Amazon Prime Day deals 2023: Everything you need to know

Outside of Black Friday (which isn't until much later in the year), this is your one opportunity in the year to grab those much-needed items that you normally don't want to pay full price for, so you need to make the most of it.

If you've made it this far into the article and are still wondering what the Prime Day sales event is, allow us to explain. Occurring once a year, it's a two-day sale exclusive only to Prime subscribers to celebrate the summer and clear out some stock ahead of the larger Black Friday sales later on in the year. Want to keep up with all our favourite deals and offers throughout the sale? Check out our complete collection of Amazon Prime Day deals here.

Separate from the Prime Day Early Access sale, which was towards the back end of 2022 and also entirely different from the Spring Sale we saw back in March, Amazon's continued penchant for creating similarly named events can make it confusing, but the upcoming Prime Day sale is typically the biggest one.

You'll need to become an Amazon Prime member to get the most out of the sale. Signing up for Prime unlocks quite a few valuable bonuses, including the much-loved free next-day delivery and access to Prime Video, but it also delivers extra tech deals and discounts on your account. Non-prime members can still grab a bargain or two, but we'd recommend subscribing to get the full suite of offers.

It's £8.99 a month (or £89 a year if you'd prefer to pay upfront) but you can get a 30-day free trial if you sign up with a unique email address to discover the best Prime Day deals.

Not so keen on shopping with Amazon? Don’t worry, there are plenty of other retailers running alternative sales at the same time like Samsung, Percival, Currys, Boots and Simba Sleep so move on over to our roundup here to find out more about where else you can spend your cash.

It’s worth noting that not everything that Amazon says is discounted is actually true. While the website will let you know exactly how many pennies have been slashed off the price, it’s not always at the lowest price, and the retailer has been known to hike up prices in the weeks leading up to an event to make it seem like a better offer, so keep a beady eye and do your research.

If you're looking to practice a bit of the sign-on dark arts, you might be wondering if there's a cheeky way to get a free sign-up to Prime membership to make things a little easier over a busy month of snagging deals. And the good news is that there is a free pass to Prime, though it requires a bit of account juggling. Essentially, you want to sign up with a totally unique email address and hook that up with your account (or add a credit card to a fresh account with a new email) or you can sign up for free on a 30-day trial if you've not had Prime for over a year. Outside of that, you can either piggyback off of someone you know who has Prime or simply pay yourself.

Before you nosedive into the latest deals, it's worth spending some time doing your research to make the most out of the sale and avoid any frustrating time and money-wasting if you're prone to over-eagerness. First up, we suggest you download the Amazon Prime app, which will send you live notifications in the weeks leading up to the sale and throughout the two-day event.

You can tab products to get told when discounts are going live on your favourite stuff, and you can pre-create a wishlist of all the gadgets and gear you might want to buy for faster access –a lifesaver if you're looking to snag a lightning deal or two that only go live for a few hours. You can – and definitely should – also sign up for our GQ Recommends newsletter and keep our top pages tabbed to learn of the latest deals and what our editors are buying in this year's sale.

It's a tough question to answer as it's largely down to your own personal preferences and how much value you get out of whatever you buy. If you cave to TikTok pressure and buy an air fryer but never switch it on beyond the initial experimentation, it's certainly not worth your time to hunt through the sale to get one.

However, for the monthly sigh up fee of £8.99 a month, we reckon the Prime Day sales give you more than your money's worth even if you only partake in one or two purchases. Saving a tenner on some electric toothbrush replacement heads or a larger sum on a shiny new telly will more than makeup for the £8.99 you paid to get access to the deals, and we do really appreciate Prime's next-day deliveries to get our goodies as fast as possible.

Alongside that, you also unlock Prime Video, Amazon Music and a host of free audiobooks as part of your subscription, so you can enjoy the benefits long after Prime Day is over. And if you find you don't make the most of it, you can always cancel your membership at any time and just wait for next year.

For those in the know, Amazon Prime is simply one of many seismic online shopping events, with the other big one called Black Friday. Black Friday is arguably the more famous shopping event, not least because it mostly featured literal fisticuffs among shoppers attempting to grab a heavily discounted telly in stores. However, things are more civilised now, and we do our shopping online and in the safety of our bed, thanks very much. Because of this, the big shopping events are fairly parable in terms of size, quality of deals and what you can actually buy.

Having said that, Amazon Prime Day is only limited to Amazon's website, whereas Black Friday is across a plethora of other retailers from the likes of John Lewis, Selfridges, Currys and even Amazon itself. In that regard, Black Friday is significantly larger, but Prime Day is no slouch, with tens of thousands of discounts on the latest tech, the best clothes and the must-have items from 2023. In fact, more than 300 million products were shipped through Amazon's system in 2022, just in case you were wondering how Jeff Bezos' pockets were looking.

For more fashion, grooming and technology releases delivered straight to your inbox, sign up for our GQ Recommends newsletter.

Here are GQ's picks of the best Amazon Prime Day 2023 deals…