(Credit: RaShawn Dixon; IVAN ROSHCHUPKIN, Smile Studio AP, Mehmet Gokhan Bayhan, iso100production, fizkes/Shutterstock.com)
Amazon Prime Day is set for July 16-17, and that means there are some great deals to be had on top products, especially electronics. It’s like a sneak peek at Black Friday.
For every quality device you'll see on sale, however, there are about a dozen items that aren’t nearly as compelling a bargain. There will be some bad deals, generic fluff, and outright mediocrity on offer. Here are some tips for finding the best deals, and recognizing the worst ones.
1. Stay Focused to Get the Best Deal
The Best Product Categories to Shop This Prime Day
Once it's up, clicking on the Prime Day banner and going to the deals will open up a sprawling list of thousands of products from every corner of Amazon. By default, the list will prioritize “Featured” products, but that isn’t very useful and becomes even less helpful as you scroll down.
Avoid impulse buys by focusing on the type of deals you’re actually shopping for. On the left side of the page (if you’re shopping on a web browser), look at the list of Departments. There are dozens, from first-party Amazon devices to headphones to books to musical instruments. Check only the departments you actually want to browse.
2. Now Is The Time to Buy Amazon Devices
Everyone who sells anything on Amazon will be trying to get some Prime Day attention, but you'll generally find the best discounts on Amazon's own lineup of hardware products.
The Amazon Devices department will have some of the most significant discounts on products we’ve reviewed and can actually recommend. Echo smart speakers and smart displays, Fire tablets, Fire TV media streamers, Kindle ebook readers, most of which are excellent devices, will be on sale for much less than they usually retail for.
One possible exception is TVs, which will likely include both Amazon’s own Fire TV televisions and Insignia, Pioneer, and Toshiba TVs that use the Fire TV platform. Fire TV is an excellent smart TV system with lots of features, though we've yet to see one offer a particularly bright or stunning picture. They aren't bad, and we can recommend the Fire TV Omni QLED as one of the better budget picks, but no Fire TV television we've seen so far will amaze.
3. Always Check the Product Model, Even for Brand-Name Tech
Brands don’t mean everything, and just because a manufacturer might make some excellent products, it doesn’t mean they don’t also offer some clunkers. Whenever a big name catches your eye, look carefully to make sure you’re actually getting something good.
Let’s say a big Samsung TV is 40% off on Prime Day. Sounds great, right? After all, some of the brand's TVs have earned top marks from PCMag, like the S95D, an Editors’ Choice-winning OLED TV with one of the best pictures available.
That doesn't mean every Samsung TV that’s on sale for Prime Day is a good one, though. The company, like most electronics manufacturers, offers a wide range of products. The QN90D and S95D are at the top of Samsung’s TV selection, but there are a lot of other models out there that don’t have nearly as many features or comparable picture quality.
I’ve warned in the past that you need to check the individual product numbers, or SKUs, to understand what you’re getting. See if you can find reviews of that particular model; if not, go to the manufacturer’s website and look at where it is in their lineup.
The Best Budget TVs We've Tested
4. Beware of Scammy No-Name Products
Brands might not mean everything, but they do mean something. Major brands generally have to present a baseline level of quality, reliability, and support. That doesn’t apply to most “brands” on Amazon, though.
Whether you’re looking for earphones, webcams, or smartwatches, you’re going to find a lot of dubious, heavily discounted products on Amazon. Their product names will probably just describe what they are with tons of keywords, like “Bluetooth Wireless Headsets Earphones,” “Smart Watch for Men Women,” or “HD Webcam 1080p, Pro Streaming Web Camera with Microphone.”
If you click on them, you’ll probably see a brand you’ve never heard of, possibly a mishmash of letters in all caps (“GPEESTRAC” is the best one I’ve seen so far). And then you’ll see identical products with different brands as you scroll further.
We haven’t tested most of these no-name products, but a few years ago, we checked out a handful of webcams to compare them with more recognizable brands, and they generally disappointed. When you're looking at that product tier, are you saving money on Prime Day compared to what similar devices cost at your local Big Lots or Five Below?
Amazon has also started adding a "frequently returned" label to products that often end up getting sent back. So keep an eye out for that and read those reviews.
5. Save Money on an Amazon Prime Membership
An Amazon Prime subscription is required to get Prime Day deals. If you're on the fence about subscribing, start with a free 30-day trial and then cancel before you're automatically charged. That said, if you're a big online shopper, the free shipping alone makes the investment worth it.
Plus, there’s a huge library of shows and movies on Prime Video (both legitimately excellent media and some glorious trash if you dig deep enough), a decent library of music (Prime Music will let you shuffle play 90 million songs, but a la carte listening is limited to Amazon Music Unlimited, which is a separate subscription), and a similarly decent library of ebooks via Prime Reading.
And if you have already taken advantage of the free trial, and you don’t want to spend $139 for an annual membership just to shop the Prime Day deals, you can grab one month for $14.99. To save even more, you can share your Prime membership with your family as a Household.
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