offer their best TV prices year-round, and tariffs have made tech deals in general feel more scarce than usual this year. Though TVs weren’t affected as overtly as the Nintendo Switch 2 or Xbox consoles, a majority of the best TV brands do their manufacturing in countries facing steep import rates. (LG was reportedly considering raising prices due to tariffs, while Samsung was on the safer side since most of its production is anchored in Mexico.)

Luckily, we’ve arrived at one of the year’s peaks for TV deals: Prime Day. Running from July 8 to 11 this year, Prime Day is here to bring back many of the best deals from Black Friday, plus some never-before-seen deals on the year’s new TV releases that weren’t even out in November.

Prime Day 2025 is a particularly exciting time to buy a TV on sale, because Amazon is actually being competitive this year. Aside from deals on Fire TVs themselves, Amazon’s Prime Day TV deals historically get beaten out by those in Best Buy’s Prime Day competition sale. But given the surprisingly robust list of TVs already on sale before Prime Day — including several 2025 flagships that seem more up Best Buy’s alley — shoppers with any budget have a ton of options this July.

At any rate, knowing when TVs are cheaper than usual is a good adult shopping skill to have. The selection of live TV deals fluctuates depending on the month, and understanding the peaks of the TV calendar is a crucial chapter in the unofficial TV buyer’s guide.

The #1 best time to buy a TV: Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Months: Late October, November, and early to mid-December

People may not be throwing down in a Best Buy parking lot at the crack of dawn anymore, but Black Friday TV deals are still unmatched — they just don’t require you to wake up at 2 a.m. anymore.

Black Friday is trending toward a month-long affair at this point, with retailers shifting into Black Friday mode online as early as October. The extended time frame raises the question of whether TV sale prices will drop even further closer to Black Friday. Thankfully, most of the big retailers aren’t trying to trick you — in fact, Best Buy and Samsung will straight-up tag a certain deal as a Black Friday deal if they drop it ahead of time, confirming to buyers that there’s no need to hold out until the week of Thanksgiving.

This is an especially auspicious time for budget shoppers looking for the cheapest possible version of a 4K TV at a certain size. During Black Friday, basic budget-friendly 4K TVs are typically the doorbusters that sell out soon after they drop — and are much less likely to return in the next few months.

In-store or not, Best Buy TV deals during Black Friday include elite prices on top 65-inch TVs (or larger). You can save hundreds on high-end QLEDs, OLEDs, and big-screen cheap QLEDs at shockingly low prices. Budget-friendly TVs get even more. Our favorite TV deal from Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2024 was a Hisense 75-inch QLED TV for $449.99 at Best Buy. Walmart also stays in the mix with a handful of wild doorbuster deals on the best cheap TVs. Amazon mostly dabbles in the affordable TV crowd and focuses on its own Fire TVs, which often drop to record-low prices.

Post-holiday sales and New Year sales are absolutely a thing, but you can be confident that most TV prices are generally better before Christmas than after. We’ve seen firsthand how sale prices on TVs subtly go up by $100 or two (or three) during post-holiday sales. However, if you miss the Black Friday-Cyber Monday season, another chance to save soon follows…

The second-best time to find TV deals: NFL playoff season

Months: Mid-January to early February

The people want to know: Are TVs cheaper after the holidays? The answer is technically yes, but not in the “after-Christmas sales slash New Year’s sales” way that you’re thinking.

If you didn’t snag your TV during Black Friday, your next best bet is to wait in the wings until the end of January for football-fueled deals, which kick off near the start of the NFL playoffs (sometime in mid to late January) and last until the big game (some in early to mid-February).

The month-long lead-up to the biggest football game of the year — one of the most-watched sporting events of the year — is prime time to find a TV on sale. In particular, these deals may focus more on TVs that are good for watching sports: i.e., big-screen QLEDs. The vibrant lighting supplied by a QLED panel is ideal for following small details like a ball or tiny score box, as well as the brightness of the team’s colors and the field to make your experience feel as live and in-person as possible. It’s not uncommon for most of these deals to be identical to what we saw during Black Friday, or in some cases, drop even lower in price due to proximity to CES. (See explanation below.)

