Black Friday smart home deals: what a good price looks like

Most Black Friday smart home lists have the same problem. They are lists of whatever happens to be discounted, which sorts the year’s hardware by how badly somebody wants to move it. That is not the same as sorting it by whether it is any good.

It is also the part of the year when the local-first question gets quietly dropped. The deepest discounts tend to land on hardware whose real business model is the subscription behind it. A doorbell sold near cost in November expects to earn the margin back at a few dollars a month for the next four years. That can still be a reasonable trade, but it is a trade, and the sticker is not the price.

This guide is the other half of that information. It is the prices I recorded before any sale started, the categories where waiting actually pays, and the discounts that are worth walking past. Black Friday 2026 falls on November 27.

The reference prices

Between August 28 and September 1, 2026 I read the retail buy box for 106 products in this catalog and recorded what it said, with the date. That is a rolling job rather than a complete sweep, so it is a sample rather than the whole shelf, but it is a sample taken months ahead of any holiday pricing.

Almost all of those are Amazon buy-box readings, which matters for how you use them. They are a floor test against one retailer: if a November price is not below the figure I recorded in a quiet week at the end of summer, it is not a discount, whatever the badge next to it says. They are not a floor across the whole market, and on the bigger items that gap is real. My own notes on the Denon receiver below record Best Buy and World Wide Stereo at $639 in the same week Amazon read $749. Check two retailers before you believe any of these numbers. A few examples across the range:

Prices move, and some of these will have drifted by the time you read this. The method is the durable part: write down what a thing costs on an ordinary day, then check the sale against your own number instead of against the retailer’s crossed-out one.

Do not wait on the hubs

The hardware that gets a local-first setup off the ground is mostly sold direct at a fixed price, and it does not get Black Friday treatment.

Home Assistant Green has a $199 MSRP. Home Assistant Connect ZBT-2, the Zigbee and Thread coordinator, is $49, and the Z-Wave Connect ZWA-2 has a $69 MSRP, though its Amazon buy box read $79. Those MSRPs are what Nabu Casa’s own distributors sell at, and I have not recorded a Black Friday discount on any of them - the gap to watch here is the retailer markup, not the calendar. Do not extend that to the rest of the local-first shelf. Shelly runs a Black Friday campaign on its own store, and Zooz gear discounts through The Smartest House, so those two are worth waiting on rather than buying now.

So if somebody needs a hub and a radio in November, buy them in November. Waiting five weeks to save nothing is the most common mistake in this category. One practical note on the ZBT-2: its Amazon listing has been reading as unavailable, so buy it from Home Assistant’s own distributors rather than assuming the Amazon page will come back. If you are still choosing a coordinator, my Zigbee coordinator roundup covers the trade-offs.

Where waiting pays

Percentages matter more than counts. A ten percent move on a $749 receiver is worth more than a shelf of discounted smart plugs, so the categories worth watching are the expensive ones.

EV charging. Emporia EV Charger read $449.00 and the Autel MaxiCharger AC Lite Home $446.50. The Tesla Wall Connector Gen 3 is $535 from Tesla directly, which is the link I point at because the Amazon listing for it runs well above the vendor’s own price - it read $750 on 2026-09-08, about 40 percent over. Treat the $535 as the price to beat rather than a promise you can buy it today: Tesla’s own page states that “Tesla ownership is required while supplies are limited” and will not add one to a cart until you sign in, so a non-owner shopping this category for a discount is really shopping the Amazon price.

Receivers and streamers. Denon AVR-S770H and the Bluesound Node both read $749.00, though they are not alternatives to each other: the Denon is a 7.2-channel receiver that amplifies speakers, while the Node is a source-only streamer that feeds one. The WiiM Pro Plus is the cheaper way into what the Node does, not into what the Denon does. If you are shopping this category rather than watching it for a discount, which media players actually stay local sorts the whole set by how much of the box keeps answering Home Assistant offline.

Air and climate. Coway Airmega AP-1512HHS at $299.99 and ecobee Smart Thermostat Premium at $229.99 are both large enough that a real discount is worth a wait. One caveat on the ecobee, because it gets misdescribed constantly: it has no Thread radio, no Z-Wave and no Matter. It is Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, plus a 915MHz radio for ecobee’s own room sensors.

Robot vacuums are the classic high-ticket Black Friday category and the discounts there are real. Check the local-control story before you commit, though, because most of these are cloud-first and the mapping features that justify the price usually live in the vendor’s app rather than on the machine. One warning specific to this category: it turns over fast. Six of the machines I track stopped being available through late August, and not because they sold out - they were superseded, and the manufacturers have moved to current-generation models. A vacuum roundup written a year ago is mostly a list of discontinued hardware, which is the trap in the next section rather than a bargain. Check that the model in front of you is still the one being made.

The discounts that are traps

A discontinued product on “sale” can cost more than it ever did new. End of life inverts the price trend: scarcity pricing replaces clearance pricing once the last stock is on the shelf. The Hunter Hydrawise HC irrigation controller, discontinued back in January 2023, read $279.49 with two units left on 2026-09-01. That is well above what it sold for new. Treat any end-of-life product the same way and check the number rather than the story.

The same caution applies to hardware that is still excellent but no longer made. Home Assistant Yellow was discontinued in October 2025, the Connect ZBT-1 in November 2025, and the plain Hubitat Elevation C-8 in March 2026, with Hubitat now shipping only the C-8 Pro. All three are fine if you already own one. None is worth a premium for old stock, and a November listing is not a reason to start.

The cheap thing with the account attached. A camera or doorbell at half price that stores everything in a vendor cloud has not saved you money, it has moved the cost into a subscription. My privacy and local recording guide covers what to look for instead.

Starter bundles that assume a hub you do not have. Plenty of holiday kits are priced attractively because they are the on-ramp to an ecosystem. Check what the sensors talk to before the box arrives.

What this guide will not do

It will not quote last year’s discount prices. I did not record them, so I cannot verify them, and a remembered figure is exactly the kind of claim that turns into a wrong one. Everything above is a price I read on a stated date, or an MSRP from the manufacturer.

If you are shopping for someone else rather than yourself, the gift guide for Home Assistant enthusiasts covers single items and gift bundles room by room groups them into something that works on day one.