Amazon will launch a shopping event called Prime Big Deal Days on October 10 and 11, aka Prime Day Part II. As usual, many of these Prime Day deals will require a Prime membership, though you can take advantage of a 30-day trial. In the run-up to the October Prime Big Deal Days event, we’ve rounded up some early deals worth your time and money. Right now, there are already deals on Amazon hardware like Echo speakers and Eero routers, but we’ve also found discounts on work-from-home gear, headphones, and plenty more.
Updated October 7, 2023: We’ve added a handful of early deals, including more Amazon devices, weighted blankets, and an electric scooter.
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Early Prime Day Deals
Amazon devices frequently go on sale, but this is an especially nice deal, since it comes with a free smart plug that typically sells for about $20. It isn’t the exact same model, but a similar Kasa plug is the top pick in our Best Smart Plugs guide. The Echo Dot (5th Gen) is one of our favorite Alexa speakers. You can use the included smart plug to do things like ask Alexa to turn off your box fan or turn on a lamp. If you’d prefer the version with a built-in LED clock, that one is discounted to $45 ($15 off), however, it was priced at $30 on Prime Day back in July.
This is basically the same bundle as you get with the aforementioned Echo Dot deal. We think the Echo Dot is a better speaker, but the Echo Pop (7/10, WIRED Review) is arguably cuter. Either way, the price is right, especially with the included smart plug. This is $1 more than we saw on Prime Day in July 2023.
If you’re battling Wi-Fi dead zones in your house, you may need to add a mesh router to your setup. Eero’s Pro 6E (7/10, WIRED Recommends) makes this process as simple and hands-off as it can be, and each one covers 2,000 square feet. The brand’s subscription is pricey at $10 a month (the cheaper option was eliminated)—you don’t have to subscribe for it to work, but there are nice features like parental controls. If you need more than one, a two-pack is currently discounted to $280 ($120 off) and a three-pack is $400 ($150 off). Read our Best Eero Routers guide for more.
If you like to take digital notes, the Kindle Scribe (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is the first of Amazon’s e-readers to let you write on the enormous 10.2-inch screen like a regular notebook. However, if you want to write in the margins of books, you’ll have to settle for using sticky notes. That’s frustrating, given that the point of spending this kind of money is to write on it (marking up books is better on the Kobo Elipsa). This 16-gigabyte version comes with the basic pen, but you can upgrade to the premium pen—which has one end acting as an eraser and a programable shortcut button—and also opt for 32 or 64 gigabytes.
Amazon just released a new version of its Fire TV Stick 4K (and a 4K Max), but this one isn’t old, so you shouldn’t notice much of a difference. This pricing matches the lowest we’ve ever seen for this device. Fire TV sticks are among our favorite streaming devices, but they are obviously geared toward Amazon Prime content. If you don’t mind being trapped in Amazon’s ecosystem (or you are already fully entrenched), it’s a good deal.
Other Echo Show devices are also on sale, but the Echo Show 8 is our favorite. This product comes with a free trial of Alexa Together, an Amazon service that claims to help remove caregivers. It usually costs $20 per month. Set a reminder to cancel it if you aren’t interested in subsequent charges. You can also pay $2 more to get it bundled with a Philips Hue Smart Bulb.
We haven’t tested these yet, but they’re the newer version of the pair that we recommend here. Amazon says the battery lasts up to 6 hours per charge. Alexa is built in, should you require on-the-go voice assistant assistance. This is a crazy low price for wireless earbuds in general.
The Blink Mini is compact, versatile, and cheap—even cheaper now, thanks to this deal. We found it was reliable, with good quality video, but it sits in our honorable mentions because it can’t distinguish between pets and people when detecting motion and you need a $3 per month subscription to make the most of the features. Amazon owns Blink as well as Ring.
Work-From-Home Gear Deals
If you’re constantly moving back and forth from the bedroom to the living room when working from home, Flexispot’s adjustable table with wheels can make it easier to swap between rooms. WIRED reviews editor Julian Chokkattu has been wheeling this rollable desk around different spots in his apartment. You can adjust the height and, because the leg isn’t centered, pull it under your bed or couch to bring the desktop close to you.
