Does Alienware do Black Friday sales?
Will we see savings this year?
Like most other retailers, Dell regularly takes advantage of the uptick in spending around Black Friday by rolling out its own discounts and offers. The retailer's site plays host to doorbuster offers ahead of the main event (usually starting around two weeks before Black Friday itself, though that has been getting earlier every year) before opening its shelves for a full discounting bonanza from the start of Thanksgiving week. It's not just day to day laptops and work hub docks included in these sales, though, Black Friday Alienware deals make up a good chunk of this retailer's holiday savings.
We typically see everything from the brand's best gaming laptops to high-end configurations of Alienware Aurora gaming PCs included, but monitors, chairs, headsets, keyboards, and mice all play their role as well. Of course, the biggest savings are usually reserved for those high ticket items - a $1,000 saving is going to sit much better on a $4,000 gaming PC, for example. However, the budget end of the scale tends to be well served as well.
Last year's Alienware Black Friday offers landed primarily on the M-Series of 16-inch and 18-inch gaming laptops, the Aurora R16 gaming PC, and premium curved gaming monitors. We saw savings ranging from $200 to $700 on the most valuable of discounts, though more premium offers easily slid into the four-figure territory. You'll still be paying premium prices for one of the best Alienware PCs on the market, but that blow should be softened by the time November 29 rolls around.
How much can you save during Alienware's Black Friday sale?
Dell runs discounts on its Alienware laptops and PCs year-round, with savings usually sitting pretty competitively against the rest of the market. These are premium devices, so you're never going to price match something like an Acer Nitro 16 with an Alienware M16 R2, but considering the build quality and engineering under the hood, Dell's own discounts regularly offer up promising value for money. Those prices tend to trickle down the scale as we get closer to Black Friday, with the retailer rotating different discounts on and off the shelves in the weeks leading up to the main event. However, it also goes particularly hard on the big day.
Dell is one of the few retailers that still plays into Black Friday's on-the-day rush ethos - incorporating flash sales that drop some of the year's best prices on high-end tech and are quickly snapped up by shoppers. Strangely, this is one of the last bastions of what Black Friday used to be - after all, most stores simply run their full Black Friday sale in the weeks leading up and only add a few extra discounts once the clock strikes midnight.
That means Alienware's official Black Friday sale may well improve on the kinds of prices we'll be seeing over the next few weeks. But it also means you've got less of a shot of actually securing those discounts. While Dell runs Alienware sales pretty much constantly, the actual configurations and models taking part in those discounts change much quicker than I tend to see at other stores. I regularly check back on a deal a day later to find a price change, and that's during the low season. When Black Friday comes, these discounts move quickly.
Last year's top Alienware deals on Black Friday itself averaged out at 21.028% off the full MSRP, though some savings were hitting highs of over 40% off in the cheaper categories. Right now, we're off to a good start. A sample pool of deals available now versus those available over Black Friday last year shows that the average percentage saving is actually already higher in 2024 than the previous big day. Current discounts on two mid-range curved monitors, three mid-range laptops, one high-end laptop, three mid-range PCs, and two high-end PCs average out at 22.421% on the shelves at the time of writing.
That doesn't necessarily mean things are cheaper right now than they were over last year's Black Friday offers - you've got things like differences in spec configurations and the inherent value of newer models stopping us from making a black and white comparison. However, it does show that those scales are sliding a little further towards the cheaper end in 2024.
Dell drops a whole wad of Black Friday gaming laptop deals and Black Friday gaming PC deals on us every year, and they often make up some of the more impressive savings to boot. If you're on the hunt for a new Alienware rig this holiday season, it's well worth keeping in touch with the brand's own retailer site for all the biggest savings.
We're also looking forward to some Black Friday gaming monitor deals this year, but we're also keeping you topped up with all the latest Black Friday gaming chair deals and Black Friday gaming headset deals as well.
Sign up to the GamesRadar+ Newsletter
Weekly digests, tales from the communities you love, and more
Managing Editor of Hardware at GamesRadar+, I originally landed in hardware at our sister site TechRadar before moving over to GamesRadar. In between, I've written for Tom’s Guide, Wireframe, The Indie Game Website and That Video Game Blog, covering everything from the PS5 launch to the Apple Pencil. Now, i'm focused on Nintendo Switch, gaming laptops (and the keyboards, headsets and mice that come with them), PS5, and trying to find the perfect projector.