Red Dot Blue Dot's Best Amazon Prime Day Deals for Travelers
PRIME DAY UPDATE II:
Just about every frequent traveler we know has the Bose QuietComfort 25 Acoustic Noise Cancelling Headphones, which are normally $198 and are $99 right now as a Prime Day Lightning Deal. If you’ve been wanting a pair, snag them quickly. If they’re sold out or you prefer another option, you can see other headphones on Prime Day specials here (including some that don’t go over your ears).
If you are deciding between a Kindle and another tablet device, don’t forget that with iPadOS coming out in a few weeks, the iPad is going to be an unstoppable travel machine. This particular prime deal is fantastic at 30% off an iPad Pro!
PRIME DAY UPDATE:
Buy a $25 Amazon gift card and get a $5 credit off a future purchase. Just add $25 or more in Amazon.com gift cards to your account and enter promo code GCPRIME19.
If you’re in the market for a cheap tripod you can throw in the trunk, this Amazon Basics 50 inch tripod is just $10.49 or $34.99 for a four pack, including bag(s). While we haven’t personally used this one, it looks like a great option for conditions that aren’t ideal, like to take to the beach, or to use if you’re photographing severe weather. Nothing fancy here, just 3 legs for stabilization.
The Adobe Creative Cloud Photography Plan one year subscription is $95.99 ($23 off) during Prime Day and includes Lightroom Classic for desktop workflows, Lightroom for desktop, web and mobile, Photoshop, Spark Premium, Adobe Portfolio, and 20 GB of cloud storage. This is a great deal and you get a few dollars off. Very convenient to have the latest software!
If you carry a card with food allergy information, prescriptions, want to make your own luggage tags, etc., you need a laminator. This Amazon Basics one is just $15.39.
Many of my favorite travel snacks are on sale, but you can’t see the prices until you put the item in your cart and go to check out. 12 pack boxes of Kind bars are on sale for $9.24 and the new nut butter bars are 35% off, too.
And I already ordered a variety pack of Bare Baked Crunchy Apple Chips, Banana Chips, and Coconut Chips. They’re delicious and at $9.93 after the discount, you get six bags for the price of two at an airport. . If there’s a flavor you prefer, 24 packs of one flavor are just $15.59, or about the cost of three at an airport.
For warm weather destinations, or just to keep in my bag without worrying about melting chocolate, I love 100 calorie bags of Blue Diamond Almonds. They’re also on sale for 35% off.
Personally, I’ve very loyal to my eBags MotherLode Mini 21” Wheeled Carry-On, but if you prefer Samsonite, they’re on sale right now up to 60% off. And Amazon Basics luggage is discounted 20% or more.
I am constantly borrowing Keith’s portable charger to charge my phone when planes don’t have outlets., here is an option Amazon has on sale today, Anker PowerCore 10000 high-speed portable charger. If you can grab one fast enough, they’re just $19.99 as a lightning deal.
I don’t think you can have too many phone charging cords. I like to just keep extras in a cord pouch in my bag rather than having to remember to pack them for trips, and take one I can leave in the rental car at night and a separate one to use in the hotel or Airbnb. Because I left two behind last summer, I was glad to see the Amazon Basics power cords are on sale for Prime Day. I ordered a new 3 foot long red one to hopefully keep me from forgetting it in a rental car or hotel room. At $9.79 for a three foot cord (other lengths and colors are also on sale), it’s about 1/3 the price of needing to buy one at the airport.
ORIGINAL POST:
Amazon’s Prime Day (ok, really two days in 2019) is here! Each of the last five years, we’ve found great deals on items that have enhanced our travels. Here are the items we’re watching for this year (between midnight Sunday, July 14 (Pacific time) and midnight Tuesday, July 16). If we’ve overlooked something, let us know in the comments!
First, if you’re not already a Prime Member, sign up for a free 30 day trial here.
Photo By Amy M. Gardner
In 2018, one of our favorite Amazon Prime Day deals was the Fire TV Stick. Let’s face it, travel can be tiring. And when you’ve spent your day getting out of your comfort zone, there are some nights where you just want to be able to watch TV in your native language. Two weeks into our 10 week, 2018 round-the-world trip, we were in Chicago for 36 hours. At the same time we were leaving lots of things behind, the Fire Stick was one of the few things we added to our bags. We’ve used it in TVs around the world when we’ve just wanted an hour or two of English television that wasn’t just Sky News. It’s small, easy to use, and a godsend when you just want to decompress after long travel days. Normally $49.99, during Prime Day, the Fire TV Stick 4K with Alexa Voice Remote, is just $24.99. And the version we bought, the Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote, is just $14.99 instead of the usual $39.99.
