You can’t really avoid Amazon these days, especially in the US and UK where it has become a huge part of online shopping. So this review is designed to help you navigate Amazon’s premium “Prime” service and decide whether it’s worth signing up to.
It offers, most famously, unlimited next-day delivery but also provides a whole selection of other bonuses that you might, or might not, have heard of. For everything Prime offers you have to pay just $10.99 per month in the US or an annual fee of £79 per year in the UK.
You can always snag a one month free trial too – if you’ve had Prime or a Prime trial in the last year you might miss out, but Amazon tends to reset this so if you’ve been away long enough you can get back in with a free month.
US: Amazon Prime free 30-day trial| UK: Amazon Prime free 30-day trial
You can’t really avoid Amazon these days, especially in the US and UK where it has become a huge part of online shopping. So this review is designed to help you navigate Amazon’s premium “Prime” service and decide whether it’s worth signing up to.
It offers, most famously, unlimited next-day delivery but also provides a whole selection of other bonuses that you might, or might not, have heard of.
For everything Prime offers you have to pay just $10.99 per month in the US or an annual fee of £79 per year in the UK.
You can usually snag a one-month free trial too. If you’ve had Prime or a Prime trial in the last year you might miss out, but Amazon tends to reset this so if you’ve been away long enough you can get back in with a free month.
Prime is a clever idea, and one that’s not really replicated by anyone else. Sure, Netflix has a video streaming service, but it’s more expensive than Prime and doesn’t have the ability to make things arrive at your house in less than 24 hours. Prime isn’t a pure video service, but it offers one that’s very good.
In case you don’t know what Amazon Prime offers, it’s worth mentioning some of the highlights in this intro.
Free shipping with Amazon Prime
There is the famous next-day delivery in the UK and two-day delivery in the US, while same day delivery is available in certain areas and rolling out further in 2017. Prime delivery is usually only available on ‘Fulfilled by Amazon’ purchases.
Instant access to Kindle ebooks
If you’re a Kindle owner, then your Amazon Prime membership will get you access to a free ebook every month from Kindle First and another free book from the Amazon Kindle Lending Library.
Stream thousands of movies and TV shows
You’ll also get access to the Amazon Prime Instant Video streaming service with hundreds of movies and TV shows, including Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond’s “Grand Tour”.
Over a million songs. Thousands of playlists and stations
There’s Amazon Prime Music which offers free music with millions of tracks and Prime Photos for backing up your photos from a phone or computer. For an additional fee you can unlock Pime Music Unlimited which offers a bigger library.
No matter what the service offers, and the faults that it has – which we’ll explore – the key thing to remember here is that Amazon Video alone is worth the Prime subscription. It’s cheaper than Netflix per year, and everything else that Prime offers can be considered as an added bonus. And there’s a LOT of extras.
1. Amazon Prime Video
We’ve given Amazon Prime Instant Video a full test over here, but we’ll cover most of the important points again in this review. This streaming service has had more names than Cordozar Calvin Broadus, Jr. over the years, but this forms an important part of what Amazon Prime offers.
It is, essentially, a streaming service like Netflix but it’s also included in your yearly (or monthly) Prime subscription. It’s really very impressive value.
The service is available through a series of apps across all types of smart devices. If you’ve got a TV, Blu-ray player or other media player from the last couple of years chances are it’ll have the Amazon Prime Video app. There are also bespoke apps for Android and iOS. The only real omission is desktop – to use Prime Video on a computer you need to go via the main Amazon website which isn’t a great user experience really. There is no Windows 10 app and now modern UI like you get with Netflix.
Downloading shows to your phone or tablet
However, Amazon does allow you to download shows to your devices, a feature which Netflix only recently matched.
This means that you can watch Mr. Robot on the plane, or off the grid, without anyone knowing. One big limitation of this though is that you can only have 25 items downloaded at once. That’s an account limit too, not a device restriction. So if you have two tablets, you’ll only be able to sync 25 items across both. I hit this limit, and I’m not entirely sure what else I had downloaded.
On downloads I’d urge you to select “best” quality for downloads. On an iPad Pro the medium setting didn’t have anywhere near enough detail for my tastes. You can save space though, which is handy. But when you consider the download limit, that’s perhaps somewhat irrelevant.
