Turns Out You All Like Free Money —

The 12 most popular Prime Day 2020 deals, as chosen by Ars readers

We peel back the curtain to reveal what people are actually buying on Prime Day.

sony wh-1000xm4
Enlarge / Sony's WH-1000XM4 noise-canceling headphones.
Jeff Dunn

With Amazon Prime Day comes a flood of discounts, but in truth, only a fraction of those are worth jumping on. So we've spent the last couple of days trying to pick out the deals most worth your attention from Amazon's self-manufactured shopping holiday.

With the event scheduled to end by tomorrow, though, we thought it would be fun to have our final Prime Day post share the most purchased items by readers here at Ars. To be clear: we absolutely do not (and can not) track individual buying habits, but we are able to see what's received the most attention in anonymized aggregate.

Furthermore, don't take this as a scientific set of data. We've highlighted specific products as especially noteworthy within our deal roundups, with entire articles dedicated to the best Amazon device deals and the best Apple device deals. Naturally, some of the products that got the most prominent call-outs wound up among the most popular. (We appreciate your faith in our recommendations, by the way.) Without getting too deep into the minutiae of retailer affiliate networks, we'll also note that the items below are only based on Tuesday's activity.

Regardless, if you've been curious to know what everyone is actually buying from Amazon's bonanza, here are the most popular Prime Day deals, according to you folks.

Free Amazon money, with a couple of hoops

Amazon boxes.
Enlarge / Amazon boxes.
This shouldn't come as a surprise, but the most popular Prime Day deal among Arsians was, essentially, free money. (You've always been a savvy bunch.) As we noted in our best Prime Day deals under $50 roundup, Amazon is running a promotion that gives $10 in promotional store credit to Prime members who pick up at least $40 in Amazon gift cards or reload an existing gift card balance with at least $40.

Amazon says it will apply the credit to your account within two days of your purchase. You may need to go through an email to redeem it, and you'll have to spend your loot by November 29, but it's not hard to see how "$50 for $40" is an enticing offer at a store that sells as many goods as Amazon. This deal ends alongside Prime Day if you want to take advantage; just be sure to use the "Apply code to your account" button in the link below or the code "GC20PRIME" at checkout.

  • Get $10 promo credit when you buy an Amazon gift card of $40 or more or reload a gift card balance with $40 or more (use code: GC20PRIME).

New 4K streamers

The Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K.
Enlarge / The Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K.
Jeff Dunn
Number 2 on the list was Amazon's Fire TV Stick 4K, a media streamer we've recommended on multiple occasions in the past. Our biggest complaint with the streamer is its insistence on pushing Amazon-related content in its user interface, but with Prime Day's audience almost exclusively made up of Prime members, that may have been less of an issue.

More likely, though, devices like the Fire TV Stick 4K and competing Roku Streaming Stick+ are very similar from a core functionality standpoint, and Amazon's device was cheaper. The Streaming Stick+ was the seventh-most popular deal among Ars readers, but whereas it was on sale for $37, the Fire TV Stick 4K was priced down to $30.

Unfortunately, the Fire TV Stick 4K's deal has since expired, but the Roku deal is still kicking as of this writing.

Roku Streaming Stick+

(Ars Technica may earn compensation for sales from links on this post through affiliate programs.)

Going wireless with AirPods

Apple's AirPods Pro are great noise-canceling headphones that are truly wireless headphones.
Enlarge / Apple's AirPods Pro are great noise-canceling headphones that are truly wireless headphones.
The third-most popular Prime Day deal among Ars readers was Apple's AirPods Pro, which, even at its $199 deal price, is far from a budget buy like the products above. Still, true wireless headphones are the trend these days, and the AirPods Pro are among the best: we recently recommended them as the best set of noise-canceling earphones with this form factor. It helps that this deal matches the best price we've seen.

We'll lump in the base-model AirPods here, too, as they were the 10th-most popular Prime Day deal. Down to $115 for Prime Day, this is the best price we've seen on the easy-to-use earbuds, but more Ars readers seemed to think the noise-cancellation and improved sound of the AirPods Pro were worth the extra investment.

(Ars Technica may earn compensation for sales from links on this post through affiliate programs.)

The best e-reader for most people

Amazon's Kindle Paperwhite is waterproof and comfortable to use.
Enlarge / Amazon's Kindle Paperwhite is waterproof and comfortable to use.
Valentina Palladino
Number 4 was Amazon's Kindle Paperwhite, which we've long recommended as the best e-reader for most people. Prime Day brought it down to a new low of $80, and with the COVID-19 pandemic cooping more people up inside, it seems like a sensible buy for those in this market.

