Is Amazon Prime Day worth it? What you need to know

Amazon’s next Prime Day arrives on July 16, 2024 and lasts 48 hours until the end of July 17.

Prime Day offers Prime members thousands of exclusive discounts across the site for up to two days. The service costs £8.99/US$14.99 per month (or £95/$139 for the year), but you may be able to try Prime for free.

Visit our dedicated Prime Day hub to see the best deals and read our buying advice.

Over the years, Prime Day has built a reputation for offering the best discounts on a wide range of products, including all the tech we love, like smartphones, laptops, smartwatches, audio, gaming consoles and more. But it has also led to some skepticism, with people wondering whether the deals are as good as they seem. So, is it really worth the hype?

We answer the important questions ahead of Prime Day 2024, and point out a few things to keep in mind if you’re wondering whether Prime Day is worth it.

Will Prime Day 2024 be worth it? Will you actually save money?

Prime Day offers discounts on hundreds of thousands of products. Will they all appeal to you? Absolutely not.

But there are some really good deals to be had, if you know where to look.

Sometimes Amazon’s Prime Day discounts are only marginally higher than pre-sale prices. That’s why you need to do some research to make sure you’re getting the best deals available. Below we’ll show you how.

Is Amazon the best place for discounts?

Amazon may once have been the best destination for the lowest price; the company was known for decades as being unprofitable by its own choice, focusing on long-term growth rather than short-term profits. The strategy helped the brand cement itself in the public consciousness as the obvious place for the lowest price. But that may no longer be the case.

While we expect all kinds of discounts on Prime Day, other retailers will also compete for customer attention: the battle has begun. What we would suggest is that, if you come across a product on sale on Amazon, check other sites before purchasing.

In the past few years Curries has adjusted Amazon’s price more times than we can count. Currys often does promotions with free next day delivery (usually with the code FREENEXTDAYDELIVERY), which essentially gives you the main benefit of Amazon Prime but without the extra cost of a membership.

With a Prime membership you get plenty of other benefits all year round, like Prime Video, Prime Music and Prime Reading – but if free delivery is your main deciding factor for shopping with Amazon, make sure you check out other options too consults.

But if you’re looking for Ring, Echo, or Kindle devices — which are Amazon products, after all — the Prime Day sale is the best place to find them. The discounts on technology from these brands, especially on bundles, can be huge. You’ll need to have a Prime membership and be prepared to act quickly if you come across a really good deal: they sell out quickly.

And while Amazon offers competitive pricing year-round to other popular tech brands, especially Fitbit, we’ve seen other retailers beat Amazon’s prices lately. AO And KRCS have both surpassed Amazon iPad deals in the past.

How do you find out if the Prime Day discount is real?

Follow, follow and follow again.

Amazon is notorious for price shifting. This is no different on Prime Day, when supplies run low or the models on sale change frequently. A price you see on a popular device in the morning could be very different in the afternoon.

You may also see a price increase right before Prime Day, making the sale discount seem more dramatic than it is. In other words, you’ll still get a discount, but it might not be as impressive as it seems.

Therefore, it is useful to know the average prices and the usual discounts that appear throughout the year. Because while you can expect a host of deals on Prime Day, you need to know if you’ll get the deal best price requires some legwork.

Fortunately, there are tools to help. For example, CamelCamelCamel allows you to look up the price history of any Amazon product by simply entering the URL. The site shows you the current, highest and lowest price for an extensive database of products. Make a note of these so you know what price to beat when Prime Day starts.

For example, the Google Pixel 7a (one of our current highest-rated smartphones) currently costs £349 on Amazon. But CamelCamelCamel shows that the Amazon price regularly drops to £330, and was recently as high as £299. So £299 is the price to beat if you’re hoping to get your hands on one in a Prime Day deal.

Camelcamelcamel

Camelcamelcamel

Camelcamelcamel

The Keepa browser plugin is another useful tool that allows you to view price history directly on the product page on Amazon. You can see it in action in the image below for the price history of the Oral-B iO9 electric toothbrush. You can also use it to sign up for alerts when a product drops below a certain price.

How can you keep track of all the deals?

This is a good time to sign up for relevant newsletters, which will likely give you advance notice of big discounts and send emails when they appear.

You can also bookmark this page for quick access to the best Prime Day deals. We constantly keep an eye on the best prices and offers in our deals available all year round.