15 early October Prime Day tech deals, hand-picked by experts

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Mashable’s discerning reporters and editors are constantly testing the latest gadgets, from e-readers to headphones, laptops, phones, power stations, smart rings, and portable speakers. This year, many of our favorite products have been besieged by price hikes as a result of the ongoing memory crisis. Fortunately, Amazon is about to bring tech shoppers some relief in the form of Prime Big Deal Days, better known as October Prime Day.

Set for Oct. 6 and 7, Prime Big Deal Days is a 48-hour sale for members of Amazon’s Prime program. Often referred to as “October Prime Day,” it serves as Amazon’s unofficial kickoff to the holiday shopping season. We’ve been covering the event since its inception in 2022, back when it was still called the Prime Early Access Sale. And this year, we’ll be keeping an extra close eye on the best early Prime Day tech deals.

In the lead-up to the sale, Amazon is already offering some steep discounts on select devices from brands like Apple, TCL, Garmin, Beats, and Sony. After spending hours poring over these deals, we’ve identified the best early Prime Day deals that are so good, we’d buy them ourselves.

How do we pick these deals, you might ask? We look for products we recommend at record-low prices (or close to them). We use price-tracking tools like camelcamelcamel to see if Amazon’s discounts are actually better than usual, then cross-check them with other retailers’ listings to make sure they’re not cheaper elsewhere. (Walmart and Target are both gearing up to host their own October sales, FYI.) You can add our picks to your cart with confidence.

Without any further ado, these are the best early October Prime Day deals we’ve spotted so far.

$99 AirPods (a Prime Day classic)

It wouldn’t be an Amazon Prime event without some $99 AirPods. Apple’s fourth-generation earbuds have excellent audio quality and a comfortable fit. and a five-hour battery life. The newer AirPods 5 sound even better and add ANC, but this pair is still a great option for iOS users on a budget. (Read Mashable’s review.)

Note: The AirPods 4 dipped down to $69 last Black Friday, but $99 is their lowest price so far in 2026. Plus, they probably won’t be in stock much longer now that their successors have launched; they already sold out once on Amazon earlier this week.

Take $600 off Apple’s most powerful laptop

If you’re a professional creative, developer, or AI enthusiast who needs a compact new laptop for work, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better option than the 14-inch, M5 Max-powered MacBook Pro. (The M5 Max is Apple’s most powerful laptop chip to date.) The “base” configuration with 36GB of RAM and 2TB of storage got a $500 price increase back in June, which bumped it from $3,599 to $4,099. But right now, Amazon has it on sale for just $3,499 — a $600 savings. It’s even cheaper than before.

I should mention that Amazon’s MacBook Pro discounts have capped out around $400 during its past Prime events. Suffice to say, this is a very good deal that probably won’t last long.

Cheaper-than-ever Fire tablets

Two of Amazon’s own Fire tablets are already on sale for record-low prices ahead of Prime Big Deal Days. Take your pick from the compact Fire HD 8 with 64GB of storage — our favorite Fire tablet overall — or the big-screened Fire HD 10 with 32GB of storage, nicer cameras, and a sharper display. (Both have 13-hour battery lives.) They’re now up to 53% off for Prime members.

64% off a 4K streaming stick

Amazon’s Fire tablets have been safe from price hikes so far, but the retailer made all of its Fire TV streaming sticks at least $5 more expensive in August. For its part, the 4K Plus model went from $49.99 to $69.99. Nevertheless, Amazon will sell it to you for just $24.99 right now if you enter the code STREAM4K at checkout. That matches its all-time low price from this summer’s Prime Day sale and Black Friday 2025. It used to equate to a $25 savings, but now you’re getting a whopping $45 off.

FWIW, this is Amazon’s cheapest media player with support for Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, Nvidia Geforce Now, and Alexa Home Theater (a surround sound feature that works with Echo devices).

A new all-time low on an Apple Watch alternative

Garmin’s vívoactive 6 is a lightweight fitness smartwatch with an AMOLED display and an 11-day battery life. It supports features like constant heart rate readings, stress tracking, and sleep coaching. Our friends over at Lifehacker, one of our sister sites, gave it a stellar 4.5/5 review, calling it “a great watch for somebody who wants to track their steps and activity.”

The vívoactive 6 usually costs $50 more than Apple’s entry-level smartwatch — the $249 Apple Watch SE 3 — but Amazon just put the pink dawn variant on sale for $229.99. At 23% off, it’s never been cheaper before.

A huge discount on a huge QLED TV

The 65-inch TCL QM8L is the best QLED TV for most people, according to Leah Stodart, our former TV expert. She praised its “superb peak brightness, detailed picture quality, and fantastic glare handling.” (QLED TVs in general “are ideal for people whose TV usage happens mostly in the daytime, especially watching sports,” to quote her TV specs guide.)

The 85-inch QM8L just hit a new all-time low of $2,497.99 on Amazon, which is 38% off its suggested sticker price of $3,999.99. For comparison’s sake, it’s currently $2 more expensive at Best Buy and on TCL’s website.

An affordable Fire TV

The best early Prime Day tech deals always include savings on Amazon’s own devices, like this affordable Ember Fire TV. This TV has a high-definition HDR10+ display and doubles as an Alexa smart speaker for your home. The 28% discount drops the price to a very affordable $179.99, its lowest-ever price.

Save $10 when you preorder the ‘Ocarina of Time’ remake

Nintendo’s upcoming remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the Switch 2 will be one of the year’s biggest gaming releases (after GTA 6, obviously). Preordering the physical edition will normally cost you $69.99 — it’s $10 more than the digital version — but Amazon has it on sale for $59.88 ahead of its Nov. 5 launch. The first print run has special packaging with foil cover art, so don’t dawdle.

Deals on SanDisk memory products

The global memory crisis has led to rising costs for smartphones, laptops, and gaming consoles, but it’s been a disaster for SD cards and hard drives. So, while the discounts aren’t as huge as they were in past years, you can find savings on these memory products during October Prime Big Deal Days. We’ve found a bunch of early Prime Day deals on portable SSDs and hard drives, and we expect even more savings to come.

Case in point: The SanDisk Nintendo Switch 2 microSD Card Express is currently $40 off. Likewise, you can save $40 on the popular SanDisk Extreme portable SSD with 1TB of storage.

Bose QuietComfort headphones and earbuds on sale

We’ve made so secret of the fact that we love Bose headphones and earbuds here at Mashable. The brand makes the most comfortable headphones we’ve ever tested, and the brand’s popular QuietComfort line recently got refreshed.

Right now, you can get the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (Gen 2) or the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones (Gen 2) for $50 off. Keep in mind that the headphones are not at a record-low price, so there’s a chance they could get bigger discounts when Prime Big Deal Days starts on Oct. 6.

Shop the Nintendo Customer Appreciation Sale

Nintendo just got a massive tariff refund, and to pass along the savings, the brand is hosting a mega Customer Appreciation Sale through Sept. 26. So, while these aren’t technically early Prime Day deals, they are a great opportunity to enjoy rare savings on Nintendo Switch games and hardware. Unfortunately, the Switch consoles and Switch 2 games aren’t on sale, but we’ll let you know if that changes when October Prime Day begins.

You can shop the sale at Amazon or Nintendo, but our top picks include the classic Metroid Dread and the wireless Nintendo Switch Pro Controller.

Early deals on iPads

Some of the best early Prime Day tech deals so far are on Apple’s iPads, which are due for an upgrade any day now. If you don’t mind a slightly older device and chip, you can pick up the Apple iPad Air (M4) with a cool $100 discount.

Check out all of the top October Prime Day iPad deals so far.