It’s Black Friday season and that means deals are flying around left, right and centre. We love finding you the best ones, but we also want to make sure you avoid the bad ones.
For the last couple of years, we’ve been raving about the Samsung Galaxy Tab A9 and shouting about it in various sales events. Amazon currently has it reduced to just £79.99 in a Black Friday Week deal – almost 50% off (not even factoring the original RRP).
This might seem like an amazing Black Friday deal on the face of it, but I’ve got three reasons why you shouldn’t buy it.
Lifespan
The Galaxy Tab A9 launched in 2023 and that means it’s already two years old. Not too bad but when you factor in that it’s already halfway through its software support promise, it’s not so good.
Samsung only promised four years of new Android versions so this tablet will only reach Android 17 and no further.
Old-gen
You wouldn’t know it by just looking at the deal on Amazon, but the Tab A9 is now the previous generation. Oddly, Amazon is calling the deal a ‘2025 model’ alongside a ‘2024 model’, but neither exists for the Tab A9 as far as we know, or reliable listings like GSMA.
Samsung updated its budget tablet series this year, just weeks ago, with the Galaxy Tab A11 pictured below. There was no Tab A10, presumably due to the two-year gap.
Small budget tablets that are actually good are hard to come by these days, so you need to buy the right one.
Chris Martin / Foundry
Better deals
Look around and there are better deals to be had…
The aforementioned Galaxy Tab A11 has already been on sale, despite being brand-new. We’ve seen it for as low as £99 in various Black Friday sales – not just Amazon.
Sadly, that deal has ended but at only £20 more, it’s worth waiting for it to come back around again. It will and it could even be on Black Friday 2025 itself.
John Lewis does have the 128GB Galaxy Tab A11 for £139 (£50 off) which is a very good deal, though it seems like a mistake considering the 64GB model is £10 more and it’s only on the grey colourway.
The new model looks identical but has a number of upgrades, including a higher refresh rate screen, better front-facing camera and a much longer seven-year software support promise.
Just yesterday, I saw the Tab A9 in its higher spec model for £89, getting you 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. That’s gone already, though it would have been a reasonably good deal if you don’t mind the short lifespan.
We haven’t tested it but you might also check out the Honor Pad X7. We generally score Honor devices highly and this 2025 model has the same 8.7-inch screen as the Galaxy Tabs along with mostly similar specs, but a bigger battery.
It normally retails for £99.99 but Amazon has slashed the price by 31% to just £69 for Black Friday – the deal ends on 27 November.
We’re also rounding up all the best Samsung Galaxy deals this Black Friday.
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