Amazon Prime Day 2023: Early Deals

Amazon Prime Day
(Image credit: Shutterstock)

Amazon Prime Day is happening on July 11th and 12th 2023. The annual (or sometimes twice-annual) deal holiday is an opportunity for Amazon and the merchants which use its platform to increase their revenue by offering you outstanding savings.

It's a given that you'll find great deals on Amazon first-party gadgets like Kindles or Amazon Echo speakers. But what about PC hardware, maker gear and 3D printers? Fortunately, there will be savings on those too, both on Amazon itself and on competitors such as Newegg, Walmart and Best Buy.

To help you save, we are covering Prime Day, cataloging the best Prime Day hardware deals, best Prime Day laptop deals, best Prime Day monitor deals, and best Prime Day SSD deals.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind as you plan your Prime Day shopping.

Amazon Prime Day 2023 Quick Links

Best Early Amazon Prime Day SSD Deals

2TB Samsung 980 Pro PCIe Gen 4 SSD:  now $99 at Amazon

2TB Samsung 980 Pro PCIe Gen 4 SSD: now $99 at Amazon (was $129)
The Samsung 980 Pro (2TB) offers sequential read and write speeds of 7,000 and 5,100 MBps and thanks to its large capacity it is great for installing more games from your collection.  

SK hynix Platinum P41 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD:  now $125 at Amazon

SK hynix Platinum P41 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD: now $125 at Amazon (was $259)
One of the fastest SSDs on the market, the SK hynix Platinum P41 promises sequential read and write speeds of 7,000 and 6,500 MBps along with 1.4 and 1.3 million read / write IOPS.    

1TB Samsung 980 Pro PCIe Gen 4 SSD:  now $59 at Amazon

1TB Samsung 980 Pro PCIe Gen 4 SSD: now $59 at Amazon (was $129)
One of our favorite SSDs thanks to its great performance and power efficiency, the Samsung 980 Pro (1TB) offers sequential read and write speeds of 7,000 and 5,100 MBps.  

Team Group MP33 1TB SSD: now $38 at Newegg

Team Group MP33 1TB SSD: now $38 at Newegg (was $69)
This offer is for the 1TB Team Group MP33 but other capacities are available, as well. It can reach read/write speeds of 1800 / 1500 MBps and is supported by a 5-year warranty from Team Group.

Best Early Amazon Prime Day Gaming Laptop Deals

Asus ROG Strix G17 (2023): now $1,399 at Walmart

Asus ROG Strix G17 (2023): now $1,399 at Walmart (was $1,499)
With a 17.3-inch QHD 240Hz display the Asus ROG Strix G17 (2023) gaming laptop is a powerful gaming machine thanks to its includes Ryzen 9-7845HX CPU, Nvidia RTX 4060 GPU, 16GB of DDR5 RAM, and a 1TB SSD.

Lenovo Legion Pro 5i 16IRX8 Gaming Laptop: now $1,729 at B&H Photo

Lenovo Legion Pro 5i 16IRX8 Gaming Laptop: now $1,729 at B&H Photo (was $2,069)
This model of the Lenovo Legion Pro 5i contains an Intel Core i9-13900HX processor, 32GB of 5600MHz DDR5 RAM, and an RTX 4070 GPU with 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM all powering the 16-inch 2560x1600 resolution 240 Hz IPS display.

Dell G15 Special Edition Gaming Laptop:  now $999 at Dell

Dell G15 Special Edition Gaming Laptop: now $999 at Dell (was $1,729)
Powered by a 12th Gen Intel Core i7-12700H and 16GB of DDR5, this gaming laptop features a 15.6-inch QHD display running at 240 Hz. Powering the display is an Nvidia RTX 3060 6GB GDDR6. Your games and OS are stored on a generous 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD.  

Razer Blade 17: now $1,192 at GameStop

Razer Blade 17: now $1,192 at GameStop (was $2,384)
This model of the Razer Blade 17 packs a 17.3-inch QHD display with a 165Hz refresh rate, that's powered by an Intel i7-12800H CPU,  RTX 3060 GPU, 16GB of 4800MHz DDR5 RAM, and a 1TB SSD. To help keep this gaming laptop cool and quiet, Razer uses vapor chamber cooling to dissipate heat. 

