The 12 best Prime Day deals the iMore team would spend its own money on
We put our money where our mouth is.
![iMore Prime Day picks](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/EwQrjWPkxLeJfofKQHCzzZ-320-80.jpg)
When it comes to Amazon's summer sale, we can recommend all the best Prime Day Apple deals until we're blue in the face. But what you really want to know is what we'd actually buy, so we're putting our money where our mouths are with a roundup of the iMore team's top picks from this year's sale.
We've combined our years of Apple coverage experience and picked out two products each that we'd happily part with our own cash for. There's plenty of variety here and something for everyone, so take a look at our roundup below!
The best Prime Day deals according to the iMore team:
Gerald Lynch: Editor-in-Chief
My picks this Prime Day are all about having fun — not a new Mac, not a new productivity accessory. Just pixel-pushing perfection with a couple of excellent gaming devices.
The first is the Anbernic RG35XXSP, which will let me indulge in some retro gaming delights. This Linux-based handheld is like a Game Boy Advance SP for the modern age, with a neat clamshell design and enough power to run not just Game Boy games via its emulators, but even more modern PSP games, too. It’s down to just $72.
Anbernic RG35XXSP | was $89.99 now $71.99 at Amazon
A full retro gaming library in your back pocket? That's what the Anbernic RG35XXSP offers, letting you play classic retro title from the earliest days or Atari right up to PSP highlights.
My second pick is something far more modern — the superb Meta Quest 3. Despite its high-powered internals and high-resolution better-than-4K display, this immersive wearable is almost as cheap as it’s ever been at $429.99, down from its usual $500 RRP. It’s a great escape for daily drudgery thanks to its great app library and AAA VR games.
Meta Quest 3 128GB | $499.99 $429.99 at Amazon
The best bang-for-buck VR headset on the market, the Meta Quest 3 gives you access to hundreds of on-device and PC VR titles, in a lightweight form factor at a great price. Its high-resolution screen and full colour passthrough just seals the deal.
Stephen Warwick: News Editor
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My top pick this Prime Day is the Samsung ViewFinity S9. There’s a big Mac market for 5K displays because the resolution plays nicely with macOS, doubling the size of the OS while keeping everything in proportion. However, Apple’s own Studio Display is upstaged by this $899 option that comes with a better 4K webcam, AirPlay, and smart TV Functionality.
SAMSUNG 27" ViewFinity S9 Series 5K | $1,599 $899 at Amazon
With a 4K webcam, great connectivity, 5K detail, AirPlay, and Smart TV functionality, this 5K monitor trumps the Apple Studio Display.
Price check: B&H Photo $1,599 | Best Buy $1,299
The M3 MacBook Air isn’t the cheapest Mac in the Amazon Prime Day sales, but at $849 it is the best value. Make sure you click on the coupon to get the best deal, and you’ll save $250 on Apple’s 13-inch MacBook Air, complete with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of SSD storage.
MacBook Air M3 13-inch| $1,099 $849 at Amazon
Apple's 13-inch MacBook Air returns to its lowest-ever price of $898. Get Apple's brand-new M3 chip for $200 off the list price of $1,099, all wrapped up in Apple's favored new MacBook Air chassis, ripe for Apple Intelligence later this year.
Price checker: $1,099 at Apple | $1,099 at Best Buy | $1,099 at B&H Photo
Daryl Baxter: Features Editor
Why spend $24,000 on a new car with CarPlay when I can keep my reliable 2010 Vauxhall Corsa and spend only $99 on a CarPlay portable monitor for the same experience? That’s exactly what I’m doing. I can attach a 9-inch monitor that provides the full CarPlay experience, allowing me to use Apple Maps, Podcasts, and more without having to use my car’s retro dashboard.
LAMTTO Wireless Apple CarPlay | $169 $99 at Amazon
LAMTTO's CarPlay monitor has a sleek design thanks to its 9-inch screen and a thin bezel. Its adjustable arm ensures that the display can be positioned at the right angle, making it ideal for a passenger who wants to watch a movie.
Over the years, films and TV shows taught me how robots are bad and signal the end of the world. But the eufy X10 Pro has convinced me otherwise — they can help rather than hinder. Being able to control this robot vacuum with my iPhone has been revelatory. I can command it to vacuum or MOP my home whenever I want, and it even gives me a helpful map of its progress.
eufy X10 Pro |$799 $599 at Amazon
The X10 Pro is a fantastic robot vacuum cleaner that makes sure the floors in my home are fully cleaned every day. At $200 off for Prime Day, it’s a fantastic opportunity to have one of your own to save yourself the chore of vacuuming up yourself.
John-Anthony Disotto: How To Editor
The fact you can find a Mac for under $500 at all blows my mind, especially considering just how good the Mac mini M2 actually is. For $479 in the Prime Day sale, you can pick up a very competent desktop computer that will get almost all of your daily tasks done in the blink of an eye. I use mine every day for work and I can’t recommend Apple’s tiny desktop enough — grab one now!
Mac mini M2 | $599 $479 at Amazon
This is one of the best-value Macs that money can buy, but only at the reduced price of $499. This routinely sees discounts of $100 and is well worth waiting for.
