Once two distinct deal shopping days, Black Friday and Cyber Monday have basically merged into one massive shopping extravaganza. The lines really began to blur when the world shut down in 2020 and brick-and-mortar stores hosted online sales in lieu of in-person Black Friday events. In 2026, lines outside stores are practically nonexistent. We certainly can't see them.

While major retailers will be running holiday sales throughout all of November, savvy shoppers know that Black Friday, Cyber Monday, (and the few days surrounding them) still remain the absolute biggest shopping days of the year for their ability to reliably trigger record-low prices on big-ticket items (like TVs, Apple devices, smartwatches, headphones, and of course, Amazon's own devices). That includes discounts that beat Amazon's massively-hyped October Prime Day deals.

If you're debating when you should start adding big ticket items to your cart and whether it's better to shop on Black Friday or Cyber Monday, you've come to the right place. After years of covering both sales extensively, here's our expert analysis.

Way back in the age of MySpace and AIM — aka 2005 — the National Retail Federation debuted the term "Cyber Monday" after realizing that the Monday after Thanksgiving saw a flood of online sales. This was likely due to shoppers using their faster internet connections at work on Monday morning to snag deals, or at least that's what they credited it to. That, of course, and the fact that online retailers wanted some of that holiday shopping bread, too.

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