Amazon's Prime Big Deal Days sale returns in October

Black Friday might be the biggest shopping event of the year, but before that rolls around, Amazon likes to serve us a little aperitif in the shape of its Prime Big Deal Days, which the company has announced will take place on October 6 and 7 this year.

Amazon is promising deals across more than 35 product categories when the two-day sale kicks off at 3:01am ET on October 6. New deals will arrive three times daily and appear under the Today's Big Deals banner, with Amazon teasing involvement from the likes of Shark, Anker, Sony and Lego. You can also be pretty confident that there will be some big savings on Amazon's own products too, with Kindle and Echo devices usually featuring prominently in these events.

If you're reading this, you'll no doubt be keeping an eye on all the tech deals that pop up, but with discounts on kitchen equipment, fashion, beauty, homeware and more, it's a good time to start your holiday shopping early. Given the time of year, Amazon will also have a Top 100+ Deals for Halloween section for those who want their candy and costumes sorted in good time.

If you're an Alexa user, you can ask the assistant to create deal alerts on specific product categories you want to shop, and you can also set a target price on an item that Alexa can automatically purchase on your behalf if a deal becomes available at that price. If you already have an Amazon shopping list on your account, Alexa can check to see if there are any available deals on anything you've added to it in the past.

We'd always advise using a price tracker such as CamelCamelCamel or Keepa to check price history information for Amazon, as these sale events can be sneaky about making you think every deal is unmissable or unlikely to be beaten anytime soon. And keep an eye on early deals, some of which Amazon has already told us about.