Best Early Amazon Prime Day Gaming PC Deals

Lenovo Legion T5 Gaming Desktop: now $979 at Walmart

Lenovo Legion T5 Gaming Desktop: now $979 at Walmart (was $1,499)
This gaming desktop from Lenovo uses an AMD Ryzen 7 5700G, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti GPU, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, a 256GB SSD, and a larger 1TB HDD for storage. You would want to possibly swap out or upgrade the HDD for an M.2 SSD for better gaming compatibility as a 256GB SSD containing the OS won't leave a lot of room for your games library. 

Acer Nitro 50 Gaming Desktop: now $779 at Newegg

Acer Nitro 50 Gaming Desktop: now $779 at Newegg (was $1,199)
A good budget pre-built PC option, the Acer Nitro 50 (model - N50-640-UR13) comes with an Intel Core i5 12th Gen 12400F CPU, 16GB of DDR4, a 1TB HDD & 512GB of PCIe SSD storage, with the graphics provided by an Nvidia RTX 3050.  

Alienware Aurora R15 (RTX 4070): now $2,299 at Dell

Alienware Aurora R15 (RTX 4070): now $2,299 at Dell (was $2,599)
This powerful configuration of Alienware Aurora R15 gaming desktop features an Intel Core i7-13700F CPU, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 GPU with 12GB of video memory, 16GB of 4800MHz DDR5 RAM, and a 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD.

Best Early Amazon Prime Day Monitor Deals

Samsung Odyssey G5: now $399 at Newegg

Samsung Odyssey G5: now $399 at Newegg (was $549)
A wide 34-inch gaming monitor with a 3440x1440 resolution, a low 1ms response time, and a 165Hz refresh rate. This ultrawide monitor also features an immersive 1000R curve.

Omen 27u 4K Gaming Monitor: now $549 at Amazon

Omen 27u 4K Gaming Monitor: now $549 at Amazon (was $699)
The Omen 27u gaming monitor from HP sports a speedy 120Hz refresh rate on its 4K IPS panel. The color gamut of this screen has 99% sRGB and 95% DCI-P3.

Best Early Amazon Prime Day CPU Deals

Intel Core i7-12700K CPU:  now $314 at Newegg

Intel Core i7-12700K CPU: now $314 at Newegg with promo code (was $449)
The Core i7-12700K wields Intel's hybrid microarchitecture with a combination of eight P-cores and four E-cores. The Alder Lake chip flaunts boost clocks of up to 5 GHz and nearly matches the gaming prowess of the 12900K. Get "Total War Warhammer" game free with a purchase. Use code FTTPCU585 to receive your discount.

Intel Core i5-12400F:  now $149 Amazon

Intel Core i5-12400F: now $149 Amazon (was $206)
The Core i5-12400F is a great all-rounder for an affordable price — made even better with this discount. With 6 cores/12 threads and a max clock speed of 4.4 GHz. This chip comes with a setup of just 6 performance cores and no efficiency cores.

When is Prime Day in 2023? 

Amazon has confirmed that Prime Day 2023 will happen on July 11th and 12th.

The big shopping spectacular is taking place in July. Having Prime Day in July allows the company to create a new shopping holiday in the middle of the summer, months before people are thinking about the holidays. 

Prime Day Isn’t Just Amazon

As the top online retailer in the world, Amazon has the power to drive its competitors. In order not to be left out, retailers like Newegg, Walmart, Best Buy, Dell and Lenovo are likely to have their own sales that coincide with Prime Day. They obviously can’t call their sales “Prime Day,” but the deals will likely be just as sweet.

Newegg tends to have a better selection of PC components than Amazon, so it’s possible that it will have some of the most appealing deals on CPUs, RAM, SSDs and other internal parts.

Prime Day is for Prime Members

Keep in mind that, if you want to take advantage of Amazon’s Prime Day deals, you need to be a member of the company’s Prime program. You can sign up for a free 30 day Prime membership trial if you need to.

Where to Look for Prime Day Hardware Deals

  • Tom’s Hardware coverage: When Prime Day begins, we’ll be rounding up the top Amazon Prime day deals on this page and on our home page.
  • Amazon’s Computer’s and Accessories Page: Don’t just go to Amazon’s Prime Day deals page and scroll past all the irrelevant products. Click on the Computers and Accessories category in the left nav .We also recommend choosing lightning deals to focus on the short-term, hottest deals. 