There is one group of TVs that still may not be seeing their lowest possible sale price during football sales: If you’re eyeing one of the most premium, most recent models from a certain brand and still aren’t seeing a discount of more than $100 or two, you might consider pumping the breaks until spring.

The third-best time to find TV deals: Spring

Months: March and April

Flagship TVs don’t go on sale that often. And even when we get deals, the discounts hardly feel like a deal. (Oh, wow: $200 off a $2,000 TV? You shouldn’t have.)

Until CES happens, that is. CES is a Las Vegas-based tech trade show where the latest and greatest consumer tech is unveiled to gadget enthusiasts. The annual TV release cycle mostly revolves around CES, as it’s where brands like Samsung, LG, TCL, and Hisense show off their new TV designs for the year. While these fresh releases aren’t the ones going on sale, those splashy new TV releases do force last year’s models to go on sale.

The key here is that the best deals start not when the TVs are announced at the event in January, but once they’re officially up for grabs to the public in the spring. As of May 2025, most highly-awaited flagship TVs for the year are out, or at least have prices announced. For example, LG released the OLED C5 OLED in March, TCL released the QM6K Mini LED in March, and Samsung released the Frame Pro and unveiled prices for its S95F OLED in April. Funny enough, we already caught some small discounts on those new models in their first weeks on the market. Those were fleeting, but deals on the predecessors like the LG C4 OLED, TCL QM7, and older Samsung Frame models are what we’re really eyeing.

Now that LG has finally released the 2025 C5 OLED, keep an eye out for drops on the C3 and C4.
Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

The one outlier here is Sony, which has been sitting CES out for the past few years in favor of its own release schedule — a very Apple and iRobot-coded tactic. In 2023 and 2025, Sony announced its new TV lines for the year in March, though it deviated in 2024 with a June launch. Sony’s slightly differing release calendar doesn’t change the fact that Black Friday and football season are the main times for discounts. Then, Sony’s discounts throughout the year will simply depend on when its annual TV lineup launches. Its 2025 Bravia 8 II OLED and Bravia 5 and 2 LCD models should be revealed any day now.

Honorable mention: Prime Day(s)

Month: July

Amazon is typically pretty low on the list of best places to buy a TV. While it does sell most of the same brands of TVs as competing retailers do, its sale prices are more volatile and often plagued by inflated prices that make discounts look better than they are. (Pro tip: You can spot-check the prices of TVs at Amazon by pasting the listing URL into Camelcamelcamel, a free Amazon price tracking site.)

However, Amazon stands out as a TV destination during the shopping holidays it made up for itself: Prime Day and Prime Big Deal Days (basically a second Prime Day). These events usually happen in July and October, respectively. Amazon Prime Day is four days long in 2025, running between July 8 and 11.

Naturally, Fire TVs are the focal point during Prime events, and these deals go hard. For example, we’ve seen a 43-inch Amazon Omni 4K Fire TV drop to $99.99 during Prime Big Deal Days. The week before Prime Day 2025, a 65-inch Insignia QLED Fire TV dropped to $329.99, and an 85-inch Panasonic OLED Fire TV dropped to $997.99. These are wild screen size to price ratios that can only be rivaled by similar Walmart doorbusters on its TV brand, onn. Otherwise, Amazon seems to be keeping up its solid selection of cheap QLED TVs for Prime Day, as well as offering some deals on 2025 flagship TVs that would usually be Best Buy’s forte.

But Amazon isn’t the only good place to buy a TV on sale during Prime Day. Amazon’s self-titled events also trigger conveniently-timed competing sales from its biggest competitors, and as antithetical as it sounds, Best Buy and Walmart almost always beat Amazon at its own game during Prime Day — with TVs, at least. Unless Fire TV is already your comfort streaming platform, don’t limit your TV search to Amazon during these events just because Amazon picked the dates.