Black Friday PC Deals Will Include Discounts for Surface

If you have considered treating yourself or someone else to a new PC, next weekend's Black Friday and Cyber Monday might be the best opportunity yet to do it. Microsoft today revealed on its Windows blog that it will offer some attractive deals for some of its Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book models, and pointed to some notable markdowns for PCs from third-party OEMs from a number of retailers. As far as I can recall, this year's lineup of holiday discounts may be the best Microsoft has ever offered during the traditional holiday buying season.

Arguably the most tempting offers are for a Surface Pro 4 with an Intel m3 processor, 4GB of RAM, a 128GB SSD and its Signature Type Cover keyboard, which regularly costs $1,029 for $599. For those wanting a step up, the company is also offering its Surface Pro 4 with an i5 processor, 256GB SSD, 8GB of RAM and the keyboard for just $999 (the bundle typically costs $1,429).

Those $400-plus discounts will only be available at Best Buy and the Microsoft Store from Nov. 24 to Nov. 28. While there are rumors that Microsoft at some point next spring might roll out a Surface Pro 5 and thereby marking down the predecessors anyway, the discounts offered on the Surface Pro 3s after the launch of the Surface Pro 4s weren't as attractive as these current holiday deals.

Also during Black Friday next weekend, Microsoft is taking $400 off its Surface Book, offering a model with an i5 processor that includes a GPU, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD for $1,499. The entry level Surface Book with 128GB SSD and 8GB of RAM, which normally sells for $1,499 will be on sale for $1,249.

In addition to its own hardware, Microsoft pointed to a variety of other Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals available at other retailers from its OEM partners Dell, Lenovo, HP, Acer, Asus and Samsung. One of the deals Microsoft considered most appealing to business users included $150 off of the new Lenovo Yoga 910 with Intel's 7th Generation Core i7 processor, a 14-inch display, 8GB RAM and a 256GB SSD for $1,049 (not mentioned but also planned is a similar model with 16GB of RAM and a 4K Ultra HD display for $1,399) at Best Buy. During the weekend Costco members can save $300 on the costly and compact  Dell XPS 13 Ultrabooks for $300 off or $100 markdown on the Acer Spin 5.

Those looking for lower-end PCs that are lighter on the wallet will find some good deals worth considering as well including:

• Dell Inspiron PCs starting at $399 and HP Notebook 15 for $299 at the Microsoft Store.
• HP X360 for $229 or Lenovo Ideapad for $400 at Best Buy.
• HP laptops NT Ci3 for $269 and NT Ci5 for $329 at Office Depot.
•  ASUS Transformer Mini T102 for $299 from Amazon.
• Dell's Inspiron 11 3000 for $99 at the company's Web site.

For gamers, Microsoft said it is discounting its 1TB Xbox and Xbox One S by $50, bringing the latter to its lowest price ever, at $249. The game console deals will be available starting next Sunday Nov. 20 through Wednesday Nov 23.

Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 11/14/2016 at 1:29 PM