Over the past couple of years, Amazon has had a hard time turning its annual summer Prime Day into anything more than a glorified clearance rack. Today, however, the site had a chance to redeem itself during the Cyber Monday shopping blitz that occurs between Black Friday and Giving Tuesday.
And thankfully, it didn’t waste the opportunity. Amazon is offering discounts of 30 to 50 percent on its own e-readers and tablets, and is also including these items as freebies when customers purchase other products—for example, today anyone who buys Rosetta Stone language software for $149 will get a free Kindle Fire HD 6.
This time, however, the deals don’t drop off once you go outside the Amazon family of electronics—there are thousands of other great items on sale (in fact, the retail giant claims it’s offering 75,000 discounts this week).
The video game nerd in your family will love the Xbox One S—and if you order the console today, you can bundle it with a full game digital download of the new first person shooter games Battlefield 1 or Gears of War 4 and save almost $100.
Amazon hasn’t abandoned print books in its quest for Kindle dominance—indeed, one of the day’s best deals is reserved for them. Anyone who orders at least $25 worth of books and then enters the code HOLIDAYBOOK at checkout automatically gets $10 off.
Prefer movies to video games? Amazon is offering select DVDs three for $13.99, Blu-Rays three for $19.99 and TV seasons three for $29.99. And unlike in previous years, the items on sale are Oscar and Emmy-winning titles that you’ll actually want to buy.
For the reader/science nut on your gift list, there’s no better gift than a one-year subscription to National Geographic for only $19. That works out to $1.58 an issue, which is a 74 percent discount on the normal price—Time, Entertainment Weekly and Fortune, among others, are also discounted.
Need some new accessories for your tool belt? He’ll be extra prepared with the DeWalt compact drill set, on sale for 50 percent off and perfect for the gearhead on your gift list.
Want to make Christmas baking easier? Get her a KitchenAid six-quart Bowl-Lift Stand Mixer for 60 percent off.
And after all that mixing, you deserve a vacation—luckily stylish Tumi Vapor Light Luggage is 50 percent off today as well.
If this is all too square for you, however, never fear—there are still some weird Prime Day-style deals, including over 30 percent off the Kickstarter-backed adult board game Exploding Kittens.
As the above video notes, Amazon is racing against its own high expectations this year—last year Amazon customers bought 54 million items on Cyber Monday (that’s 629 items per second). This is also eating into in-store sales—early figures show that 109 million people shopped online on Black Friday, while only 99 million braved the in-store crowds.
“If you don’t enjoy the festival of going out on Black Friday, you don’t have to,” Yahoo Finance writer Myles Udland says in the video. “You don’t have to talk to anybody.”
Most of Amazon’s Cyber Monday deals expire at 12 AM EST (9 PM PST) tonight.
