The other day we discussed how you should research before you jump on a Black Friday sale, and boy did we find a good example of why you should do this.

While we have written several articles about how Blu-ray may not be the best choice for you to jump in to, we saw a good chance to show you how you may be able to save yourself some hassles.

Walmart is advertising on the back page of their Black Friday circular for a Samsung Blu-ray player for $198.  While they didn’t list the model number, we were able to locate it by going to BlackFriday.info that had it listed as being a Samsung BD-P1500 Blu-ray Player.  So there is step one of how research has paid off already in just getting the model number.

My first rule of thumb wehn price checking something is to head over to Amazon.com and see what they are charging for the item.  Sure enough, Amazon has it, and it’s on sale also.  Their price (at the time of this writing) is $203.58 with free shipping.  Remember, they may be higher than Walmart’s price, but you aren’t only getting free shipping, you’re also not paying sales tax, so this is actually cheaper than going to Walmart, and you also are getting more technical information about the product, as well as actual user reviews.

Total time digging was maybe three minutes and I have saved myself sales tax, paying for gas and time in the store.  Of course, all of this is dependent on you wanting a Blu-ray player, but it was an easy example of how research can end up saving you in all kinds of ways.