Amazon’s member’s only sale is back this month, but can you actually save any money?
As with Black Friday, there’s quite a frenzy when it comes to Amazon’s Prime Day sale. There are often an awful lot of offers in just about every category, with a lot of them seeming to have huge discounts so it’s easy to buy things that you don’t really need.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you can afford it and will use the things you buy. But, despite the discount advertised, you may actually be getting a bargain? We’ve taken a look at some of the offers from last year to find out if Prime Day is just a deception.
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What is Prime Day?
Amazon Prime Day is an annual sale to celebrate Amazon’s birthday, although they’ve started to sneak another into October. It’s only for customers signed up to Amazon Prime. This comes at a cost: £95 for a year, £8.99 a month or newbies can take out a 30-day free trial.
For that money you don’t just get access to this special sale, you also get extras such as film and TV streaming and free next-day delivery. Here’s our full review with thoughts on whether it’s worth the cash.
When is Amazon Prime Day 2024?
This year, Prime Day is on 16 and 17 July. Offers will go live from midnight and run for 48 hours.
There will be some deals across both days as well as “Lightening” offers that will come and go. There will also be a few early offers in the days leading up to the sale.
How good are Prime Day deals?
There are two parts to Prime Day offers. The first are extra savings and offers, such as an extra £5 off here, or £10 credit there. These can really help bring down prices, but over the last few years there haven’t been too many of these. That could well change in 2024, and we’ll let you know on our Amazon Deals page if they do.
The other part, and the bulk of the offers you’ll see are discounted items. And there are thousands of these. I’ve taken a look at some of last year’s best offers and reached out to both the Be Clever With Your Cash and our sister site Smart Money People‘s teams to find out some of the (so-called) bargains they’ve blagged. I’ve used the price comparison site CamelCamelCamel to work out which of them got a great deal, which ones went down to the same prices eventually and who got fobbed off.
A quick caveat: CamelCamelCamel’s price history doesn’t include Prime Day or Lightning Deal prices. This means that there’s a chance that lower prices have occurred. Even so, the site gives us a good indication of the usual selling prices. More on CamelCamelCamel further down.
Prime Day 2023 offers analysed
When we asked colleagues for some items they’d bought on Amazon last year for Prime Day, it turned out none of us at Be Clever With Your Cash had bought a single item during Prime Day last year. Seeing as we’re all dedicated bargain hunters, that says a lot. But some of our colleagues at Smart Money People did shop in the sale, so here’s how their purchases rate.
Echo Pop
- Prime Day Price: £29.00
- Lowest price since: £17.99
- Price now: £44.99
- The consensus: she missed out on a great deal
Sara at Smart Money People bought herself an Echo Pop on Prime Day last year. The smart speaker costs £44.99 at the time of writing. Sara nabbed it for £29.99 in the sale, reckoning that she saved about £20 on the purchase. Since this was a new product it was a hefty discount.
But just three months later, the Echo Pop was selling for just £17.99 — she could have saved herself £11 more if she’d waited.
Anker Powerbank
- Prime Day Price: £19.99
- Lowest price since: £27.99 (11 months later)
- Price now: £27.99
- The consensus: lowest price all year
Another item Sara picked up on Prime Day was an Anker Powerbank for £19.99, reckoning she’d saved herself about £10 on it. The power bank is being sold for £27.99 right now and that’s also the lowest price it’s been since. So she managed to grab herself the lowest price on that item all year.
Garmin Venu watch
- Prime Day Price: £259.99
- Lowest price since: £244.99 (5 months later)
- Price now: No longer available. It was £369.99 before removal but is now available at many retailers for £249
- The consensus: a fair price
Sophie, Senior Insight Analyst at Smart Money People bought herself a Garmin 2S last year on Prime Day at £53.44 less than the advertised price, spending £259.99.
The CamelCamelCamel graph below suggests that she picked up a huge saving with the same watch costing far more for most of the last 12 months.
However, that dotted line shows Amazon didn’t actually sell it that often after Prime Day, which suggests it was a stock clearance price rather than a special deal. In fact the S3 was released soon after.
An alternative colour did keep selling though, often between £260 and £300, so while her watch wasn’t really available from Amazon at the listed £310 price, it looks like it was a decent price at the time.
Ultrasport F-Bike
- Prime Day Price: £79.99
- Lowest price since: £99.99 (2 months later)
- Price now: Unavailable – was £100.99 before it was pulled
- The consensus: a decent deal
A friend of mine, Jen bought herself an UltraSport F-Bike on Prime Day last year. The Bike was £133.99 at the time and was reduced to £79.99 on Prime Day. This was the lowest price on this item since 2016. It was never reduced as far as this before it was removed from Amazon, so Jen got herself a pretty good price.
Apple Airpods
- Prime Day Price: £169.99
- Lowest price since: £149.99 (8 months later)
- Price now: £169.99
- The consensus: the price went down anyway
One of the top advertised deals for Prime Day last year were these Apple Airpods. They were £189.99 before Prime Day and you could get them for £169.99 on Prime Day — not a bad deal, but if you tried to buy them today, they’re selling at Apple’s new retail price of £169.99, so the price was going to go down eventually anyway.
There was a brief time when they were £149.99, which could have saved you an extra £20 on them, but this was eight months after the Prime Day price.
