Best of Amazon Prime Day 2023 mobile tech deals

Some Amazon Prime Day Deals are better than others. But with thousands of products on sale, it can be tough to sift through everything to figure out if you’re really getting the price… or if the thing you’ve put in your cart is worth buying at all.

So let’s take a look at some of the best Prime Day deals on mobile tech. Note that you’ll need an Amazon Prime membership to score most of these deals, but new customers can sign up for a 30-day free trial.

Subscriptions

Amazon is offering extended free trials on a number of services, and discounts on some others.

For example you can get a 3-month subscription to Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited service for free if you’re a new customer or a returning customer that hasn’t had a subscription in the past 12 months.

Kindle Unlimited offers a selection of eBooks, audiobooks, digital comics, and other media that you can borrow for free and read for as long as your subscription is active. Not every book you’re looking for is likely to be there, but odds are that avid readers will find something worth checking out.

I generally don’t find enough content in Kindle Unlimited to maintain a membership year round, but every time I’ve signed up for a free trial I’ve found a few things worth reading.

Audiobook, audio drama, and podcast fans, meanwhile, might want to take advantage of Amazon’s offer of a 3-month free subscription to Audible Premium Plus. This is also good for new and returning subscribers (I’m not sure how long it needs to have been since you last had a paid subscription, but I know I’ve had one in the past, and I qualify for the deal).

This deal doesn’t end with Prime Day. You can sign up by the end of July.

Amazon is also offering extended free trials of Amazon Music Unlimited, but I wouldn’t necessarily jump on this as an alternative to Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, or any other subscription you’ve already got, as I find Amazon’s music service to be a bit of a mess.

What I would recommend checking out, however, is Amazon’s Prime Video Channels sale.

The company is offering deals that let you get a bunch of channels for as little as 99 cents per month for up to 2 months, while a few other premium channels are on sale for half price.

Personally I picked up subscriptions to Max (formerly HBO Max) for $7.99 (half price), Britbox, and Acorn (99 cents each).

Tablets

All of Amazon’s Fire tablets are on sale. And while they all ship with Amazon’s Fire OS software rather than Android, if you’re willing to do a little extra work you can install the Google Play Store, which will greatly expand the number of apps you can install (and keep those apps synchronized with your Google account, if that’s something you care about).

But while Amazon now has a bunch of different tablets in the Fire lineup, I’d skip the cheapest model, which has a pretty lousy display and a sluggish processor.

The lowest priced model I’d consider would be the Amazon Fire HD 8. It’s not a great tablet, but it’s on sale for $55, which is 45% off the list price. The tablet has a decent screen and it’s fast enough for web browsing and basic apps. If you just want a cheap device for reading eBooks, web surfing, and watching videos, it’s hard to go wrong at this price.

Want something with a bigger, higher-resolution display, more memory and a faster processor? The Fire HD 10 is selling for $75 right now, which is 50% off the usual price.

And the new Amazon Fire Max 11 has a slightly larger screen, a much faster processor, and optional support for a pen and keyboard. This model was released just last month, but it’s already on sale for as much as 35% off during Prime Day, with prices starting as low as $150.

Don’t want to jump through any hoops just to install the Google Play Store? Then you may be better off buying a non-Amazon tablet.

Samsung is pretty much the dominant player in the Android tablet world, and the company has discounts across its product lineup.

With the Galaxy Tab S9 series set to launch later this month, I’m not sure I’d spend money on a Galaxy Tab S8 for Prime Day, even though several models are on sale. But the company’s budget tablets are looking pretty good at the moment.

You can pick up an 8.7 inch Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 Lite for $105 and up, which is the lowest price I’ve seen this year for this tablet. Just keep in mind that, having been released in 2021, it’s getting a little long in the tooth at this point.

Also on the oldie but goodie side of things, there’s the Galaxy Tab S6 Lite 10.4 inch tablet, which is on sale for $215. This is the 2020 version of the tablet, but at this price it’s the most affordable Samsung tablet with S-Pen support.

Meanwhile if you want a much more powerful tablet, there’s the Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 FE 12.4 inch model from 2021, which also has pen support, but a much faster chipset. You can get a model with 64GB of storage for $380 during Prime Day, but it only costs $20 more to get a model with 256GB of storage, so I’d say that’s the way to go.

And if Android ain’t your thing, Apple’s current-gen 8.3 inch iPad mini and 10.9 inch iPad are both on sale for $379 and up, while the previous-gen 10.2 inch iPad is selling for $249 and up.

eReaders

Amazon is selling the Kindle Paphttps://amzn.to/3PP7AOwerwhite for $90, which is 36% off the list price and one of the lowest prices to date for this eReader with a 6.8 inch E Ink display with 300 pixels per inch and a front-light with adjustable color temperature.

