When is Amazon Prime Day 2 and what are our 5 best tips to save?

If you missed the main Amazon Prime Day in July, the retail giant is giving you another bite of the cherry by announcing a second sales event of 2024. The two-day sale is called Prime Big Deals Days, as it was last year, but it is often referred to as Prime Day 2. Whatever you call it, this short guide will answer your questions and have you fully prepared to save big in the sale.

As usual, Prime members will be treated to big discounts on a wide range of products, including many of the latest tech featured on our site. We’ll preview it with some of the key info, but if you just want to know how best to be ready for the event, you can jump straight to our section on the five best tips for Prime Day.

When is Amazon Prime Day 2?

Prime Day 2, or Prime Big Deals Days, will take place over 48 hours, starting on October 8 at 12:01 AM PDT.

While the summer Prime Day has been running since 2015, this second edition in the fall has only been a tradition since 2022. It was called the Prime Early Access Event in its first iteration and became Prime Big Deals Days last year. This obviously went down well enough with shoppers to bring it back for 2024.

Amazon Prime Day 2 will take place in most countries on the same days. These include Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, the UK, the US, and for the first time, Turkey. Prime members in Japan can shop on Prime Big Deal Days later in October.

Will I need an Amazon Prime membership?

In recent years, not all of the deals have required you to have an Amazon Prime subscription. Just as a rising tide raises all ships, Prime deals seem to trigger a host of other discounts on the site. This also applies to other retailers. You can be sure that the likes of Best Buy and Walmart will be running parallel summer sales events to catch your eye while you’re in spending mode.

That said, the majority of the best deals will only be available to Prime members. The subscription is $14.99 per month, which drops to $7.49 for students or $6.99 if you have qualified government assistance. The regular and student plans also have yearly subscriptions, which cost $139 or $69, accordingly.

Along with unlocking the top Prime Day offers you’ll get all of Prime’s other perks for a month, such as Prime Video and a free monthly GrubHub Plus membership. You’ll also get free shipping, Amazon Music for Prime Members, Prime Reading, discounts, and more.

If you’ve never been a Prime member, the good news is that there’s a 30-day free trial that you can activate solely for the purpose of scoring the best deals. You can sign up below. Just be sure to cancel your membership before the end of the trial period if you don’t want to start paying for it.

Our five best tips for Prime Day

We can offer some very simple advice on how to make the most of Amazon Prime Day 2. Here are our five top tips.

1. Start early

It used to be that you wouldn’t see any deals until the official Prime Day period, but all retailers are now trying to get ahead of each other. It’s the same reason that Black Friday now seems to last for all of November. There have been ‘Prime Day deals’ available before the event in recent years, so get your Prime membership sorted out early and start keeping an eye out for deals from the beginning of October.

2. Get deal alerts on products you want

While some people will be keen to splurge their cash on any bargain, most will have a specific product or type of product in mind. Once you have your Prime membership in place, you can set alerts on the Amazon app to get notifications when the product you want goes on sale. Go to the Prime Day event page on the app to set them up.

3. Look out for special deals

Amazon has added more innovative ways of delivering offers in recent sales, and there will be some special deals worth looking out for. For example, there were invite-only deals last year, which allowed you to request an invite to buy a product at an excellent price. Only a proportion of those who showed interest would then be invited to buy. These are often among the best discounts, such as getting 75% off a smart TV.

4. Check Amazon multiple times per day

Another type of special deal you might be more familiar with is Amazon’s Lightning Deals. These will also offer some fantastic opportunities to save during Prime Day, but they can be snapped up very quickly. Check the site a few times per day during the sales event to avoid missing them.

5. Use a price tracker

Unless you regularly check the price of a product the rest of the year, you won’t know how good the deal you’re seeing on Prime Day is. It might be a rare chance to get the lowest price ever, or it might have actually been cheaper a few weeks earlier and nothing special. There are price trackers that can help you check this, such as the CamelCamelCamel or Honey Chrome extensions.

What products will be discounted on Amazon Prime Day?

We don’t yet know all the deals that will be available during Prime Day 2, but you can be assured that we’ll highlight the Android Authority favorites once they go live. What we do know is that the offers will be very wide-ranging, so if you’re interested in the latest Android phones, smartwatches, tablets, and so on, there’s a very good chance you’ll be able to get them at a great price during the sale.

One range of products you can be sure will be on sale during the event are Amazon devices. Popular hardware, such as the Kindle e-readers, Echo smart speakers, Fire tablets, Fire TV sticks, and smart TVs, will have big discounts applied — possibly 50% off or more in some cases. As mentioned in the previous section, some of these are already discounted!

Should I shop on Prime Day 2 or wait for the Black Friday?

You might feel that there’s an endless string of sales these days and that Prime Day 2 won’t bring any discounts worth shouting about. There are also those memes that always go around that suggest retailers jack up prices ahead of big sales and then present them as big discounts when they drop back to the usual price in the sale. And then there’s Black Friday, which is only a matter of weeks beyond this sale. Should you buy now or wait?

There’s no definitive answer to any of this, and we’re not here to tell you whether you should participate in a sale or not. What we can say from years of deal-hunting experience is that there will almost certainly be some gems in the Prime Day 2 sale. The two annual Amazon events and Black Friday are usually the best times to save on certain tech.

We’d suggest you keep an eye on the sale and on any products that you’re already planning to buy at the right price. Follow the tips above to set alerts, and use CamelCamelCamel on any tempting deals. If the price offered is noticeably lower than usual and you’re happy with it, you can snap it up.