WIRED contributor Simon Hill says the Ergotron LX is built to last and has a great range of movement, which makes it easy to adjust the monitor’s position. He uses it with his 34-inch Alienware display and has it clamped onto a standing desk. Other mounts have a tendency to jiggle when he adjusts the desk’s height; this arm barely moves. It’s also VESA-compatible, comes with built-in cable management, and can support displays up to 34 inches.
Photograph: Das Keyboard
If you use a Mac as your daily driver, the Das Keyboard MacTigr is an excellent keyboard to use with it. It has a dedicated Mac layout, Cherry MX Red switches, a two-port USB-C hub, and a high-quality, all-metal build. It rarely goes on sale, and this additional on-page coupon saves you even more than when the sale first started.
Photograph: Bose
These noise-cancelling headphones are our favorite for the office. With advanced signal processing and four microphones built in, these will limit any sound around you, making them great for focusing on work in a busy environment and for Zoom calls. These often fluctuate in price, but we think it’s a great deal.
The JBL Bar 1300X (8/10, WIRED Recommends) comes with detachable wireless speakers. You can pop off the two speakers on the side of the main soundbar and place them wherever you’d like without having to hide cables or worry about whether there are power outlets nearby. It also has some of the best Dolby Atmos immersion we’ve heard from a soundbar at this price. The only downside is that without cables you’ll have to charge the speakers between uses.
If you can wait, this might get cheaper again—we saw it dip to $46 this week. The Tribit Stormbox has an IP67 waterproof rating, so it can handle hikes and trips down the river, as well as backyard gatherings. Under the hood are dual-firing drivers, passive radiators in a 7-inch-long pill shape, and an extra bass button for impressive sound clarity and some surprising thump (though it can get slightly muddy).
The V15 Detect holds the top spot in our Best Dyson Vacuums guide. It’s lightweight (7 pounds), simple to convert into a handheld model, and easy to maneuver. Since it’s a Detect model, it also comes with a motorized head that projects a green laser to help you spot microscopic dust—making it easy to catch particles that are invisible to the naked eye.
The Eufy X9 Pro (6/10, WIRED Review) doesn’t work well as a stand-alone robot vacuum, but it’s the best mopping vacuum we’ve tried. On the bottom of the X9 Pro are two mops that rotate at about 180 revolutions per minute; it’s both fast and accurate. WIRED senior associate reviews editor Adrienne So says it only took 30 minutes to mop her kitchen (including a spilled half-bottle of syrup), laundry room, and bathroom. The docking station dries the mops for you too, so they don’t get gross.
The Shark AI Ultra 2-in-1 (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is our favorite vac-mop combo in our Best Robot Vacuums guide. It vacuums well and does a thorough job of scrubbing the floors (using the included mopping bin) without getting the carpets wet. It also uses laser navigation to accurately map your home, allowing you to subdivide vacuuming and mopping zones within the easy-to-use app.
Phone and Smartwatch Deals
Photograph: Garmin
The second-generation Garmin Epix Pro holds the title of Best Outdoor Watch in our Best Fitness Trackers guide and is one of our favorite sports watches (8/10, WIRED Recommends). It has a bright AMOLED display, battery life that can last through a week of camping, and useful features like redshift mode (for training outside at night), and a flashlight. There’s also an endurance feature, in addition to all the other Garmin proprietary metrics that assess what kind of shape you’re in. This deal applies to the 51-mm size, but the 42-mm and 47-mm sizes are also on sale.
This received an honorable mention in our Best Fitness Trackers guide. It doesn’t run Wear OS (so it’s not that smart), the screen fritzes out sometimes, and it doesn’t have FDA clearance. But it comes with GPS, a 24-hour heart rate monitor (along with a feature called Arty, which uses two light sensors to monitor your heart health), and a blood oxygen sensor. It’s a safe choice for tracking your daily metrics, especially if you don’t want to spend a lot of money on a wearable. With the coupon, this is also the lowest price we’ve tracked for it.
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Samsung’s new folding phone delivers a larger cover screen, which means you can do more on the phone without having to open it up. If you always complain about how big phones are these days, a folding flip phone might be the answer. Read our review for more details.