Amazon Prime Day 2023

(Image credit: Amazon)
  • Check Newegg, Dell, Lenovo, Best Buy and Walmart: Each of these sites is likely to have its own set of deals. Newegg is the most likely candidate, and you can see its current discounts on its Shell Shocker page.

How to Tell if a Deal Is Real

Don’t believe the hype. Not every sale price you see on Prime Day is an all-time low price. The price you find could be the same as it was the week before Prime Day or it might be higher than it was just a month before. It may even be the case that another site has a better regular price than Amazon’s (or someone else’s) sale price.

To find out whether you’re really looking at a deal, take a few steps:

1. Use the Camelizer plugin for Amazon deals, 

This plugin will show you a complete price history for a product, based on the database at Camelcamelcamel. When you’re on the product’s Amazon page, just click the plugin button and you’ll see a chart.

(Image credit: Future)

2. Search PCPartPicker.

That site maintains a price history of nearly every component, across half a dozen retailers, but usually not Amazon.

3. Check competing sites to see if any of them has an even better sale on the same product.

For example, if you see a great deal on a graphics card at Amazon, check Newegg also.

What Kind of Products to Look for on Prime Day

While it’s possible that you’ll find the CPU or GPU deal of your dreams on Prime Day, these types of products are more likely to be on big sales, both on Amazon and its competitors.

Amazon Devices

While not necessarily enthusiast devices, Amazon's Fire, Kindle and Echo devices will be on huge sales. 

Storage

There are always a ton of good deals on both external storage and internal drives. And you can always use more storage.

  • microSD Cards: Great for Raspberry Pi users (see best Raspberry Pi microSD cards) or people with Android smartphones, microSD cards give you a ton of storage in a tiny space. Look for a name-brand 256GB card that’s under $10.
  • USB Flash Drives: If you need to move data using a “sneakernet,” a USB flash drive can come in handy. Look for a name-brand 256GB USB 3.0 drive for well under $20. You’ll pay extra for additional features, such as ruggedness or the addition of a Type-C port.
  • SSDs: Who doesn’t need bigger, faster internal storage? Look for high-end 2TB NVMe SSDs for less than $100 or a 4TB drive for less than $200.
  • USB Hard Drives: If you need bulk storage that’s easy to carry, USB hard drives are always a good deal during peak sale times. Look for a 2TB drive that’s well under $60.

Networking

If you’re reading this on the Internet rather than a printout someone handed you (and who would?), you probably have a router already. But does your router have the very latest technologies?

Routers are always going on sale at Amazon and elsewhere. Look for a Wi-Fi 6e Kit for $150 or a 6E mesh kit for less than $300. 

Robots, Raspberry Pi and Arduino

Electronics kits are often on huge sales during the Prime Day time frame. Companies such as Elegoo often have significant sales on Arduino starter sets or robots you can build yourself. We also expect to see some Raspberry Pi accessories or kits on sale during this time.

Monitors

If you see a good sale, Prime Day might be a great time to get a new display. A good deal on a 144 Hz or faster, 1080p display that’s 27 inches or larger is one that’s less than $200 and a name brand. If you’re looking for 4K, 60 Hz, a price under $250 is great.

Gaming Mice and Keyboards

Keep your eyes peeled for good deals on gaming peripherals, such as mice, keyboards and headsets. Look for products from well-known, reputable brands that cost less than usual. There will be plenty of no-name products for sale, but you should only consider those if they have a ton of positive user reviews.

Power Banks, Cables and Chargers

Prime Day is prime time to find deals on power banks and chargers for your mobile devices. If you own a laptop that charges over USB Type-C, look for deals on chargers and external batteries that support USB PD (Power Delivery), preferably of at least 45 watts.

Bottom Line

Remember that Prime Day is about more than just Amazon.com, but also keep in mind that if you don’t find a great deal on a product you’ve been waiting for, there will always be holiday sales starting just a few weeks later. Whether it’s Prime Day or Black Friday or Cyber Monday, the best strategy during any sale is not to feel like you have to make a purchase, just because there’s a sale.

Stewart Bendle
Deals Writer

Stewart Bendle is a deals writer at Tom's Hardware. A firm believer in “Bang for the buck” Stewart likes to research the best prices for hardware and build PCs that have a great price for performance ratio.