Everything you need to know about Amazon’s Prime Early Access Sale

For the first time, Amazon’s having a second Prime Day sales event in October. If you missed out on the original Prime Day that took place in July, this new two-day event, called the Prime Early Access Sale, will be your next opportunity to grab things like gadgets, clothing, shoes, household necessities and even early holiday gifts for less. Engadget will cover all of the best tech deals you’ll be able to get during the event, but there are some useful tidbits to keep in mind as you think about what you may want to pick up during this year’s Prime Early Access Sale.

When is the Amazon Prime Early Access Sale?

Amazon’s Prime Day “part two” of sorts will begin on October 11th and will run through the end of the day on October 12th. In typical Prime Day fashion, you’ll have to be a Prime subscriber to get access to all of the deals available during this event. Thankfully, Amazon still offers a 30-day free trial to new members, so you can start your free trial now ahead so you’ll be all set when the event arrives.

If you don’t pay for Prime and have no intention of doing so, you should still check out Amazon on Prime Day for sales that are available to all shoppers. Those were few and far between during the original Prime Day back in July, but they did exist. Also, since Amazon is likely using this event to kick off the holiday shopping season, we expect to see other retailers follow suit; you may be able to get the same discounts and additional sales during the same time period at Target, Walmart, Best Buy and other stores.

What deals can we expect?

As with Prime Day earlier this year, we expect Amazon to kick things off a little bit early by knocking down the prices of some of its own gadgets. Early Prime Day deals typically include discounts on Echo speakers, Fire TV gadgets, Eero routers and more, so keep an eye out over the next few weeks for those items to drop in price.

Typically, Prime Day is only matched by Black Friday when it comes to record-low prices on these gadgets. That means you can either choose to pick up Amazon devices during the two-day event or take your chances and wait until Black Friday the following month. There’s a good chance the sale prices we see during this event will come back for Black Friday – however, due to lingering supply chain issues and high demand around the holiday shopping period, there’s a chance you’ll have to wait longer to receive your items if you wait until the last minute to buy them.

Amazon devices will not be the only items on sale during this second Prime Day. The online retailer usually discounts things like household goods, clothing, shoes, books, appliances, beauty items and more for Prime Day, along with a plethora of gadgets. We expect to see a lot of the original Prime Day deals come back for this October event, so there’s a good chance you’ll be able to get headphones, laptops, TVs, gaming accessories, SSDs, robot vacuums and more for record-low prices.

How to prep for the Prime Early Access Sale

Our advice for this fall sale is much the same as ours for the original event – go into it knowing exactly what you want to buy. Amazon’s homepage will be one big distraction on October 11th and 12th and it’ll be easy to get sidetracked by deals that probably aren’t worth your time or money. Instead of falling into that trap, make a list of the things you hope to get at a discount for both yourself and for other people if you’re doing some early holiday shopping.

You can either use Amazon’s wish list feature to collect all of your desirables in one place online, or write it all down the old-fashioned way on a sticky note. We like Amazon’s wish list feature because it’ll show if something dropped in price after you added it to your list. That essentially makes the wish list a one-stop shop for you on Prime Day – it’ll have all of the items you want to buy, and it’ll show you how much of a discount you can get on it during the two-day event.

We also recommend using a price tracker like CamelCamelCamel to check out the price history for any items you plan on buying during the Prime Early Access Sale. That will help you decide if Amazon’s deal on that particular item is good enough for you to buy it.

Engadget will surface all of the best tech deals available during this Prime Day, so if you have a lot of gadgets on your list, be sure to check the site during the two-day event. You can also follow the @EngadgetDeals Twitter account and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter to stay up to date on the latest discounts.

Amazon will hold a Prime Early Access Sale on October 11th and 12th

After weeks of rumors, Amazon has officially announced that it plans to hold a second sales event this fall exclusively for Prime members. The second Prime Day of the year, dubbed “Prime Early Access Sale,” will be held on October 11th and 12th in the US, UK, Canada and 12 other countries, following the same two-day format as the original event.

Amazon Prime Day has historically been an annual event in which Prime members have access to thousands of sales from the online retailer. It’s been not only a way for Amazon to increase sales during the summer months, but also helps the company to drum up more subscribers for Prime. This year’s Prime Day on July 12th and 13th brought a plethora of discounts on things like household essentials, clothing, electronics and more, and most of them were reserved for Prime members. However, like years past, there were select sales available to anyone on Prime Day as well.

Since Amazon has not had a second Prime Day in one year before, it’s hard to anticipate what this new sales event will bring. Since it’ll be held in the middle of October, we expect it to unofficially mark the start of the holiday shopping season for Amazon. It’s also possible that the discounts available to Prime members only during this sales event may not come back around for everyone until Black Friday or Cyber Monday. That may encourage some shoppers to stock up on holiday gifts as early as they can snag them on sale.

Engadget will cover all of the best tech deals we can find during this second sales event, held in 15 countries including the US, Canada, the UK, much of Europe, and Turkey. If you plan on taking advantage of those sales, be sure to check Engadget for more information leading up to the event, and follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and sign up for our Engadget Deals newsletter so you never miss the latest news.

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There are only a few major differences between the Galaxy Watch 4 and this year’s Watch 5. The newer model has a Sapphire Crystal glass display, which makes it more resistant to cracks and scratches, and it has a unique curvature to the underside of its case, which should help provide more accurate health sensor readings. The Galaxy Watch 5 also has a new skin temperature sensor, but it wasn’t active at launch.

Because we enjoyed our experience with the Watch 5, we now consider it to be the best smartwatch for Android users. But make no mistake, the Galaxy Watch 4 is a very similar device, and you wouldn’t be giving up many new features by opting to pick it up while it’s on deep discount. The Galaxy Watch 4 earned a score of 85 from us for its attractive design that’s also durable with protections like an IP68-rating, 5ATM of water resistance and MIL-STD-810H for durability. It has a 3-in-1 biometric sensor that enables a ton of health tracking features, including body mass scans and continuous blood oxygen detection during sleep.

We also like that it runs WearOS with One UI, so users will still feel like they’re using Samsung’s Tizen but they’ll still reap the benefits of Google’s wearable operating system. You can download apps directly from the Watch 4 from the Play Store, and One UI supports gesture controls that will let you do things like answer or dismiss calls with a flick of the wrist or a lift of the arm. Overall, if you’re on a tight budget or simply don’t want to spend at least $280 on the Galaxy Watch 5, you can still get most of the same features in the Galaxy Watch 4 right now for much less.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

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