When is Amazon Prime Day and what are our 5 best tips to save?

Android Authority –

One of the biggest shopping events of the year is fast approaching, but when is Amazon Prime Day 2024, and how can you make the most of it? This short guide will answer your questions and have you fully prepared to save big in the sale.

You probably know this already, but Amazon Prime Day is an annual sales event that usually takes place over the course of 48 hours during the summer. Prime members will be treated to big discounts on a whole range of products, including a lot of the latest tech that features on our site. We’ll spotlight all of the best offers we see, but if you just want to know how best to be ready for the event, you can jump straight to our section on the five best tips for Prime Day.

When is Amazon Prime Day 2024?

We finally know when Amazon Prime Day 2024 will be! The online retailer has finally announced the exact dates, which are July 16-17.

This is no surprise — since the first Prime Day in 2015, it has been held in July almost every year, with the pandemic causing a couple of exceptions. We initially assumed it would be either July 9-10 or July 16-17, as this event usually occurs on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Amazon Prime Day will take place in most countries on the same days. These include Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Egypt, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the US, and the UK. The only exception is India, but Amazon mentions those in India will get another Prime Day “later this summer.”

Will I need an Amazon Prime membership?

In recent years, not all of the deals have required you to have an Amazon Prime subscription. Just as a rising tide raises all ships, Prime deals seem to trigger a host of other discounts on the site. This also applies to other retailers. You can be sure that the likes of Best Buy and Walmart will be running parallel summer sales events to catch your eye while you’re in spending mode.

That said, the majority of the best deals will only be available to Prime members. The subscription is $14.99 per month, which drops to $7.49 for students or $6.99 if you have qualified government assistance. The regular and student plans also have yearly subscriptions, which cost $139 or $69, accordingly.

As well as unlocking the top Prime Day offers, you’ll get all of the other perks of Prime for a month, such as Prime Video and free monthly GrubHub Plus membership. You’ll also get free shipping, Amazon Music for Prime Members, Prime Reading, discounts, and more.

If you’ve never been a Prime member, the good news is that there’s a 30-day free trial that you can activate solely for the purpose of scoring the best deals. You can sign up for it here. Just be sure to cancel your membership before the end of the trial period if you don’t want to start paying for it.

Our five best tips for Prime Day

We can offer some very simple advice on how to make the most of Amazon Prime Day 2024. Here are our five top tips.

1. Start early

It used to be that you wouldn’t see any deals until the official Prime Day period, but all retailers are now trying to get ahead of each other. It’s the same reason that Black Friday now seems to last for all of November. There have been ‘Prime Day deals’ available before the event in recent years, so get your Prime membership sorted early and start keeping an eye out for deals from the beginning of July.

In fact, Amazon went out of its way to mention some Prime Day deals are officially available early. You can get Prime Day deals on many Amazon devices right now.

2. Get deal alerts on products you want

While some people will be keen to splurge their cash on any bargain, most will have a specific product or type of product in mind. Once you have your Prime membership in place, you can set alerts on the Amazon app to get notifications when the product you want goes on sale. Go to the Prime Day event page on the app to set them up.

3. Look out for special deals

Amazon has added more innovative ways of delivering offers in recent sales, and there will be some special deals worth looking out for. For example, there were invite-only deals last year, which allowed you to request an invite to buy a product at an excellent price. Only a proportion of those who showed interest would then be invited to buy. These are often among the best discounts, such as getting 75% off a smart TV.

4. Check Amazon multiple times per day

Another type of special deal you might be more familiar with is Amazon’s Lightning Deals. These will also offer some fantastic opportunities to save during Prime Day, but they can be snapped up very quickly. Check the site a few times per day during the sales event to avoid missing them.

5. Use a price tracker

Unless you regularly check the price of a product the rest of the year, you won’t know how good the deal you’re seeing on Prime Day is. It might be a rare chance to get the lowest price ever, or it might have actually been cheaper a few weeks earlier and nothing special. There are price trackers that can help you check this, such as the CamelCamelCamel or Honey Chrome extensions.

What products will be discounted on Amazon Prime Day?

We don’t yet know all the deals that will be available during Prime Day, but you can be assured that we’ll highlight the Android Authority favorites once they go live. But the offers will be very wide-ranging, so if you’re interested in the latest Android phones, smartwatches, tablets, and so on, there’s a very good chance you’ll be able to get them cheaper on Prime Day.

One range of products you can be sure will be on sale during the event are Amazon devices. Popular hardware such as the Kindle e-readers, Echo smart speakers, Fire tablets, Fire TV sticks, and smart TVs, will have big discounts applied — possibly 50% off or more in some cases. As mentioned in the previous section, some of these are already discounted!

Should I shop on Prime Day or wait for the next sale?

You might be feeling that there is an endless string of sales these days and that Prime Day won’t bring any discounts worth shouting about.

You can’t be blamed for feeling that way, and Amazon hasn’t helped in this regard by introducing a second sales event in Autumn in the last couple of years. While the second sale isn’t quite as wide-ranging, it gives the impression that there’s a Prime Day two times each year now. When you bring other retailers into the picture, there’s always a seasonal or holiday-based promotion going on somewhere. We’re not here to tell you whether you should participate in this one or not.

What I can tell you is that after spending years scouting the internet for deals on a daily basis, Amazon Prime Day and Black Friday are still the two annual sales events that tend to produce the biggest opportunities to save. That won’t be the case for every product, but it’s common for some devices to drop to an all-time low price on Prime Day. My advice would be to keep an eye on the sale and follow the tips above, then decide if you’re happy with the prices you’re offered when they arise without feeling the need to splash the cash if you’re not.