Best Amazon Black Friday TV Deals (2020)

TV pricing on Black Friday used to be straightforward. Big retailers ran loss-leader deals on a few specific models, the prices were genuinely the lowest of the year, and the deal-hunting strategy was to find a TV you wanted and buy it during the four-day window. That model started to break around 2017 and is mostly broken in 2020. The lowest prices of the year are now spread across multiple windows (Prime Day, Black Friday, post-Christmas, January Super Bowl). Black Friday is one of those windows, but it's not always the deepest discount.

With that context, the 2020 Amazon Black Friday TV deals are still worth knowing, because the spread between models within the same size class has gotten bigger and the "good deals" are easier to spot than the "great deals."

The TCL and Hisense Story

The two most aggressive value plays at every TV size in 2020 are TCL and Hisense, both Chinese manufacturers that have spent the last few years buying their way into the US market through extremely competitive pricing on Roku-OS-equipped sets. The TCL 6-Series, in particular, sits at a price point where Samsung and LG can't really compete on dollar-per-pixel.

On Amazon's Black Friday list this year, the TCL 6-Series 65-inch is around $749. The equivalent-spec Samsung Q70T is $1,199, and the LG NanoCell 65-inch is around $1,099. The TCL is meaningfully cheaper for a panel that benchmarks within 10% of the Samsung on every objective metric (peak brightness, color volume, input lag for gaming).

Where the Premium Brands Win

The TCL and Hisense story holds at the mid-tier. At the high end (LG OLED, Sony A8H, Samsung QN90A), the comparison falls apart because the panel technology is fundamentally different. OLED panels self-emit per-pixel light, which means infinite contrast ratio and perfect blacks. No amount of LCD-side cleverness closes that gap.

For Black Friday 2020, the LG CX OLED at 65-inch dropped to around $1,799 from $2,499. That's the deepest OLED discount of the year so far, and it's the model worth buying if you're going to spend in the OLED tier at all. The CX has the latest LG 2020 panel, full HDMI 2.1 support for 4K-120Hz gaming on PS5 and Xbox Series X, and Dolby Vision support. The Samsung QN90A is the LCD-side equivalent in this tier and competes on brightness and HDR but loses on contrast.

The Deals to Skip

Cheap 4K TVs at sizes 50-inch and below. The 50-inch class is where the off-brand Black Friday TVs are concentrated, and the units in this size are almost universally compromises: dim panels, slow processors, no HDR support that actually works, and 60Hz panels that look bad on motion. Buying a $250 50-inch "4K" TV is almost always worse than buying a 43-inch TCL 4-Series at $200.

Bundled deals from Best Buy or Walmart that include a non-essential accessory. If the deal is "TV plus a gift card" or "TV plus a 4K Blu-ray you don't want," the marginal value of the bundle is usually less than the marginal cost. Buy the TV by itself and skip the bundle.

Last year's models without verified reviews. TV manufacturers re-release minor revisions of older panels with new model numbers every Black Friday. The retail price looks like a deal, but the panel is often a year or two behind on processor and image processing. Always check the actual model number against the current-year lineup.

The Buy-Now Recommendation

If you want a great picture and you're willing to spend OLED money, the LG CX 65-inch at $1,799 is the Black Friday deal worth taking. If you want a great picture for half the money, the TCL 6-Series 65-inch at $749 is the value play and it's genuinely competitive with TVs that cost twice as much. Everything between those two price points is incremental and not particularly compelling on Black Friday specifically; you can find similar prices in January and February without the warehousing hassle.

The smartest play, if you can wait, is to mark the post-Christmas window. December 26 through Super Bowl Sunday is the second wave of TV deals, and on premium models like the LG OLED line the prices often dip slightly below the Black Friday floor. The trade-off is you might wait too long and the model gets discontinued. For someone who can be patient, the savings are meaningful. For someone who needs the TV now, Black Friday is the right window to buy.