Price checker: $599 at Apple | $599 at Best Buy | $599 at B&H Photo
I love hyperbole, but I can’t emphasize enough just how much the Ember Mug 2 is my favorite piece of technology in my home. On the outside it looks like a simple black mug for tea and coffee but inside it has a magical heating element and a Bluetooth chip that makes it the coolest mug around. Pick one up, you won’t regret it as you sip coffee at the perfect temperature that was brewed the day before yesterday.
Ember Smart Mug 2 | $149 $120 at Amazon
Hot coffee, whenever you get around to drinking it. At $120, this amazing smart mug will save you the indignity of downing cold coffee for the rest of your life.
Tammy Rogers: Deals and Reviews
Q Acoustics 3020i bookshelf speakers
While I pen the words you read, the music I listen to comes from one of two sources: a pair of headphones (which changes depending on my mood) or an old pair of Qacoustic 2010i speakers, hooked up to an external amp (which plays over a DAC, again changing by mood). Those speakers have been there since I popped the desk together, making the center of my loud desktop audio system. And now, as Meat Loaf sings All Revved Up With No Place To Go at top volume and my brain melts into a kind of Prime Day flavored soup, I’m reminded just how good Q Acoustics speakers are — and the 3020i speakers in this deal are just as epic as my older model, if not even better. Loud, compact, and good-looking — everything you could want. They are passive which means you can’t plug them straight into the side of your MacBook, but pop them into an amp or a desktop power amp and you’re away. A $100 discount is a very solid saving too, and when you’re pumping your tunes at top volume and singing along at the top of your lungs, I reckon you’ll agree with me.
Q Acoustics 3020i | $449 $341 at Amazon
The Q Acoustics 3020i bookshelf speakers are some very tasty pieces of audio gear indeed, and this deal makes them an absolute steal. They are not cheap per se, but $100 off is a great discount that makes it a whole lot easier to get them on your desk or on your bookshelf.
Bang & Olufsen Beoplay EX
In-ear headphones aren’t traditionally my bag, but there are some spectacular options if you prefer your headphones with a more… invasive fit. The AirPods Pro 2 are a great option, or the ever-faithful options from the likes of Sony and Sennheiser. What if, however, you’ve got a bit more money to spend? What if you want something more luxury, more exclusive — that happen to sound really as well? Bang & Olufsen make some truly stunning audio gear already, and the Beoplay EX are the firm's foray into the in-ear headphones category, and I really really like them. They are comfortable, with what feels like 1 million different fitting options in the box, they’re filled with features like solid noise canceling and wireless charging, and the case is made of cold, cold metal. They’re also, at the moment, reduced by over $100 in the Prime Day sales, so you too can experience their brilliance without having to spend $400 on them. And so, when I go to bed tonight for my pre-bedtime reading ritual, it’ll be these that I slip into my ears so that I can destroy the insides of my noggin with pulverizing death metal. Bliss.
Bang & Olufsen Beoplay EX | $399 $284 at Amazon
The BeoPlay EX are a fairly expensive pair of headphones even at their Prime Day price, but this deal makes them at least a little more affordable. A $120 discount is nothing to be sniffed at, no matter how much something costs full price.
James Bentley: Staff Writer
Though I do love the unique experience of building and customizing a PC myself with specially chosen parts, the Alienware Aurora R15 makes a great pitch for itself. For just $2000, it comes with a Ryzen 9 7900x, 32GB of DDR5 RAM, and an RT 4080. This seriously beefy rig will be able to handle pretty much anything I can throw at it, and it looks gorgeous too. Alienware seems to be the closest comparison to Apple in the PC Gaming space and, with rigs this tightly designed, it’s easy to see why.
Alienware Aurora R15: Ryzen 9 7900X, 32GB DDR5 RAM, RTX 4080 | $2,499.97 $1,999.99 at Amazon
Alienware is one of the closest comparisons to Apple in the PC gaming space. For raw specs, you can often shop smart and get something similar on paper for cheaper but the build quality is so high that you end up thankful for that extra cost when it continues running excellently years from now. Luckily, with a $500 reduction, this is downright affordable for those awesome specs.
At a whopping 59% off, the Blue Baby Bottle condenser microphone is one of the best deals I’ve found the entire weekend. Great for podcasters, streamers, and, most importantly for me, musicians, it has a fantastic look and incredibly range sound. It even comes with a shock mount and protective case, making it great for setting up at a venue.
Blue Microphone Baby Bottle | $399.99 $163.49 at Amazon
A truly astonishing deal – you can get this Baby Bottle condenser microphone at a whopping $230 discount right now. Providing clear sound and a great look, this is an excellent microphone for any music production setup. The XLR connection means you can plug it straight into the Focusrite above, too.
Stephen Warwick has written about Apple for five years at iMore and previously elsewhere. He covers all of iMore's latest breaking news regarding all of Apple's products and services, both hardware and software. Stephen has interviewed industry experts in a range of fields including finance, litigation, security, and more. He also specializes in curating and reviewing audio hardware and has experience beyond journalism in sound engineering, production, and design. Before becoming a writer Stephen studied Ancient History at University and also worked at Apple for more than two years. Stephen is also a host on the iMore show, a weekly podcast recorded live that discusses the latest in breaking Apple news, as well as featuring fun trivia about all things Apple. Follow him on Twitter @stephenwarwick9
- Tammy RogersSenior Staff Writer
- James Bentley
- Gerald LynchEditor in Chief
- Daryl BaxterFeatures Editor
- John-Anthony DisottoHow To Editor