Traveling a lot means not being home. During Prime Day, the Ring Video Doorbell Pro — with a free Echo Dot — is just $169, a discount of more than $100 off the $273.99 normal price. The reason we think the Ring Video Doorbell is a good choice for travelers is because it allows you to answer the door from anywhere and keep an eye your home through the video. You get a mobile alert when someone is at the door, and you can see visitors (and speak to them and hear their responses) from a phone or tablet anywhere in the world.
If you like to read when you travel, and don’t want to haul around books and magazines, the Kindle Unlimited plan is terrific. In addition to access to over a million books, you can also read magazines, listen to audio versions of books that display the "with narration” icon (so you can switch between Kindle and audio versions without having to buy either one), and use it on any device with the Kindle app. (So if you don’t own a Kindle or don’t want to take it on your trip, you can use still use Kindle Unlimited on your iPhone or tablet, or both.) During Prime Day, you can receive three free months of Kindle Unlimited. Note that if you don’t cancel, you will pay $9.99/month after the three month trial period, but you’ll probably find it more than pays for itself when you stop buying $16.99 paperbacks at airports.
I love Audible and use it virtually every day when I’m traveling. Annoying seat mate on the plane? Start a book. Want to learn a new language? Listen to Pimsleur lessons on Audible. Four month wait time for the library book your book club selected, and no time to read? Download it through Audible and listen while you walk through airports. And, my favorite: when I can’t sleep on a plane, Donald Sutherland reading me The Old Man and the Sea has a 100% success rate at putting me to sleep within minutes. During Prime Day, Amazon is offering an amazing deal: Instead of the usual $14.95 per month, you’ll receive three months for $14.95 total. Each month you receive one audiobook and two Audible originals. In addition, you can buy additional books offered as part of their daily deals (usually $2.95-5.95) and their regular specials (often buy one, get one on certain genres). I also love that if you cancel your subscription, the audiobooks are still yours to keep, and if you use one of your free credits on a dud, you can easily return it and pick a new one. (Even if you’ve listened to it.)
I used to travel with my Kindle on every trip, then stopped because I could read books on my phone using the Kindle app. Blame it on older eyes or just being tired of wearing down my phone battery, but this year I’m finally picking up a new Kindle during Prime Day. I was planning to just get the basic Kindle while it’s $30 off but when I realized that the waterproof Paperwhite with 32 GB of storage is just $109.99 (versus the usual $159.99) I started to second guess myself. Hmmm. Any recommendations?
A fellow frequent traveler swears by his Fire HD 10 inch tablet, which he uses primarily to download TV and movies to watch on planes. When I asked him why he doesn’t just watch the free movies or free TV on planes, he reminded me that every time you get on a plane planning to watch a movie is exactly when there’s no individual screen, the movie system is broken, or the only option is Sharknado or Howard the Duck. And, he said, his time is too valuable to hope that the TV and movie system in his steel tube hurling through the air at 20,000 feet is going to work. He may have a point. Take matters into your own hands and head out with your own selections on your Fire HD, which you can also use to read books and magazines, play games, etc.
While this post is going up before we know for sure, I’m hoping my favorite packing cubes will be on sale during Prime Day. As I’ve written about before, the Eagle Creek Specter Compression Packing Cubes are terrific for keeping your clothes organized and freeing up space in your suitcase. As I’m always telling Keith, you can never have too many compression cubes. If they’re on sale tomorrow, I’ll be picking up another set.
If they’re on sale, I’ll get a jump on Christmas shopping and pick up another set of humangear Gotoob Silicon Travel Bottles. They’re great gifts for anyone who has trouble with the 3-1-1 rules, and mine have lasted for years. I’ll also check to see if our favorite travel power strip with surge protector is on sale. While one is enough for the two of us, even with our cameras, iPhones, and laptops, I’d like another one for those times when we are both traveling separately at the same time.
Here are the other items we’ll be watching to restock our supplies:
Tide Sport Travel Sink Packets
Repel bug repellent stick or Ben’s tick and insect repellent wipes
Hand sanitizer (Seriously, do you know how many of these we go through when we’re traveling?) or the individual packets
Check out our post on the items we pack in our First Aid and medicine kits and that you might want to pick up during Prime Day.
Keith will be keeping an eye on memory cards because, like my packing cubes, you can never have too many. He isn’t as concerned about speed and prefers a smaller size like 32GB to spread the pain if there is ever a failure. He only uses SanDisk cards so these are great, but check all the deals to make sure a slower or faster card isn’t cheaper.
And last but not least, I’ve spent so many hours of my life researching and trying out different shoes for travel. I’ve now reached the point where, when I find a pair of shoes that are good for travel, I try to buy a second pair to prolong having to go through the whole hunt all over again. If my favorite New Balance Women’s Cruz Fresh Foam running shoes or Keith’s favorite Arc'teryx Men's Konseal FL are on sale, we’ll be grabbing replacement pairs.
What did I overlook? We’ll update this post during Prime Day—let us know in the comments if you have found other great deals on items that make your travels easier.