3.
How do I know I’m getting a great deal?
If you refer to PCWorld’s articles pointing to the best Prime Day deals, you can be assured that our editors have vetted the deals based on price history and the quality of the product. But it’s also possible for you to do background research that will help you find the best deals.
Like any retailer, Amazon mixes true deals with “sales” that are really just regular prices (or close to it) with a deal tag. To avoid that pitfall, look up historical prices before buying. We like Keepa.com for this—particularly price history graphs that you can adjust on-the-fly. CamelCamelCamel.com is also a good alternative, though not quite as robust. Both services offer price watching for specific items, too.
For example, let’s say you see a deal on the Elgato Stream Deck. You’d type “Elgato Stream Deck” into Keepa, and find the historic pricing of that product.
Keepa says the best pricing on this macro board was $97 in January 2020, and that the highest was $190 about a year and a half ago. In the last three months, it’s hovered between $120 to $130. With that information, you have the tools to decide whether this streaming accessory is worth the current sale price.
If the sale price were $100, for example, that would be a good deal—you’d be getting close to the lowest price ever. A $110 price tag would also still be a pretty good deal, since it’s cheaper than recent prices, which were already in a low range. The graph also shows that deals in the last year have been standard discounts, rather than anything special like a limited-time lightning deal.
