What to Know About Walmart's Upcoming Walmart+ Weekend Sale
The retail giant's launching a new savings event a month before Amazon Prime Day
By Samantha B Gordon
If you’re jonesing for a big sale and can’t wait until mid-July for Amazon Prime Day, you may want to check out Walmart’s new savings event. The retail giant recently announced Walmart+ Weekend, a three-day sale for Walmart+ members offering exclusive savings on thousands of items.
While this is the first time Walmart is running this event, the retailer has held a competing event to coincide with Amazon’s Prime Day for the past several years. It’s not a huge surprise, then, that given Amazon that recently announced Prime Day will take place in July this year, Walmart is getting ahead by holding its new sale a month earlier. If you’ve shopped those summer sales in the past, we expect this to be similar, but with potentially bigger savings.
The catch? You have to be a Walmart+ member to access these sale prices, and membership is not free (but the 30-day trial sure is!).
What Is Walmart+?
Walmart+ is Walmart’s answer to Amazon Prime—a paid subscription that gives users access to perks like free shipping on every order (regular shoppers must meet a $35 order minimum to avoid shipping charges).
The service costs $98 per year or $13 per month, and you can try it free with a 30-day trial. This means you can actually access the Walmart+ Weekend sale without having to fork over extra cash for the subscription. (Just make sure to cancel before the trial ends to avoid getting charged if you’re not interested in keeping the service.)
Free shipping isn’t the only perk Walmart promises its paying members. In addition to the new Walmart+ Weekend sale, members also get early access to Walmart’s Black Friday sales, which the company says inspired the upcoming shopping weekend.
And if you have access to a Walmart location that sells gas, you can save up to 10 cents on every gallon you pump. It’s not just online, either. Walmart+ members can also use their smartphones to scan items as they shop, then quickly pay at a self-checkout register to save time. There are also special member-only delivery times to get orders from your nearest location, which may be especially useful if you use Walmart for your grocery needs, too.
What Will Be on Sale?
While we don’t know every single item Walmart plans to discount, we do know there will be deeper-than-usual savings on thousands of items across almost every category. And Walmart’s sale page is live, listing items that will drop in price for the event. Some of these items are on sale already, but Walmart promises the deals will get better starting June 2. And you will need to be logged in to see the member price during the sale, so keep that in mind if you’re browsing the site looking for big savings.
Consumer Reports will also be watching the sale and sharing the best deals on products that score well in CR’s tests, so you can always bookmark our Deals page for the latest.
Walmart has teased a handful of deals and savings as high as 50 percent off full price on everything from TVs and laptops to coffee makers, air fryers, and grills. For example, the Keurig K-Compact pod coffee maker that usually costs $89 will go on sale for $49. And a 58-inch Onn TV that currently sells for $378 will also receive a discount, though we’re not yet sure how big the price drop will be. We haven’t tested this set, which is part of Walmart’s exclusive brand, but other Onn models have received mixed results in our ratings. However, if you’re not too finicky about picture quality, they’re decent sets at very low prices.
There’s also a hefty discount coming on an 8-quart Gourmia air fryer as well, bringing the price down from $99 to $59. And while we haven’t tested that exact model, other Gourmia air fryers get solid scores in CR’s test.
Walmart is also promising savings on apparel, toys, furniture, grills, craft supplies, and even large appliances, as well as heavy hitters, like headphones, vacuums, and tablets.
How Can You Find a Good Deal?
Walmart displays prices in a few different ways, and you might not always know the original price. For example, there may only be on a Rollback Price icon to let you know the price has dropped, with no indication of how far it has fallen. When it comes to the Walmart+ Weekend, we expect Walmart to make it readily apparent that you’re saving, but even still, this typically involves the original price and doesn’t take into account what the item usually sells for.
Some items may have been selling for a discount for weeks or even months, meaning a seemingly steep discount might not be as impressive as it looks. So how do you know just how much you’re saving? Well, the first step is to compare prices. Unless you’re looking at a Walmart-exclusive brand like Onn, you should be able to find the same product at other retailers, which can help you get an idea of whether a deal is really that exclusive. You may find that it is, indeed, cheaper to buy something in this sale, or you might learn that the sale price is available everywhere, so there’s no real rush to buy something right away.
The sale is still on the horizon, so you can use this time to peruse the early access page. If you see something you might like to buy, take note of the current price. You can add things you want to your cart now, and then you’ll be even more ready to shop when the sale starts, with easy access to all the items you had your eye on.
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