Prime Day: What I’m Buying

Since I’m likely to be updating this article throughout the day, if you are reading this in your email, you might want to click on the live web version with the updates. The deals in this article apply to Amazon Prime members.

There are going to be approximately 1.34 billion articles written about Amazon Prime Day (today). One reason is that there really are some great deals. Another reason is that Amazon pays a referral fee, so writing about it can make a writer a few dollars if you decide to buy. (It doesn’t get more full disclosure than that, does it?)

I’m usually not one for the hype, but I’ve had my eye on some things for awhile. If I’m going to buy something anyway, I might as well take advantage of a sale, right?

What I’m Buying on Amazon Prime Day

A Gift Certificate to Myself

Amazon is offering a free $5 in promotional credit when you buy a $25 gift certificate. This deal probably won’t last long since it is essentially a free $5.

Let’s Go Eevee for the Nintendo Switch

I don’t have a Switch, but the kids love Pokemon and a Switch is likely in the mix for Christmas. They’ll need a game and Let’s Go Eevee is $30 – a 50% savings.

Upgrading an Echo Dot (2nd generation) to the new Echo Show 5 for under $25

The Echo Show 5 is Amazon’s latest attempt to perfect the Alexa alarm clock. It has a 5″ screen for video and better audio than a normal Echo Dot. Normally it is $90, but for Prime Day it’s on sale for $50. However, when you trade in another Echo device (such as the 2nd generation Echo Dot that I have lying around), you get 25% off a future Echo device. Amazon does that off the top, so it’s a $22.50 promotional credit. You also get $5 for the Echo Dot itself, but the real value is that promotional credit.

You have to take a little leap of faith in trading in the device for the promotional credit, but a number of people on Slickdeals, including myself, are making it work without a problem.

The math looks like:
$90 – original price
-$40 – Prime Day discount
-$22.50 – the 25% promo for the trade-in
-$5 – Credit for the 2nd generation Echo Dot
Total = $22.50

Sold Out A FireTV and Echo Dot for $12

Normally this bundle would cost you $75 or so, but it’s just $12 (probably a pricing mistake) with a discount that appears at checkout. Click here to buy. It will sell out quickly, so just buy if at all interested.

I think one could easily resell them on Ebay in a few weeks to make $30 or so.

Amazon Fire HD 10

I’ve long said, You Should Consider Buying an Amazon Fire HD 10, because when it’s $100 (the lowest it usually ever gets), it is the best computing bargain around. Even at full price it is a very good value. It’s almost impossible to find a 10″ full high-definition tablet for under $200. Of course one of the reasons why it is so cheap is so that Amazon can sell you stuff.

On Prime Day, the Fire HD 10 will be back to it’s lowest price of $100 (buy it now at that price. However, you can also buy 2 for $180 or $90 each (just add them to the cart). That’s the deal that I’m looking at. With two kids, our tablet is getting a lot of use. The kids tend to want to play at the same time (monkey see, monkey do). That means someone is stuck with our 5-year old Nexus 7. That was a good enough tablet for the time, but it’s noticeably slow nowadays. It seem like people on Ebay on are still willing to pay $75 for it, so to get half our money back (and nearly the price of a bigger, newer Kindle Fire) after all this time is a big win.

Some could (correctly) argue that the Fire HD 10 is nearly 2 years old and that it runs an even older version of Android. I’m sure that Amazon will update it a couple of months after I buy these. It seems like technology is always like that.

While I’m worried about the kids getting glued to the tablet too much, I feel it is somewhat inevitable. At least so far, they’ve been using our existing tablet for learning apps like ScratchJr, DuoLingo, and ABC Mouse. You’d think that maybe one tablet would be best so that they’d each have one. However, I’ve been customizing ours with the Google Play Store and I’m looking forward to having my own set of apps like Gmail and WordPress.

I’ll be shopping with my Amazon Prime card for another 6% back.

A New Cell Phone

My Moto X Pure is old 2015 technology and getting really slow. So slow that even my wife says that I shouldn’t “cheap out” and get something really good. I think the most I should spend on a cell phone is around $300.

It looks like there are going to be some deals on Pixels and Nokias, but from what I’ve seen it’s nothing too amazing. Since I’m writing this before the deals go live, I’m speculating on news leaks, but I think the sources are trustworthy. I’m not sure if I want to pull the trigger on a Pixel 3, when the Pixel 4 will be released in a couple of months – making the Pixel 3 likely much cheaper.

If I find a cell phone that’s worth pulling the trigger on, I’ll update this article.

Update:

Now that the smart phone deals are out, I’m more impressed than I thought I’d be. There are some excellent Samsung, Motorola, and this very tempting top of the line LG G8. I didn’t think I wanted a LG phone and $500 is more than I wanted to spend, but in the world of $1000 flagships, a $500 one seems like a good deal. I am heavily leaning towards this phone due to the latest SnapDragon 855 chipset and 6GB of RAM. It should future-proof me for a few years.

The Samsung S9 and S10 are both on sale. The S9 is $349 while the the S10 is $599. One could make the argument that I should spend another $100 to get the S10, but the LG G8 seems to be close to the same quality from all the reviews I’ve read.

A Moto G7 for $199 is extremely tempting too. The G7 would be an upgrade in every way, at $100 under my budget.

It looks like there’s a very good phone for almost any budget… $200 (Moto G7, $350 (Samsung S9), $500 (LG G8), $600 (Samsung S10).

What would you choose?

Something Else?

I’ll be going through my wishlist (which mostly includes STEM games for my kids) to see if there are any big bargains. If I find anything that’s particularly good, I’ll update this article. If you are reading this in the morning, you might want to give it a refresh in the evening.

One thing that I’m considering is waterproof Paperwhite for $85. It’s perfect for the lazy river at the Aruba Marriott and lowest price it has ever been. I just get the feeling that my wife would get more use out of it than I would. I’m a slow reader and don’t have a couple of months to read a book. I’ll probably jump on this as well since there is a 25% cash back when using an Amazon’s Prime Credit Card. For around $60, it seems worth the plunge.