Amazon Kindle Paperwhite

(Ars Technica may earn compensation for sales from links on this post through affiliate programs.)

Stocking up on microSD storage

Samsung's EVO Select microSD cards.
Enlarge / Samsung's EVO Select microSD cards.
Samsung
The fifth-most popular deal was Samsung's 256GB EVO Select microSD card. This is another one that got a specific call-out in our general Prime Day deals roundup: as we said in that post, the EVO Select isn't the absolute fastest card you can buy, but it finds a nice middle ground between faster cards that cost much more and cheaper cards that are too slow to comfortably recommend. It should get the job done on a Nintendo Switch, GoPro, Android phone, and the like, and at $28—another new low—for 256GB of storage, it's a solid value.

Samsung EVO Select

(Ars Technica may earn compensation for sales from links on this post through affiliate programs.)

A Switch classic

The "climb a tower to get a map" thing is a bit played out, but <i>Breath of the Wild</i> makes it work.
Enlarge / The "climb a tower to get a map" thing is a bit played out, but Breath of the Wild makes it work.
The sixth-most popular deal was The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for the Nintendo Switch. This was one of a handful of first-party Switch games that dropped down to $40 for Prime Day. Breath of the Wild is more or less a must-play for new Switch owners, and while we've seen its price drop lower in the past, this was as cheap as it's been since Black Friday last year. Sadly, many of those Switch game deals appear to have expired, though we're likely to see them return as we get closer to Black Friday and Cyber Monday next month.

Blocking out the noise

The XM4 are highly comfortable to wear over the course of a work day.
Enlarge / The XM4 are highly comfortable to wear over the course of a work day.
Jeff Dunn

Sony WH-1000XM4 + $25 Amazon gift card

(Ars Technica may earn compensation for sales from links on this post through affiliate programs.)
With the aforementioned Roku Streaming Stick+ at Number 7, we'll move to the eighth-most popular deal: the Sony WH-1000XM4. These are Sony's latest wireless noise-canceling headphones, and we recently gave them a hearty recommendation in our working-from-home gear guide. They're certainly expensive, but their active noise cancellation is among the most effective available, they're comfortable to wear for hours at a time, and their sound, while not exactly neutral by default, is nicely detailed and customizable through Sony's companion app.

Bose's Noise Cancelling Headphones 700 have similarly excellent noise cancellation and the ability to adjust the intensity of the effect, but that pair did not receive a significant Prime Day deal. This $50 discount was the XM4's first major price cut since launching in August, and it came with a $25 gift card for good measure.

A little bit Alexa

The third-gen Amazon Echo Dot.
Enlarge / The third-gen Amazon Echo Dot.
Amazon

Amazon Echo Dot (3rd gen)

(Ars Technica may earn compensation for sales from links on this post through affiliate programs.)
Though we've covered a litany of privacy and data security concerns surrounding smart speakers like the Echo Dot, Amazon's diminutive digital helper was the ninth-most popular deal with Ars readers on Prime Day. It's also worth noting that this deal applied to the third-gen version speaker, as Amazon launched a redesigned fourth-gen follow-up last month. Since that device won't be released until October 22, we may see discounts on that new device on Black Friday.

Nevertheless, even if this Prime Day deal was something of a fire sale, there isn't much difference between either model from a functionality standpoint. At $19, it's still an inexpensive way to have Amazon's Alexa assistant set timers and control smart home devices.

Smartening up the kitchen and garage

Chamberlain's MyQ Smart Garage Hub.
Enlarge / Chamberlain's MyQ Smart Garage Hub.
Cahmberlain
We'll close with a couple deals that fell just outside the top 10 despite being products we don't typically cover on Ars. First up was the 3-quart Instant Pot Ultra, which was down to a new low of $50. This is a smaller variant of the mega-popular pressure cooker, meant more for one- or two-person households than larger families. It has since sold out, though a Prime Day deal that takes $50 off the larger 10-quart Instant Pot Duo Nova is currently available for those interested in this sort of set-it-and-forget-it cooking.

Just behind that as the 12th-most popular deal was Chamberlain's MyQ Smart Garage Hub, a controller that lets you open a garage door through your phone, works with most garage doors, and supports services like IFTTT and the Google Assistant (but not Alexa). It's not the most full-featured device of its type, but at a new low of $17 for Prime Day, it was certainly affordable.

Channel Ars Technica