We have a lot of other good cheap phone recommendations here, but this Motorola is fine and performs well for the money. It will only get one OS update (to Android 14), but it will get three years of security updates. It comes with an NFC sensor so you can make contactless payments, a headphone jack, and a microSD card slot. Read our Best Motorola Phones guide for more.
The Polar Ignite received an honorable mention in our Best Fitness Trackers guide. We particularly like its low-profile design and highly specific data collection—you can use it to check how metrics like breathing rate, heart rate, and heart rate variability increase during exercise. It’s a good smartwatch for those who want to take the guesswork out of their data when exercising.
The Niu KQi3 Pro is our favorite electric scooter. It also goes on sale so regularly that you shouldn’t pay full price. It offers some of the best range for the money, as well as commuter perks like bells and lights.
Gravity makes great weighted blankets, including this 15-pound budget version. It’s cheaper than most options out there but still offers great quality. You can add a cover (also discounted) if you don’t want to have to wash the entire thing.
This price is for the terracotta color only. Brooklinen’s weighted blanket is only 12 pounds but feels sufficiently weighty when I snuggle up at night. It has held up well through multiple trips to the wash and many cat biscuit-making sessions. It’s also prettier than some other options, and one side has a nice texture pattern.
Sometimes cooking is far too exhausting. While $5 off isn’t a huge discount when it comes to high food costs and Grubhub fees, it’s still welcome. Prime members also get a year of Grubhub Plus for no additional cost, including existing Plus members.
When Is Amazon Prime Big Deal Days?
Amazon’s second big sale event will be on Tuesday, October 10, and Wednesday, October 11, 2023.
What Happened to the Prime Early Access Sale?
Last year, Amazon held a Prime Early Access Sale as a follow-up to the event in the summer, and it was the first-ever fall Prime Day sale. The new Prime Big Deal Days is really just a renamed version of that second Prime Day. Our best guess is that many people will simply call it Prime Day II: The Primening. Hopefully, Amazon will relent and just call it October Prime Day. But not this year.
How Many Big Deal Days Are There?
It will be a two-day event, just like the main Prime Day event. The event will begin at 3 am Eastern (12:01 am Pacific) on Tuesday, October 10. WIRED’s Gear team will be here, caffeinated and posting.
Will You Need a Prime Membership?
Yes, this event is for Amazon Prime members. If you want to take the ride you need to buy the ticket. In this case, the ticket is $15 a month, and you get free two-day shipping. There are a whole bunch of other Prime Day perks you can take advantage of as well. You can also sign up for a 30-day Amazon Prime trial. Just register before the event and cancel right when the trial ends so you can take advantage of these deals. That said, there are usually a lot of discounted products available to folks who are not Prime subscribers. Retailers like Target, Best Buy, and Walmart may even price-match some items or throw their own competing sales.
What Are Invite-Only Deals?
During Prime Day this past summer, Amazon introduced invite-only deals—a system to help make it easier for Prime members to access deals that are expected to sell out quickly—and the company is bringing it back for Prime Big Deal Days. The feature is only available on select products but it has spread across a variety of categories and price points.
If a specific product is part of the Invite-Only Deals system, you’ll see a “Request Invite” button on the right-hand side. All you have to do is click it for a chance to buy the product at that sale price. However, it’s important to note that there’s no guarantee you’ll receive the invite. You can learn more about the program and how it works in our story on How to Shop Like a Pro During Amazon Prime Day.
What Types of Deals Can You Expect?
The best deals you’ll find on Prime Big Deal Days or any other Prime Day spinoff are on Amazon’s own products, including Kindles, Alexa-enabled Echo speakers and smart displays, Fire TV sticks, and Fire Tablets. However, you can also expect steep price cuts on items from brands like Lego, iRobot, and Sony—ranging from headphones to robot vacuums, toys, smartphones, tablets, and more. Apple usually has a handful of decent bargains on AirPods and other gadgets, like iPads.
Keep in mind that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are coming not long after this Prime Big Deal Days event, and there will be potential for even bigger sales from a variety of retailers. The downside is that there’s a potentially tighter shipping timeline before the holidays. Either way, we recommend adding the products you want to buy to your shopping cart so you can track the price drops and be ready to go when the discounts arrive.
