Black Friday 2019: best deals, bargains and the latest news – live

We’ve got comments open – you are very welcome to join in, and I’ll be dipping in below the line when I can. One of the main themes of course is “Why is the Guardian doing a Black Friday live blog at all”. Simple answer, as far as I’m concerned. Guardian readers buy Christmas presents, and I’m hoping to help save them some money, and maybe direct them away from the more obvious web-shopping destinations towards smaller sustainable and ethical businesses. ?

My little lad was very excited about the new Pokémon games when they came out earlier this month, and he saved up his own pocket money and some left-over birthday present money for ages to buy it himself on the day it came out. He is 6, was so excited, and there was literally no dissuading him with “But maybe you could ask Santa for that?”. Anyway, he finished it this morning, so looks like Santa is going to need to bring him another game in any case.

If you are also on the look out for video games or consoles, then here are some of the deal highlights

Game

Game’s biggest deals are a PS4 with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare for £199, and there is also a deal on the PlayStation VR bundle, if VR is your thing. Their Black Friday offers are here.

Green Man Gaming

There’s a range of discounted game titles here if PC gaming is more your scene. Most games seem to be coming with a free download code for an Intel Starter Pack with 5 free games, though I can’t vouch for the blockbuster quality of those.

Simply Games

One of the Black Friday attractions at Simply Games are double-pack bundles where you get Lego games alongside the movie they are (loosely) based on. They’ve got a range of deals on consoles as well.

Zavvi

Zavvi have got nine deals on consoles at the moment – including the Switch light for £199.99. They are offering free delivery on orders over £50.

Pre-loved?

Don’t forget though, if you don’t mind a bit of pre-loved action, CEX is worth checking out. It’s where I’ve slowly been completing

Apologies, just took a break from posting there while I commuted into the office. Can confirm that Transport for London are not having a Black Friday sale on tube fares today.

Anyway talking of ethical Black Friday, one of the biggest differences you can miake to you our carbon footprint is switching to a meat-free diet. Gauthier Soho have been in touch to point out that are offering a Black Friday sale on their vegan taster menu for two.

At £65.50, even with discount, that might be out of your price range. Possibly more to your wallet’s taste are the offers from the Vegan Kind Supermarket, who have a range of deals on offer over the weekend.

This is the kind of thing I’m talking about. Roka bags in London are doing Black Friday a little bit differently – a portion of each bag sold this Friday will be donated to Plastic Oceans, an organisation committed to pollution education and waste reduction. And Roka’s sustainable bags are each made using between 12 and 15 recycled bottles.

Seen anything similar to this? Let me know: martin.belam@theguardian.com

Aldi

Aldi’s website has confused me because it currently says “Don’t miss Orange Thursday”, and now I’m not sure what day of the week it is, or whether I should have been live-blogging yesterday as well. Anyway the deals are here, though maybe you have to time travel to actually purchase them.

Argos

All the Argos Black Friday deals are gathered in one place here – and they are going big on an XBox One S for just £129.99. There’s also a great deal on a vacuum cleaner, but, pro-tip, don’t buy your significant other a vacuum cleaner for Christmas.

Lidl

Lidl have a page full of offers here – including, at the moment, a Lenovo tablet for £80 and one of those George Foreman grill things which could potentially revolutionise how you serve your Xmas dinner.

Tesco

Nothing particularly on special offer on their website, but in-store they are having a Black Friday clearance sale on clothes. Surely the joy of Black Friday is that you don’t have to trudge out into the cold though?

Waitrose

There’s a free bottle of champagne when you order wine from the Waitrose Cellar apparently. There’s also 20% off their exotic Heston range of Christmas foods. Not in my house though, where I’ll be cooking Xmas dinner and it is dried-out Turkey all round.

As I mentioned in my opening preamble, I’m not just interested today in banging out a load of links to where you can get great deals – although of course I will be doing that. But I’m also interested in the sustainability and ethics side of Black Friday. Are you doing something for Black Friday that isn’t about spending cash, but is instead about fund-raising or giving? Are you a small business or retailer with interesting quirky gift ideas that would make a nicer present than something off the regular high street? What about deals on things that people can experience, rather than spending on goods? Drop me an email at martin.belam@theguardian.com and I’ll include some of your ideas in the live blog.

As I mentioned in the intro, Black Friday has become a firm fixture of the pre-Christmas season, but increasingly with the climate crisis on the horizon people are re-thinking whether a massive splurge of consumerism is the right thing to be doing before Christmas. Here’s Eva Cruse with some thoughts about how Black Friday fuels the damage that fast fashion is doing to the environment.

Phones are always a big seller during the festive season, and if you are thinking of getting one of the latest models you could do worse than check out our buyer’s guide from my colleague Samuel Gibbs, our consumer technology editor.

I actually need a new phone myself, thanks to a small incident when I was out playing Pokémon Go with my youngest. True story, he was actually a little bit worried the Pokémon might escape when between us we managed to shatter the screen.

I had been thinking about switching to Giffgaff, their Black Friday deals are offering up to £100 off the latest models. Apple’s own offers this weekend seem to boil down to giving you gift cards of varying amounts to spend in the Apple Store.

Or maybe I won’t get a new one at all – just get the screen on mine patched up and try and break out of the cycle of renewing a phone that is working well enough every couple of years.

The first port of call is of course to see what is around on the websites of the UK’s major high street retailers – who must have mixed feelings about the internet-driven Black Friday event. Internet shopping is, after all, one of the factors that has been giving them such a hard time. Here’s what you can get on some leading brand websites:

Debenhams

Debenhams are promising a VAT-free Black Friday extravaganza on fragrances – their words not mine. They also have “up to 50%” off other lines online, including women’s fashion. Their Black Friday deals are all gathered here.

Harvey Nichols

They have branded the whole thing “Cyber weekend” – it is up to 40% off selected items on their website. Find the deals here.

House of Fraser

Their offer is a “£20 voucher delivered by email for use on future purchases” for every £100 spent, and then there is up to 30% off selected items, including Christmas decorations. Not that you have your decorations up yet.

John Lewis

The rather grandly named “Black Friday Event” offers can all be found gathered together on this web page, with sub-sections for the usual categories, including electrical goods, fragrances, clothes, and stuff for the nursery if you’ve managed to cunningly time having a new baby with Black Friday.

Liberty

If you think “Black Friday Event” sounds grand, then Liberty is there saying “Hold my beer”. They are running “The event before Christmas”, which isn’t as you might have suspected, everyone running around in a blind panic because the forgot to buy the cranberry sauce, but is in fact up to 30% off selected lines online and in-store. There doesn’t seem to be one particular place they’ve put all the deals, so you’ll have to have a bit of a mooch around the website.