But remember that technology has new upgrades all the time – the 3rd Generation pair are still the latest ones, but there’s likely to be a 4th Generation set out soon.
Barbie DreamPlane
- Prime Day Price: £52.99
- Lowest price since: £39.79 (1 month later)
- Price now: £65.99
- The consensus: you could’ve saved more by waiting
Another deal heavily advertised by Amazon last year was this Barbie DreamPlane, a toy that would’ve been on the top of my Birthday wishlist as a kid! This was sold on Prime Day last year for £52.99, down from £74.39 — a £21.40 saving on the original price — surely Amazon didn’t go lower than that.
Just a month later, the Barbie DreamPlane was up for £39.79, so waiting just a little longer would’ve saved you an extra £13.20.
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Other items
Here are some of the items we analysed for this, including whisky, an IPL Hair Removal Device and the Shark vacuum.
| Item | Prime Day price | Price now | Lowest price since Prime Day | Wait time to lowest price |
| Hinyx 3 in 1 Foldable Magnetic Wireless Charger Stand | £19.99 | £29.99 | £29.99 | 0 months |
| Anker Power Bank | £19.99 | £27.99 | £27.99 | 0 months |
| Echo Pop | £29.00 | £44.99 | £17.99 | 3 months |
| AMINZER IPL Hair Removal Device | £48.72 | £59.99 | £46.27 | 5 months |
| Garmin Venu 2S | £259.99 | N/A | £244.99 | 5 months |
| Apple AirPods (3rd generation) | £169.99 | £169.99 | £149.99 | 8 months |
| Sony LinkBuds S | £119.99 | £119.99 | £99.99 | 5 months |
| Philips Series 3000i Connected Air Purifier | £269.99 | £270.00 | £269.99 | 9 months |
| Barbie DreamPlane | £52.99 | £65.99 | £39.79 | 1 month |
| Highland Park Dragon Legend Single Malt Scotch Whisky | £26.99 | £42.00 | £44.00 | 0 months |
| Panasonic CT54 Slimline Combination Microwave Oven & Grill with Turntable | £165.00 | £219.00 | £189.00 | 5 months |
| Bosch Home and Garden Cordless Combi Drill | £59.99 | £110.00 | £56.99 | 5 months |
| Remington PROluxe Midnight Hair Dryer | £29.99 | £52.82 | £29.99 | 5 months |
| Shark Handheld Cordless Vacuum Cleaner | £49.99 | £79.00 | £49.99 | 5 months |
| Ultrasport F-Bike | £79.99 | £100.99 | £99.99 | 2 months |
Conclusions: is Prime Day any good?
While it’s easy to get sucked in by some great-looking prices, last year’s big deals weren’t always the best prices offered, with a lot of items getting reduced further just a few months later for Black Friday.
It’s always frustrating when something is cheaper in a subsequent sale, and Amazon doesn’t appear to be offering partial refunds if something you bought goes down just days later (as it does over Black Friday).
Saying that, most of these prices were pretty strong at the time, so if you need an item now it could be a good time to buy. So on this basis, I’d say Prime Day deals can be fairly decent.
Of course, that’s only if you’re not buying items on a whim. This whole sale is designed to get you to part with your cash so be wary of any impluse spending.
And you should still do some quick research into whether you have a good price. Importantly, don’t trust the RRP — these are rarely the real selling prices. Instead, use price history to see what your real discount is — more on this below. Essentially, you’re looking for:
- a discount bigger than the usual selling price
- items that are rarely discounted
- something which isn’t about to be replaced by a newer version – bigger discounts could be on the way
- a price you’re happy to pay
- something you actually want and need
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Prime Day vs Black Friday
In a lot of cases with the above items, the prices dropped again on Black Friday, sometimes further. Amazon has recently started to throw an extra Prime Day into October, with Black Friday deals too. Prices will likely be pretty similar on core Amazon devices.
Ultimately, if you see something on Prime Day at a price you are happy to pay, it probably makes sense to pick it up rather than wait. While there’s a chance you’ll miss out on a few quid, there’s also the risk that the item won’t be reduced in November!
How to find the best prices
As you’ll see from the graphs above, there are tools to help you work out whether a deal really is a deal. Here are our best picks of what you can use.
Check price history
The strangely named CamelCamelCamel is what we’ve used for the price history charts. It’s essential for helping to work out whether you’re likely to see a further drop.
You can also use it to set price alerts for when items hit a level you want to pay, though as mentioned, it doesn’t include Lightning Deals or Prime Day prices, which is a shame.
There are more price history sites that you can use, too.
Look for price-matching
Though the Prime Day prices will only be available to Prime members (remember you can get a free trial if you aren’t already, or sign up for one month at £8.99), other retailers might match prices or even offer their own deals to try to get some money spent with them rather than with the US giant.
It’s worth using Idealo, Price Spy or even just Google Shopping to see how much the item is selling for elsewhere. And don’t forget to see if you can stack other codes and savings on top!
Beat others to Lightning Deals
A lot of the offers you’ll see will be Lightning Deals with a limited quantity and limited time to grab them. Amazon obviously want to rush you into buying these offers, but there are ways to get the product in your basket before everyone else and still have time to check price history.
2024 Prime Day deals
We regularly update our Amazon Deals page with all the top offers we spot, both ahead of the day and once the sale kicks off.
There are already some early bird offers that are worth checking out.