Finding good deals on tech products in the wild can be a challenge, as Amazon may only expose you to suggested products that you’ve already expressed interest in.
So finding stuff that’s newly on your list can require the use of other tools.
Here’s a few ways that I look for tech deals on Amazon.
#1. Amazon’s Gold Box Deals
This is a faceted navigation search directly on Amazon where Amazon lists their best deals.
The link I provide below already has all of the relevant tech / electronics categories selected.
You can find the tool here.
#2. Tech News & Blogs
Most major tech news outlets will publish alerts and content around the biggest and best deals. Typically, these are lightning deals on Amazon and only available for a day or less, so you have to be ready to act fast.
Additionally, you can also setup a Google Alert for the product you’re shopping for. Any time a major news outlet writes about it you’ll get an alert.
It’s an easier way to cover a lot of ground on your tech deal search.
#3 – Amazon Warehouse
Amazon’s Warhouse deals are items that are returned. Typically, they are still in perfect or great shape and the only difference is that it was returned by another Amazon shopper.
However, there are significant savings up for grabs.
You can find the Amazon Warehouse deals here.
What tech products are best to shop for on Amazon?
I would argue that most tech products are worth shopping for on Amazon. Amazon has reached such a gargantuan size that their prices across the tech industry are as competitive as anywhere for most categories.
Occasionally, I’ll find certain brands aren’t as widely available on Amazon or certain models might be exclusive to other retailers or the manufacturer themselves. But in most cases, that’s few and far between.Â
Helpful Tools & Resources
There are a few tools that can make the shopping process easier.
Camel x 3
Perhaps my favorite tool is CamelCamelCamel (CCC). CCC is an Amazon price tracker. It tracks prices over time and provides an easy to search database of the pricing trends for each product.
With as often as products seem to be on sale on Amazon it can be really hard to know what’s a deal and what’s not. CCC gives you the information to determine if a price is good or not.
Keepa
Keepa.com is another price tracker tool, like CCC. However, it also has an automatically curated deals page here.
The filters on their deals page aren’t great, so you need to know reasonably well what you’re looking for. But it does a great job of pulling everything into one list.Â
What about Fake Reviews?
As a first step to determining good from bad products is to look at the published reviews.
Initially, I look at all of the 1 star reviews to try and understand if there are legitimate problems with the product.
Many times, especially with tech products, less savvy consumers may slam the product with a 1 star review because of a factor unrelated to the product’s performance of specs.
I frequently see 1 star reviews for shipping and delivery issues, consumers ordering the wrong part, or the product doing (or not doing) something that it was never designed to do. In many cases, I discount 1 star reviews for these reasons.
Next, I look at the 5 star reviews. Here, I’m really looking for reviews that don’t pass the smell test.
Word choice, sentence structure, unverified reviews, and large number of reviews around a tight time frame can all be indicators of a fake review.
As a last step, it’s incredibly helpful to use a 3rd party review analyzer. My favorite is ReviewMeta, but there are definitely others as well.
Review Meta and services like it analyze all of the reviews around a particular product. They look at the factors I indicated above, in addition to other factors like deleted reviews, rating trends, brand repetition, and more to help determine if the reviews around a product are genuine.
Because it’s an automated tool they are able to analyze all available reviews and create an adjusted rating score based on the reviews it feels are the most genuine. Tools like Review Meta are by far the best way to spot a fake review.
Importance of Warranties
Certainly, a good warranty never hurts. However, it always is worth reading through the warranty to understand what’s actually covered.Â
When I’m shopping for a new PC, electronics, or other tech products I always look for products that contain some type of a warranty.
The big thing I look for are warranties that are notably shorter than the average for that product.
If a typical robot vacuum has a warranty of 2 years with 1 year on the battery, but a competitor robot vacuum has only 1 year and 6 months on the battery, that’s a red flag for me. It indicates to me that the manufacturer isn’t confident of their own quality.
My last tip on warranties is to be wary of the warranties from companies overseas.
Here I’m not talking about companies like LG or Samsung that are based overseas, but have a massive international and US presence. But instead, smaller and mid-sized overseas companies.
In my experience, these companies may offer a warranty, but are also more likely to have difficulties actually servicing the warranty.
Should you buy tech products on Amazon?
Amazon is arguably the best place to buy tech products. They are typically the lowest price available.
NewEgg.com is the other major eCommerce platform that I look to for tech products because of their selection, similar price point to Amazon, and superior reviews (especially for PC components).
NewEgg users on average seem to be more tech savvy, so many times the reviews are simply more actionable.
Often, I will read reviews on both platforms for the same product to get a more well rounded feel for the product’s performance.
The Final Word
Here’s a few final parting tips for shopping for electronics on Amazon and elsewhere.
- Be aware of retailer specific models. This is basically when a retailer has a model made specific for them to sell. Usually they do this so they are able to set a lower price or offer a specific set of specs / features. Sometimes these specific models are better than the regular model, sometimes not. It’s just important to be aware and compare specs to the original model.
- Be careful when shopping on major sales holidays. Some deals might not be as good as they appear. For this reason, it’s always a good idea to use a price tracker (like CamelCamelCamel) to double check.
- Don’t completely disregard niche shopping sites. While Amazon is my go-to for 95% of electronics there are some areas where they are weak. Mechanical keyboards is one of my favorite examples. Amazon’s selection is okay at best. And while a domain like  https://mechanicalkeyboards.com/ may sound sketchy at first, it’s easily the best place I’ve found to purchase these specific keywords (which have a huge following among nerds, gamers, and typing professionals).
Think we missed a deal or have a question? Let us know in the comments down below.