Black Friday is fast approaching, and that means one thing: It is time for me to panic-buy a bunch of new tech, all in the chase of the sweet experience of scoring a solid deal.
However, having spent Black Fridays before scanning through pages and pages of deals, trying to work out what is actually worth buying can be a struggle. Especially for a product that you don’t actually know much about.
This year, that item is a TV. I’ve had my current TV for years, and while I have grown to love it, it has quickly become out of date, and my eye is now being turned by fancy new features and improved resolutions.
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The problem is, I know next to nothing about TVs. This means I don’t know what I want or need, and more importantly, at this time of year, I don’t know what a good TV deal looks like.
Narrowing down the search
(Image credit: ChatGPT / Alex Hughes)
The first step is trying to work out what I actually need from a TV. It is easy to just jump onto a Black Friday TV deals page and start scrolling, but I wanted to try and make a good, informed decision here.
So, to get started, I switched ChatGPT to its Thinking Mode, forcing the chatbot to carefully consider my questions. Then, I gave it a simple prompt of:
I’m looking to buy a new TV. I want to spend £300 or less. I want it to be 43-inch or 50-inch. Outside of that, I don’t know what I want. Ask me questions to help narrow down my search
In response, ChatGPT gave me 9 questions to answer, including what I use the TV for, the distance from my sofa to the TV, and what time of day I am typically using the TV.
Answering these questions, ChatGPT came back with five TV recommendations, all under £300 and all meeting all of the requirements that I had set out. For each recommendation, ChatGPT gave me explanations of why it might be a good choice.
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Its recommendations included:
- TCL T6C QLED 4K Fire TV (43 or 50)
- Hisense E78QTUK QLED (50)
- Samsung DU8000 (43 or 50)
- LG 43UA73006LA (43)
- Hisense A6Q or similar Hisense 4K models (43/50)
These recommendations were accompanied by links of where I could buy the TVs, but I wanted to go a step further.
(Image credit: ChatGPT / Alex Hughes)
(Image credit: ChatGPT / Alex Hughes)
In theory, that is ChatGPT’s part of the job done. It has quizzed me on what I’m looking for, and provided five options that fit the description. It has even provided me with links to buy them. But what else can we do?
Using ChatGPT Agent, a tool that allows ChatGPT to take control of your computer, using the internet on your behalf, I set the AI tool on the search.
Staying in the same conversation as the set-out TV requirements, I switched to ChatGPT Agent (by clicking the + symbol in the chatbox and selecting Agent) and prompted ChatGPT with:
“Using my requirements set out above, find the best Black Friday deals on TVs. I want five options presented, as well as two options below £250 that hit as many of my requirements as possible at that price point.”
ChatGPT Agent then went to work, searching the internet to hit my exact requirements. Pre-warning to anyone looking to try this, Agent isn’t exactly a quick process, so set it on its mission, and then go get your morning cup of Joe and come back.
What did ChatGPT find?
(Image credit: Shutterstock)
One coffee and a few admin tasks later and ChatGPT had its answer for me. It had searched through Black Friday guides and a selection of the biggest retailers, running my requirements against what was available in Black Friday this year.
The end result was five discounted TVs, all within my requirements. Interestingly, only one of these options was repeated from the earlier selection that ChatGPT had presented. The other four were completely new suggestions.
For each of these, I was given an explanation of why it was a good option along with a link to where to buy it and an explanation of its discount. Following my prompt, ChatGPT also threw in two cheaper alternatives.
As one last step, I asked ChatGPT to tell me which TV, based on everything we had spoken about, would be best for me. It gave me its top pick and a long list of reasons why it fit my needs.
In total, this whole process took 20 minutes. Most of that time was taken up by ChatGPT Agent searching the internet — time I spent doing other things. In the end, I had 7 potential TV Black Friday deals, all perfectly suited to me with very little work on my end needed.
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