And once upon a time I would have said that those specs were enough to justify ignoring the cheaper entry-level Kindle. But last year Amazon updated the 6 inch Kindle so that it also has a 300 ppi E Ink display. And right now that model is on sale for $65, which is 35% off the list price.

Keep in mind that you won’t get adjustable color temperature from the cheaper model though, and it has just 4 LED lights to illuminate the display instead of the 17 featured on the Kindle Paperwhite, so lighting won’t be as even.

For more differences, check out our comparison of Kindle specs.

Amazon is also selling the Kindle Oasis for $165, which is 34% off the list price and a relatively rare discount for this premium eReader.  But the most recent update for the Oasis was 2019, so while this model has even more LED lights and physical page turn buttons, it also has some older features like WiFi 4 support and a micro USB port.

Also on sale is the Kindle Scribe, which has a 10.2 inch display and pen support. This 2022 device is selling for $255 during Prime Day, which is 25% off the list price for a device that doesn’t go on sale often.

Media Streamers

All of Amazon’s Fire TV devices are on discounted for Prime Day, but the best deal by far is the Fire TV Stick 4K Max, which is on sale for $25, or 55% off the list price.

Released in 2021, this media streamer has a MediaTek MT8696 processor and 2GB of RAM, and it’s significantly faster than the 2018 Fire TV Stick 4K, which is on sale for $23 for Prime Day. If you’re looking for a 4K media streamer, you should spend the extra $2 on the newer model.

You could also pick up a Fire TV Stick (1080p) for $17, but even if you don’t have a 4K TV it’s worth spending a little more on the Max for the additional RAM, processing power, and support for WiFi 6.

If Amazon’s Fire TV user interface isn’t your thing, Roku is also selling several media streamers at discounted prices. The cheapest of the bunch is the Roku Express 4K+ for $27, which is 32% off the usual price. And if you’re looking to add both a media streamer and better audio to your TV, the Roku Streambar can do both. It’s on sale for $90, which is also a 32% discount.

Other deals

Here are some of the other products that stood out to me.

Audio deals

Google’s Pixel Buds A-Series true wireless earbuds may not have advanced features like noise-cancellation, but they’re comfortable, get good battery life, and sound pretty good. I’ve been using a pair for the last year or so, and they quickly became my favorite earbuds. They’re on sale for $59, which is 40% off the list price.

And if you’ve got a bit more money to spare and want support for noise cancellation, the Pixel Buds Pro are on sale for $133, or 34% off the usual price.

Meanwhile the Jabra Elite 5 true wireless noise-cancelling earbuds are on sale for $90 (40% off) and the Jabra Elite 7 Active earbuds are $109 (39% off).

Bose QuietComfort 45 wireless over-ear headphones are on sale for $199, or 40% off.

The UE Wonderboom 3 portable Bluetooth speaker is $70, and the JBL Boombox 2 portable speaker is on sale for $250, which represent 30% and 44% discounts, respectively.

PCs

I don’t normally write much about 16 inch laptops, as they tend to be a bit big and heavy for a website called Liliputing. But LG’s Gram and UltraPC laptops are often and an exception, thanks to their extraordinarily thin and light designs. They’re usually pretty expensive though.

But the LG UltraPC 16 is currently on sale for $700, which is a pretty great price for this 3.6 pound notebook with a 16 inch, 1920 x 1200 pixel display, Ryzen 7 7730U processor, 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. Marked down from $1000, this laptop is on sale for 30% off, which also makes it one of the deepest discounts I’ve seen on a laptop computer during Prime Day this year (there aren’t really a lot of great laptop deals).

Looking for something a bit smaller and cheaper? An Asus Vivobook 14 laptop with a FHD display, Intel Core i5-1235U processor, 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage is on sale for $400, marked down from $480.

And the Acer Aspire 3 14″ laptop with an AMD Ryzen 5 7520U “Mendocino” processor, 8GB of RAM and 512GB of storage is on sale for $379. It’s not a speed demon, but should offer decent performance and a full HD display for a pretty low price.

Meanwhile Mini PC shoppers on a budget may want to consider the dirt-cheap Beelink S12 mini PC with an Intel N95 Alder Lake-N processor, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. It’s on sale for $129 when you clip the on-page coupon, down from a list price of $199.

If you’re looking for more horsepower, the GMK NucBox K1 with a Ryzen 7 6800H processor, 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage is on sale for $380 (37% off), while a 32GB/1TB version is selling for $424.

And the MINISFORUM UM773 Lite with an AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS processor is available as a barebones mini PC for $360 or with 32GB of RAM and 512GB of storage for $493.

This article will be updated through July 12, 2023.