The four best things to buy in the Amazon Prime Day sale - and what to avoid

As a consumer writer I have covered Amazon’s deals events for nearly a decade. From the very early Black Friday sales to the summer Prime Day discounts, I’ve written about over 15 major Amazon deal day events and that means I can spot a bargain within the vast sections of discounted items.

Amazon Prime Day is only really useful when you actively want to buy something. If you already have an item on your shopping list and you were just waiting for prices to drop then it is a useful event. The easiest way to do this is to join Amazon Prime here and then create a wishlist. You can then check your wishlist for changes in prices for all of the things you want to buy.

However, if you are just window shopping there are a few things that represent brilliant deals. These are the pick of them.

Amazon devices

The best thing you can buy in the Amazon Prime sale is one of the vast range of Amazon devices if they are already on your shopping list. There are a lot of other brands involved in the sale - Bosch lawn mowers, Ninja air fryers and PS5 games are big parts of this year’s sale - but the biggest and best discounts come when Amazon can cut the price of its own hardware.

I have owned every generation of the Amazon Echo Dot and the fifth generation is easily the best. It has clearer sound, better voice recognition and it can be linked up to your Fire TV to create surround sound. At £24.99 (and below £20 if you trade in an older device) it is the lowest the fifth generation Dot has ever been.

The Fire TV stick at £32 is another good deal, although I would expect that price to drop lower for Black Friday later in the year.

There are some solid Ring Doorbell deals too. Some of the models, including the more expensive wireless versions, are at their lowest price since Black Friday last year. For cheaper alternatives, the Blink doorbells are reliable, high quality and often cheaper in price than Ring. They are also included in the Amazon sale.

Laptops

I would usually warn against buying laptops in big sales. Typically these sort of deals do not represent good value and are usually older models the company has struggled to sell previously.

However one older model I would recommend is a 2022 Apple MacBook Air on sale in the Prime Day sale. Apple MacBook Air models rarely get discounted when new but this one is reduced by £150 and comes with the brand’s superb M2 chip, which delivers fast, powerful performance for such a small laptop. At £849, it is the cheapest I can find online at the moment.

The second is one for the gamers. The MSI Katana 17 Inch FHD Gaming Laptop comes with an Intel Core i7-13620H and a Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050. It’s a compact, powerful gaming laptop capable of running modern games comfortably and at £899, down from £1,549, it is one of the biggest discounts in the Prime Day sale.

Trainers

There are a huge number of fashion and beauty deals available during Amazon Prime Day. A lot of the better deals are in beauty tech, where straighteners and hair dryers usually dominate. The Remington straighteners for £23, down from over £70, are a staple of Amazon sales these days and it is usually the cheapest time of year to buy the highly-rated product.

My pick has to be in the Adidas and Puma stores. Adidas usually holds its own summer sales but it is very rare to be able to get a good pair of Adidas running trainers for under £30 and the Prime Day sale offers just that. You may not get the latest colourway and rare launch but for a standard pair of Adidas trainers it represents a real bargain. For an even cheaper option go for the Puma trainers for less than £25 - the cheapest you will be able to find online.

Cans of Coca Cola

It may seem strange to get a six pack of Coca Cola from the Amazon Prime Day sale but that is one of the deals Amazon itself has flagged as a top deal.

While that might not be the best use of your money it is true that Amazon’s extensive grocery listings allow you to buy food, drink and household cleaning items at very low prices if you are willing to buy in bulk. Dish washer cleaner, soft drinks and even huge boxes of chocolates are excellent value in the Prime Day sale and often the price per unit is cheaper than that of budget stores.

For example, this giant box of Nestle chocolate bars is down by around 28% and who doesn’t want 1.3kg of chocolate at a discount price?

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