With the air starting to cool and the leaves starting to turn color, the signs are here: it's time for Amazon's October Prime Day.
Officially called Prime Big Deal Days, the sale is a Prime-member exclusive event (as the name would suggest). Like its July counterpart, Amazon confirmed that it'll bring two full days of savings, which members can expect from Tuesday, October 8 to Wednesday, October 9. Also like its July counterpart, we recommend going into the sale with a plan on scoping out the best deals — other than following Mashable's coverage of course — to avoid impulse purchase-fueled buyer's remorse.
To escape that fate, we caution against simply vibing and seeing what's on sale: as in years past, we're anticipating steep markdowns sitewide during Prime Day, from TVs and Apple products to Kindles and robot vacuums. In other words, it'd be easy to drop a few hundred dollars you didn't mean to spend if you don't do a little bit of prep work.
A good place to start is our handy list of tips and tricks below, compiled by our shopping reporters who've spent years covering the sale. Plus, you can check out our guides on what to buy and what not to buy on Prime Day.
Check out dedicated sites and browser extensions that do the work of tracking prices for you.
Camelcamelcamel is a website that gives you price history charts on Amazon products and even sends you alerts when a price has dropped. To up your price-monitoring game, you can install its browser extension called "The Camelizer," which gives you instant access to price history while you're shopping.
Keepa is a price monitoring site and browser extension that is dedicated to Amazon products. You can also use it to compare prices on other retailer sites like eBay.
Other tools that can crawl the web for good deals and notify you about price drops are Honey and Slickdeals. These sites are particularly useful because "the Prime Day effect" usually means that retailers like Best Buy, Target, and Walmart will also be hosting sales. In that case, it's good to have a sense of pricing history, even if Honey's isn't quite as detailed as Camelcamelcamel.
If you have a newer Echo device, you can enable Alexa's advanced deal alerts feature to find and keep track of deals on products you want. The smart assistant will notify you up to 24 hours in advance of a deal you've added to your shopping cart, saved for later, or added to your Wish List. To turn on this setting, go to the Alexa app and open the Notifications bell, then hit Settings. From here, tap Amazon Shopping and scroll down to toggle Deal Recommendations. Your Echo device will flash a yellow ring to indicate this setting is live.
Finding the best Prime Day price is one thing, but how do you even know what deals are being offered elsewhere? It's safe to assume that most products on Amazon have some kind of discount, but some deals are better than others, meaning it's important to know what to buy and what not to buy on Prime Day.
Mashable's shopping team is already doing the legwork of scouring Amazon's vast inventory to highlight the best deals out there, and we'll be on it leading up to, during, and after the sale. Beyond price drop notifications, we're bringing our knowledge of historical pricing and trends on most deal categories, meaning that if we recommend a deal, it's actually worth checking out.
As we mentioned above, Amazon may kickstart the second Prime Day season, but other retailers make sure they're in on the fun. We're expecting to see sales from Best Buy, Target, and Walmart, so you'll have plenty of options for where you want to pick up the best deals.
Competition can be a great way to drive prices down, but certain retailers have specialties with these sales. Best Buy is usually good for big ticket tech like high-end TVs or laptops as well as gaming deals, Walmart is ideal for more budget-friendly TVs and home tech, and Target is best for everyday essentials.
