PCs, Apple Headphones, TVs Star in July Savings Promotions

Whether billed as Deal Days or Black Friday in July, tech retailers got a jump on Amazon’s Prime Day with sales of their own Monday. Best Buy, Target and P.C. Richard kicked off their July sales Monday, a day before Amazon’s high-profile 48-hour Prime Day event that begins Tuesday at 3 a.m. EDT.

Best Buy’s “surprise” two-day, limited-quantities Black Friday in July event featured a smattering of laptop deals before back-to-school season. A Lenovo 3 11.6-inch Chromebook led laptop pricing at $79, a $60 discount. HP deals include a Pavilion x360 2-in-1 touch-screen laptop at $300 off to $529, and a Victus 15.6-inch gaming laptop is $250 off to $549.

Among featured TVs at Best Buy were the LG 75-inch UP7070 4K smart TV, $180 off to $649; the Vizio 70-inch M7 Series 4K QLED TV, $100 off to $699; and Sony’s 48-inch Bravia A9S 4K Android TV, slashed $500 to $799.

Apple AirPods Pro are $40 off to $179 at Best Buy, with six months free of Apple Music. They were selling for $249 at Apple.com Monday. Second-generation standard AirPods were $99 at Best Buy for $30 savings. The Apple over-ear AirPods Max were clipped by $50 to $449.

At Target, which has a store-within-a-store relationship with Apple, third-gen AirPods were $10 off at $169. Second-gen standard AirPods were $99 with four months free of Apple Music when bought via a Target loyalty program.

Walmart, which wasn’t advertising a summer sale, still had competitive pricing. Walmart.com advertised the AirPods Pros for $169, $10 under Best Buy and down from its $214 list price, and it matched the other two retailers’ price of the second-gen standard AirPods at $99 (vs. $129 at apple.com Monday). Third-gen AirPods at Walmart were $149 vs. $179 at Apple and $169 at Target.

Walmart also beat Best Buy and Target by a buck, at $698, on the 70-inch Vizio QLED TV M7 Series TV. And it cart-priced LG’s 77A1PUA 77-inch OLED below the manufacturer’s minimum advertised price at $2,496 but above P.C. Richard’s cart price of $1,799.

The lowest price for new OLED TVs by retailer were $899 for an LG 48-inch 48C1, $400 off at Target and P.C. Richard; $796 for an LG 48-inch 48A1PUA at Walmart; and $799 at Best Buy and P.C. Richard for the Sony 48-inch Bravia A9S ($500 off), we found Monday. Best Buy also had the LG 48-inch 48A1PUA OLED TV for $799.