Another Amazon Prime Day has come and gone, and in all the madness I forgot to actually buy anything.
Oh I had plans to, believe me—after covering events like this for a few years I know that Amazon's Prime Day deals are a good time to save money on essentials, so I'd stocked my Amazon cart with batteries and toilet paper to make sure I was ready.
But the big day came and went, and despite all my big plans my Prime Day budget went unspent. Worse, I felt awfully uncreative when I came in to work this week and all of my colleagues were crowing over the cool stuff they snagged during the sale.
So I thought I'd make something sweet out of my sour grapes by getting some Tom's Guide staff members to share their favorite things they bought during Amazon's 2024 summer Prime Day sale. Some of these items are still on sale, and all are great upgrades that will make your home life a little easier.
It's chargin' time
You can never have too many chargers and even though I wasn’t planning on it, I ended up picking up yet another GaN charger this Prime Day.
I bought my first UGREEN GaN charger before CES this year to charge my laptop, phone and all of my other devices while travelling. It proved so useful though that I got another identical one for around the house.
While looking for Prime Day deals to write about, I kept seeing UGREEN’s adorable little robot GaN charger. Unlike my other GaN chargers, this one has an LED display with a Tamagotchi-like face. Not only is this cute but the expressions on the robot’s face provide real-time charging status for whatever device you have plugged in.
For instance, when the robot has upward-facing eyes and curled lips, that means a device is currently charging and when the eyes face upwards but the lips aren’t there, your device is fully charged.
My Nexode GaN charger and my new Uno one both put out 65W of power and have two USB-C ports and a USB-A port. I figure I’ll leave the Nexode one at home and bring the Uno one with me on trips or when working from coffee shops as it’s a bit more fun. You can’t go wrong with either, but having that extra visual feedback from its LED display can be useful at a glance.
Arm yourself for cheap
Outside of the usual purchases I make to continue living my life like a low-grade survivalist, such as a year's supply of laundry detergent, toilet roll, protein powder and multivitamins, the big one for me was the final piece in the puzzle of my megadesk.
This would be the Vivo Dual Monitor Arm — allowing me to adorn my standing desk with two monitors. After the last couple weeks of use, I can say it's been a dream for my productivity to have one landscape screen and a second in portrait.
Normally, your average pair of pneumatic desk arms can be quite expensive, but at $49 (by the way, it's still that price), this is a steal. If you're keen to learn more about my setup, I've gone into all the detail here.
Get 4K streaming movies and games for under $100
The coolest thing I bought for Prime Day was the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max.
First off, it's always cooler when you get your tech gadgets for nearly 50% off. But the really cool thing about this streaming device is that it now lets you stream Xbox games through the cloud if you have Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.
It's really simple too — just plug the Fire Stick 4K Max into your TV, set it up, download the Xbox app and connect a Bluetooth controller.
It took me mere minutes to get from unboxing it to playing Starfield without needing a console. The gaming experience is pretty good too! There's a bit of input lag and the picture quality isn't flawless, but it didn't diminish my enjoyment of the game one bit.
Upgrade your home theater
The coolest thing I bought during prime day was Govee TV Backlights for my 85 inch Samsung TV. Normally around $159, I got these for the reduced price of $136.47 after taxes.
I just recently bought my first house and got the basement finished, so I've been looking for cool ways to make my basement feel more like a home theater. This includes reclining seats, a big screen and now backlights on the TV are the latest touch to have been added.
The lights use a small camera to mimic what's on the screen and project that color/tone on the wall behind the TV. It really enhances movie, TV and video game enjoyment. My next purchase, when the price is right, will be a sound system for the home theater set-up.
Can't beat a cheap air fryer
When we ran our "What can you get under $100 on Prime Day? Here's what's on our wish list" piece in the build-up to the megaton sales event, I half jokingly said I would pick up a discounted air fryer... mainly because it was near the end of the working day and I'd forgotten to eat lunch.
And in the biggest twist since that kid from "The Sixth Sense" revealed he could see dead people, I only went ahead and actually bought one.
The snappily named Russell Hobbs 20L Oven 5-in-1 Rapid Hot Air Fryer, Mini Oven Grill Toaster doesn't currently seem to be available on Amazon U.S. but it was heavily discounted on the U.K. version of Mr Bezos' little known site.
I mainly bought it with the intention of using it to cook healthy fish-based meals, but so far, all I've used it for was to warm up a $2 cheese burger. So yeah, not exactly the definition of cool. Yet if I suddenly start to channel my fellow (extremely sweary) countryman Gordon Ramsay, and start making carb-light salmon dishes in this puppy, maybe it will prove to be money well spent.
There you have it. Hopefully you got some good ideas from our own Amazon Prime Day spending, and make sure to check out our updated list of the best Prime Day deals you can still get!
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