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There are a few times a year when retailers tend to offer big sales. There’s the day after Thanksgiving, when US stores kick off the holiday shopping season with Black Friday specials. There’s the back-to-school shopping season when computer makers, clothing companies, and others push their latest goods.
Now there’s Amazon Prime Day: a made-up retail holiday which Amazon is running smack in the middle of July. The company says it’s offering more bargains today than it does on Black Friday.
There will be sales on different items throughout the day — but some of the best deals are on Amazon products like the Fire TV Stick, Kindle eReader, and Fire tablets. Sales on those products aren’t time-limited, but there are limited quantities available.
Here are some of the best deals from Amazon Prime Day… and from other stores (many of which are running their own sales to keep up with Amazon).
Note that you’ll need to be an Amazon Prime member to get some of the best prices on many of Amazon’s deals — but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial membership and cancel your subscription if you don’t want year-round access to free shipping, movies, TV shows, and music that membership gets you.
Amazon stuff
- Amazon Fire TV Stick for $24 – Amazon
- Amazon Kindle eReader for $49 – Amazon
Amazon Fire HD 7 tablet for $79 and up – Amazon- Amazon Fire HD 6 for $79 and up – Amazon
- Amazon Fire HD 7 Kids Edition for $129 – Amazon
- Amazon Fire Phone + 1 year Amazon Prime for $179 – Amazon (or $140 from eBay)
- Buy an Amazon gift card pack for $45 or more, get $10 credit – Amazon
- Save 15% on select Amazon Warehouse deals – Amazon
- Save up to 40% on a Kindle Unlimited subscription – Amazon
- Amazon MP3 digital music best sellers for $4.99 each – Amazon (coupon:Â GOPRIME)
Tablets
- Apple iPad mini 2 w/Verizon 4G for $265 and up – Walmart
- Save $100 on Samsung Galaxy Tab S tablets – Best Buy
- DigiLand 8″ Windows tablet for $80 – Best Buy
- Dell Venue 8 7000 Series for $350 – Best Buy
- Lenovo Miix
Laptops
- Acer Aspire E11 11.6″ Windows notebook for $150 – Newegg
- Asus EeeBook X205 11.6″ Windows laptop for $170 – Best Buy
- Acer C720 Chromebook w/Core i3 Haswell for $200 – Amazon
- Dell XPS 13 ultrabook w/Core i5 Broadwell for $799 – Microsoft Store (coupon: SAVE100)
- Refurb Acer Chromebooks for $110 and up – Acer (via eBay)
2-in-1s
- Asus Transformer Book T100 Chi 2-in-1 w/Atom Z3775 for $350 – Microsoft Store (coupon: SAVE100)
- HP Pavilion x360 13″ convertible notebook w/Core i5 Broadwell for $599 – Microsoft Store (coupon: SAVE100)
- Asus Transformer Book T300 Chi 2-in-1 w/Core M for $397 – Microsoft Store (coupon: SAVE100)
- Lenovo Miix 11 2-in-1 Windows tablet w/Core i5 Haswell for $400 – Newegg
- Refurb Acer Aspire Switch 10 for $180 – Acer (via eBay)
Other
- Refurb HTC One M9 smartphone (AT&T unlocked) for $400 – QualityCellz (via eBay)
- Unlocked Motorola Moto E smartphone for $90 and up – Amazon
- Crucial 256GB SSD for $80, 512GB for $160 – Amazon
- Emtec USB 3.0 flash drives for $19 (64GB) and up – Woot
- Google Chromecast for $30 – Walmart
- Google Nexus Player for $70 – Best Buy
- Misfit Shine fitness tracker for $49 – Microsoft Store
You can find more bargains in our daily deals section.
this was the Mother of all bombs !!!!!!!
Is there any real benefit to owning the Dell tablet for $349 (2gb ram, 16gb storage) vs the Toshiba Tab S 8.4 for $349 (3gb ram, 32gb storage)? I’ve used the Toshiba in a store before and was blown away by the super amoled screen. Does the Dell have better build quality or more frequent updates that make it a buy?
Yet to see any good deals, besides their own aging hardware and the Kindle Unlimited cuts.
Yep, hard to really think that this is better than black Friday.
To be fair, they said more deals than Black Friday… they didn’t say lower prices 🙂
$24 is a pretty great price for the Fire TV Stick… although a new model may be on the way and I’m kind of disappointed the original doesn’t seem to support Bluetooth audio.
Meanwhile, the Microsoft Store has some crazy good deals on laptops and tablets. I’m disappointed I didn’t notice their $497 Asus Zenbook UX303 with a 3200 x 1800 display until it was sold out.
That was an outstanding deal on the UX303, essentially half off. But at it’s heart it’s still a stationary PC because of the 3lbs+ & fan. It’s nice on paper but ultimately people will probably just use it the same way they use their current laptops.
After recently being able to extensively use the new Macbook & UX305 though, I can now clearly see where the future is going. The thinness, lightness, fanless, nature make them have tablet-like convenience but with a full desktop OS. The difference in use cases between the new age UX305 versus the old school UX303 is night & day. The only real downside is the Core-M but hopefully that rectifies itself over a few generations.
I have a 2.4 pound Samsung Series 9, while my wife has a 3.2 pound Asus Zenbook UX303 (not the same model that was on sale). Sure, mine’s a bit slimmer and lighter, but basically we both use them the same way. I have no problem putting them both in the same category of portable notebooks.
I think things get different when you start looking at machines with 4 pound+ weights and 14″ or larger screens…
While I don’t plan to replace my S9 for a little while, I would have snatched up the UX303 in a heartbeat if I’d caught it while it was still on sale today.
Thats because you’re a big strong man full of enormous muscles.
I find there to be a huge difference between 2lb & 3lb laptops. The 2lb group is effortless & feels like carrying a tablet around the house. The 3lb group is thicker & noisier which always makes me second guess if it’s really with the effort (so i use my iPad instead usually).
Hehe, I’m a 5’4″ weakling. But I hear what you’re saying — it just seems odd to me that anyone’s setting the bar there when it wasn’t that long ago that you couldn’t really find a laptop that weighed less than 3 pounds unless you spent $2k.
To me, the 2.4 pound model and the 3.2 model have way more in common with one another than they do with the 5+ pound behemoths we used to carry around, that it’s easy to put them in the same category. Given a choice, I’d usually opt for the lighter model too… but I would have been willing to make an exception for a $500 deal on a laptop this good.
My 2012 S9 with a Sandy Bridge processor is starting to show its age.