Prime Day Guide: How to make the most of Amazon’s big sale event (2020)

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This post is our rundown for “Prime Day”, which is Amazon’s big online sale event, so you can make the most of it and #TechItEasy: what it is, our tricks & tips, our top deals to watch for, and some common mistakes to avoid.

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This year, there are some amazing deals on Amazon branded products, and we think the Amazon Fire 8 HD Kids tablet is one of the best deals of Prime Day 2020 as are the cheaper Fire 8 HD and larger Fire 10 HD if you do not want all the extra kids features (although the deals may not yet be live at the time of your reading this). If you want an Android tablet for watching, reading, and using your apps for around $50 (over 40% off), this is your chance!

Check out our Unboxing & Device Overview video (click here or see below) to learn more about the Kids and regular versions of the Fire tablet:

 

What is Prime Day?

Essentially, Prime Day is the worlds largest retailer’s big sale, so its a great chance to get some gear you have been holding out on or save money on any other purchases you need to make. 

Amazon is the worlds largest retailer and the online store for buying everything (in America). You can search anything from electronics to office supplies pet food to fitness gear, and over 25 other departments. Amazon even recently bought Whole Foods, and now has grocery delivery in many areas.

Prime Day is Amazon’s annual sale event palooza with tons of deals. It is usually in the summer, but is on October 13 and 14 this year because of Covd-19. Some years have been amazing whereas others a bit of a bust, although there are always great finds to be had. This short guide will give you the other essentials you need to make the most of Prime Day.

First up, you need an Amazon Prime subscription, which you either probably already have or may want anyway, otherwise this may be the perfect time to start your 30 day Amazon Prime trial (and you can sign up (using our affiliate links) here for USA, here for Canada, here for UK).
Amazon prime is a service that gets your Prime delivery (free and next day for most products), access to tons of deals and discounts all the time, access to Prime Video (a streaming service like Netflix but with its own suite of exclusive content), Music (like Spotify but smaller library), and Reading (rotating access to some pretty good books from the Kindle library). Prime costs about $13/month or $120/year, but varies depending on your location (and currency). 

 

How to make the most of Prime Day

The main trick for Prime Day is finding the relevant deals for you without spending too much time looking or getting sucked into thing you do not want to buy. Our main pro tip for this is to get on the site a few times over Oct 13-14, check out a few sources posting about Prime day in an areas relevant to you, search through the deals and departments that are relevant for you for a few minutes (look for “deals” filters if you see them), and see if you can find any winners. 

Here are some specific tips to guide you:

  1. Check out (and bookmark, maybe) Amazon’s deal page, which you can keep going to to see live deals.
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  2. Master Lightning deals: these are fast details that are often great value. You can see these in “upcoming deals” and can opt to “watch this deal” so you get a notification when it is ready. It is best to look at these ahead of time because you can also get pulled into buying something you do not actually need in the heat of the lightening!
  3. Note that other retailers also put on sales to compete with Prime Day, so is worth checking those out, for example what is going on a Walmart for its Big Save Sale.
  4. Find a reliable deal tracker/tub and follow their leads. If you can find someone in the relevant are of interest (for example, an influencer/blogger/website/etc.,) who is posting about Prime Day, they may be your best source of deals. Simply: search google for keyword of your interest + “prime day”, and you will see articles and other things come up that will be good sources (see image below for example of “headphones prime day” search)
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    For example, The Deal Guy on YouTube often follows the best deals as they happen, but many other influencers or media outlets will be posting their live streams/feeds/tweet-casts of the Prime Day deals they come across. One example is WireCutter’s daily deals page, but most news outlets (e.g., google search “CNN prime day”), tech sites (e.g., Tom’s Guide, CNET), and many bloggers will have these hubs available).
  5. (Add things to your cart in advance: in the days/weeks leading up to Prime Day, we tend to just load up our cart with goodies we need, and you never know what will end up going on sale, which may mean your chance to get a new something you want or one of your regular purchases at a discount)
  6. Checking the product quality:
    Check out Amazon user ratings for products. You can not only see how many starts a product has, but looking at the number of ratings is key as a product with only a few could be skewed by some high or low ratings wheres a product with hundreds or thousands of reviews is likely showing a reliable rating (whether high or low is another question).
    Similarly, Amazon gives “best seller” or “amazon’s choice” and other awards to certain products across categories that usually signals quality. 
    Brand name is also usually a reliable index of quality, although one you also often pay for the name, so if you are unsure of whether that knockoff tape or electronic will be good by the above (ratings, awards), you may want just want to pay the extra for the Duct tape or Samsung so you can rely on the product that shows up to your door).
  7. (Very optional: Before purchasing on Amazon, we like to search Amazon for the exact same product and make sure the same thing is not available on a better deal, for example sometimes a different colour of the same model is cheaper. Be careful that you are not picking a different product with a similar name when doing this. )
  8. Check out deals throughout the day, but prime day has been underwhelming in the past, so do not get too excited about it being a grand slam.

Our Top Deals to Watch

We are not sure exactly what will go on sale or when the next good lightning deal with strike, but here is a link to some of the top electronics deals, which are our favourites: https://amzn.to/2SNhG3F
And here are some of the good deals we have been scoping out:

Great Amazon Products Deal

We also want to highlight the Amazon products section this year, as these products are likely to go on sale and you can get some great tech at a great value (although see above for finding your deal tracker, as many of those already have lots of good deals scoped and listed). We tend to add any AmazonBasics, Echo, or Eerie products (all Amazon brands) we are interested in into our carts leading up to Prime Day so we can see if any deals show up. We have already seen huge deals on Amazon’s line of tablets, smart assistants/speakers, and smart home tech. 

Looking for bluetooth speakers? There are some great deals spanning the range, and this may just be the time to get in the game:

We will check back in with more deals as we see good ones come up…

If you are have any questions about what tech product or what baby gear is right for you, check out our TechRec service webpage, or feel free to reach out directly or comment on this post.

Common Mistakes to Avoid?

Here are some tips to help you avoid that Prime Day faux pas:

  1. Remind yourself to cancel Prime if you only intend to keep it for Prime Day purchasing:
    If you start the free 30 day trial or purchase a month of prime to get the exclusive deals of Prime Day and free shipping on them, do not forget to cancel before you get charged for the next month, as Amazon Prime is a automatically renewing recurring subscription. 
  2. Check out products before purchasing: we all get excited to see the reduced price, but just make sure it is actually cheaper than other options on Amazon or at competing retailers
  3. Do not forget to set a budget: it is easy to get carried away with the deals once you start, but if you have a top line spending limit going in, you wont accidentally spend all of next month’s rent before realizing you’ve gone overboard
  4. Do not forget to check out the different product categories and departments. World’s largest store. Lots to see. Check out departments/categories that sound good to you and you may find great deals you would have otherwise never seen. 
  5. Do not forget about other stores that have good deals and competing sales events (Walmart, Target, etc.)
  6. Do not forget to try the app. It has additional features not available on the web (e.g., notifications for deals) and is on you when you are not at your computer.


*Note: as an Amazon Affiliate, we may earn for qualifying purchases. Using our links does not alter the price you pay.

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