Save on Apple Watches, AirPods, iPads and more

The latest Apple Watch is down to $280 for Prime Day, down from the $399 list price. The Series 9 was announced during Apple’s iPhone event last fall, and there’s a good chance we’ll see a new model this year, but it likely won’t be this affordable.

The Apple Watch Series 9 is our favorite smartwatch overall, our top pick for an Apple Watch and earned a 92 in our review. It’s great at health and fitness tracking, has a bright always-on display and seamlessly integrates with your iPhone. This fall, it’ll also get fun new updates with watchOS 11, which Apple announced at WWDC.

The Apple Watch SE is the budget model in the lineup and is now down to $170. It’s been selling for $189 for most of the past few months. We recommend it for people looking for excellent integration with iPhone notifications and solid health tracking abilities. It doesn’t have all the sensors as the Apple Watch Series 9, but as we said in our review, you get a lot of features for the money.

The Apple Watch Ultra 2 is on sale for $699.99 for Prime Day, instead of Apple’s $799 list price. As we said in our Apple Watch buyer’s guide, this is the watch to get for adventurers or anyone who needs a bigger screen in a more rugged case. It has a 49mm display, cellular and GPS connectivity and a few features not found on other Apple watches like a dive depth meter and a siren.

Prime Day has dropped the latest AirPods Pro down to $170 from their list price of $249. They’ve regularly hit $189 in the past few months and $180 is the lowest we’ve seen previously. The AirPods Pro are the current recommendation for iOS users in our best earbuds guide thanks to their excellent transparency mode, seamless iPhone and Siri integration, and solid noise cancellation. They’ll soon get an update that’ll let you nod or shake your head to respond to Siri’s questions.

The third generation AirPods are now just $139.99, down from the full $169 price tag. The lowest we’ve seen them go previously is $129. We gave these an 88 in our review thanks to their improved design and audio. Note they have an older chip and lack active noise cancellation, but they are water-resistant and significantly cheaper than the Pro model.

Apple’s over-ear headphones, the AirPods Max are currently $394, down from their list price of $549. The lowest price we tracked prior to this was $430. These earned an 84 in our review back when they came out in 2020.

The major caveat was the price, but we appreciated the excellent and balanced sound as well as the capable active noise cancellation (ANC). And we got 20 hours of use out of the headphones on a single charge, just as Apple promises.

We called the new iPad Air “the iPad to get” in our review this May and it’s the Apple tablet we recommend for most people in our buyer’s guide. Right now, the 11-inch model with 128GB of storage is down to $559 thanks to Amazon’s sale. A $30 discount is the biggest we’ve seen previously. You can pick up the 13-inch version for just $738. 

The new iPad Air houses the M2 chip which makes it plenty fast for everyday productivity and lets it handle more than just casual entertainment. The screen is bright and crisp and the camera has thankfully been moved to the landscape edge.

Apple launched two sizes of the new iPad Pro, each with the latest M4 chip back in May. Currently, the Pro tablet is the only Apple hardware that houses the company’s latest silicon. For Prime Day, you can snag the 11-inch iPad Pro with 256GB of storage for $919, which is down from its $999 list price. 

The 13-inch model with the same capacity is down to $1,198 instead of the full $1,299 sticker. Prior to this, the biggest discounts we saw were $70 and $100 off the two models, respectively. We were impressed with the amazing screen and screamingly powerful performance of the iPad Pro, as you can see in our review, but called it “prohibitively expensive.” This discount may change things a little.

The standard iPad wasn’t replaced during Apple’s iPad event in May, so the 10th generation iPad is still the most current. Prime Day pricing brings it down to $299, which is a record low. With the launch of the new Pro and Air models, Apple permanently cut the list price to $349. We gave it a review score of 85 after its launch in October 2022. It’s also the budget pick in our iPad buying guide.

The iPad mini is the smallest tablet in Apple’s lineup — it also wasn’t replaced this year — and now Amazon has dropped the price down to $380 for Prime Day. The lowest price we tracked prior was $380 during last year’s sale, and the list price is $499. The Mini is our pick for one handed use in our iPad guide and it’s best for those who want something they can easily stuff in a bag or use as a highly capable ereader.

The latest MacBook Air models with the M3 chip are down to $899 for the 13-inch model and $1,189 for the 15-inch size. Prior to this, the lowest prices we’ve tracked were $899 and $1,129, respectively. Apple released the new MacBook Air models back in March and as we note in our review, they aren’t major departures from the prior generation — though that’s not a bad thing. The 13-inch version remains our top recommendation for most people in our buying guide.

The M3-equipped MacBook Pro models came out late last year and cemented them as the ideal notebooks for professionals. For Prime Day, Amazon is selling the 14-inch model with the M3 chip, 8GB of RAM and 512GB of storage for $1,399, after the discount. The 16-inch Pro with the M3 Pro chip, 18GB or memory and 512GB SSD is now $1,999, down from the $2,499 MSRP. We gave both the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro laptops scores of 90 in our review upon their debut, praising the amazing screens, fast chips and solid port selection.

Apple is keeping the 2022 M2-enabled MacBook Air around for the time being — and that’s good. We think it’s the best budget MacBook you can buy. Right now for Prime Day, a configuration with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage is down to $799. That beats Apple’s price of $999. It’s got a bright screen, capable performance and a thin, portable design.

A four-pack of Apple AirTags sell for $99 at full price, though they frequently sell for $80. Right now for Prime Day, they’re down to $75. We think these are the best Bluetooth trackers you can buy if you’re an iPhone user. They rely on Apple’s vast Find My network that calls on every nearby iPhone to anonymously pinpoint an AirTag’s location. We found their locating features to be eerily accurate.

If you get any of Apple’s new iPads and want a compatible Apple Pencil to go with it, you’ll need either the Apple Pencil Pro or the Apple Pencil USB-C. The Apple Pencil Pro is currently $119 for Prime Day. It adds new features like squeeze, roll and haptic feedback and can charge by magnetically attaching to the side of the new iPad models. Just note that it’s only compatible with the new models.

The Apple Pencil USB-C is down to $69 after the Prime Day discount. This one only charges via USB-C, but can attach magnetically for storage. It works with the new iPad Air and Pro models as well as the previous generation iPad models, which you can verify here. The second generation Apple Pencil works with the most recent prior generation iPads, and lets you store and charge the pencil magnetically on the side of your tablet.