Amazon Prime Day 2019, the two-day shopping extravaganza held exclusively for Amazon Prime subscribers, starts Monday, July 15th at 12AM PT / 3AM ET, and ends on July 16th at 11:59PM PT / 2:59AM ET. There will be thousands of deals to check out across every product category on Amazon’s massive online storefront, and some of these discounts will be the best you’ll see until Black Friday.
Part of Prime Day’s fun comes from buying things that you didn’t expect to buy and maybe didn’t budget for. Based on last year’s Prime Day, there will be new Lightning Deals every few minutes of the 48-hour stretch, and they’ll often be pretty good products, too.
More careful buyers, who don’t want to break their budget purchasing everything that looks good, will make a wish list and stick to it (or try to). If you want to make sure that you get everything that’s on your wish list, here’s some good news: you don’t need to have a tab for each item constantly refreshing on your browser. There are a few strategies you can use to make sure that you don’t miss out on a really good deal, and none of them involve being glued all day long to your computer or phone.
Make Price Alerts
First, try creating a price alert for each product that you’re interested in, especially if you have other things to do during Prime Day 2019. The alert will do all of the leg work by letting you know when your wishlist item has reached your desired price and crucially, if it has sold for that price before.
There are a few different online resources for making price alerts, but Camelcamelcamel is a great one. It’s a fast, handy tool that lets you create as many custom alerts for products as you’d like, which means that it’s perfect for Prime Day. As soon as one of the products falls below the amount set on your price alert, you’ll instantly get an e-mail. And if you already have a wishlist saved on Amazon, you can import it to Camelcamelcamel.
To use Camelcamelcamel, register for a free account (you can run a price check on items without registering, but you won’t be able to save alerts). And if you want to see the pricing trend for a product that you’re tracking, its browser extension is useful. Clicking into the extension icon brings up an unobtrusive chart of historical pricing data, and you can set a price alert on the fly from the extension as well.
Making price alerts is the best way to plan ahead for Prime Day 2019. Of course, all of Amazon’s products will be front and center, such as its Echo smart speakers and Echo Show smart displays, Ring and Blink home security cameras, its Amazon Fire TV devices, Fire tablets, Kindles, and more. But for anything outside of Amazon’s own products, like deals on 4K HDR TVs, headphones, phones, gaming consoles, and more, it’s best to make an alert.
Look Outside of Amazon
Prime Day is a huge event that shows off Amazon’s retail presence, so naturally other retail chains take notice. You can sometimes find better deals from Best Buy, Target, Walmart, and online shops like Drop (formerly Massdrop). If Amazon’s sale doesn’t have everything you want, or if you just want to make sure you’re getting the best deal, shop around a bit.
Trust the Experts
If it all feels overwhelming, check out The Verge, who will be monitoring and corralling the best deals on tech, and keeping their coverage up to date with new Lightning sale items, while eliminating old ones to avoid any confusion. So mark July 15th and 16th on your calendar, check in at The Verge, and maybe start putting aside a little spending cash.
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