Tap That App: The Best Black Friday 2014 Apps for iPhone and Android
These days, Black Friday is as much a technologically assisted event as the now throwback-sounding "Cyber Monday" that follows. And with Black Friday just around the corner, Black Friday 2014 apps are coming out of the woodwork -- all spamming the app stores looking for your download.
Let Latin Post Tech help you avoid that digital hustle, especially because, if you're interested in these apps, you've already got plenty of hustle to deal with this Friday.
This week, we spotlight the two best apps for Black Friday 2014: TGI Black Friday and Black Friday 2014 by Slickdeals -- both for iPhone and Android.
Top Pick: TGI Black Friday
The best, easiest to use Black Friday app this year is TGI Black Friday, by notable sales website DealCatcher.
TGI Black Friday has been around for about as long as people have been using apps to help them plan their holiday shopping, and it continues to be one of the most highly rated deal-hunting apps for a reason: It's clean, stable, reliable, and has a huge selection of Black Friday deals that are curated by popularity and easy to browse.
Without needing to log in or sign up for an account, you can browse all of the major Black Friday deals by popularity, store or sales category, and quickly create a shopping list to plan out your weekend. The list helpfully totals up your planned spending by store and by grand total, letting you keep track of that all-important savings-to-spending ratio.
TGI Black Friday is highly recommended for first-time app users for its friendly interface, but experienced sales-hunters will find it just as useful as well.
(Photo : iTunes: TGI Black Friday)
Get it now for iOS or Android.
Slickdeals: More Thorough, Less Convenient
Our second pick is simply called Black Friday 2014, but you can be sure to avoid spammy, similarly-named apps by looking for "Slickdeals" in the app stores' author credit. (Or following our direct links here: For iOS or Android.)
Slickdeals' Black Friday 2014 app is a little more cluttered and awkward, as far as app interfaces go. Part of that is by necessity, though, as Slickdeals packs in a lot more browsing and sorting options, along with a larger selection of stores and deals and in-depth information from Slickdeals' community of shoppers.
(Photo : Google Play: Black Friday 2014 by Slickdeals)
It's really the Slickdeals community that makes this app stand apart from the rest. The site is a perennial top-rated pick for deal-hunting year-round, and the Black Friday 2014 app does a decent job incorporating community discussions, deal ratings and other invaluable information from their website for super shoppers.
That said, the app was sometimes glitchy in our hands-on tests. Specifically, the search feature on the iPhone 5s (running iOS 7) sometimes wouldn't work all the way from beginning your search to viewing specific deal details from the results page. Exiting out of the app and starting over fixed that glitch, but it's inconvenient and a downside nonetheless.
Another downside for convenience-sake was that you have to login or sign up with Slickdeals in order to use some features, like adding deals to your list. You can quickly sign in with an outside social media account like Google+ or Facebook, but some shoppers might prefer not to add yet another extension to their online public profiles, just for the sake of using a deals app once a year.
Extended features, like mapping out stores on your shopping trip, might entice users to go ahead and sign in anyway, though.
Tap That App
Either app you use, you're guaranteed to find some amazing Black Friday deals with these digital assistants.
Doorbuster holiday shopping has entered the 21st century, and though some might feel like using an app to shop is overdoing it a bit, it sure beats the old way -- spending hours shuffling through a dozen circulars with a pair of scissors.