It’s also worth mentioning that while Amazon’s originals can be downloaded you will see some movies and TV shows which can only be streamed. This is a bit annoying, and again is about the consistency of the user experience – I’ll talk more about this confusion shortly.
Amazon also offers 4K video, HDR support is there although material is limited and the selection of TV shows and movies is good, and growing. Amazon does a lot of deals with US broadcasters to bring their shows to the UK through its service, and that’s great news. If you can work out how to watch it.
Picture and sound quality
Picture and sound quality is, overall, excellent. I have had some problems where a low bitrate stream would run on my high-speed internet. This tends not to be something I see with Netflix, but it also didn’t happen a lot.
The grumble about about apps for phones extends somewhat to devices. The best Amazon player is, weirdly, the Amazon Fire TV. If Amazon is going to be a big part of your video at home, get a Fire TV it does Netflix brilliantly too, but you don’t have the faff you get with non-Amazon products. For example, there’s not an easy way to get Amazon Video on an nVidia Shield, which is a really nice home streamer that competes with Amazon’s.
Sorting the ‘included with Prime’ from the ‘not included with Prime’
As a service Prime Video is excellent, the shows and films are varied but also watch out for the slightly frustrating upsell.
That’s to say, not every show you might see listed on Prime Video is included. Some must be paid for separately. That’s somewhat understandable, and it’s good that there’s more on offer, but even so it lacks the clarity of Netflix, and many have mentioned it to me as a frustration. I doubt anyone will be tricked into buying things they don’t want, but it’s annoying when you see something good to watch and then notice it’s a paid extra.
2. Amazon Music
Amazon Music is a nice little bonus to go along with you Prime subscription. It doesn’t cost extra, but includes a million tracks and curated playlists. It’s not a rival for Spotify, although some people will likely find it good enough and just buy any albums they want to listen to that aren’t included.
The nice thing about the Music service is that it also allows you to upload your own music, as well as keeping a backup of any music you purchase from Amazon. If you buy a CD direct from Amazon, in most cases those tracks will get added to your online streaming package too. This makes this a nicely rounded service, and a real boost given it’s free, or “included” if you prefer.
The quality I found was pretty good. As a rule these streaming services tend to source their digital copies from the same place, so the differences tend to come down to how the music is encoded for streaming.
Amazon offers a desktop app too, which actually works quite well. It can be used to listen to the streaming library, your own uploaded music as well as past purchases. You can also use it to download your music.
Overall I wouldn’t cancel my Spotify subscription for Amazon Music, but again it’s a wonderful bonus that would really suit someone who doesn’t want a full-blown music service. And, to point out the obvious you’re getting the whole of Prime for much less than a year’s Spotify subscription.
3. Amazon Prime’s Kindle Lending Library
A short point on the Kindle Lending Library, as it doesn’t offer a huge amount, but is still a nice bonus. As part of your Amazon Prime membership, you can borrow one book from the Kindle store per calendar month.
There are 600,000 titles that are involved in the Library deal, and the Harry Potter books are included, which I’m kind of hyped about because I have kids (I want to read the books myself, kids are a nifty excuse though).
Interestingly some books – Harry Potter included – have compilations, which count as one book. To borrow through the library, just search for something you want. If it’s included, there will be a Prime logo on your Kindle or Fire tablet next to the title.
Again, the Kindle Library is one of those features that just sweetens the whole Prime deal. It’s not enough to get you to part with your money on its own, but when considered in the wider offer it becomes part of an irresistible package.
There is another service called “Kindle Unlimited” which costs $9.99 in the US and £7.99 per month in the UK and allows you to borrow pretty much any Kindle book. There is a library of 1 million books, and thousands of audiobooks on offer for this fee.
4. Amazon Prime Kindle First
This is a simple one, but it’s also a bit weird. It’s the sort of thing you’d never expect, nor ask for, but its existence is rather delightful. It’s a free (or sometimes low-cost) offering that gives you early access to one of six pre-release books per month.
The books are chosen by editors, and not yet available to the general public. You select the one you want and off you go. Even non-subscribers can do this, but you have to sign-up to a newsletter, and anyone leaving the newsletter will no longer get the cheap/free books.
When I’ve checked the books have been free, but Amazon does warn that sometimes there might be a charge, it is less than a full-priced book though.
5. Amazon Prime Photos
Another simple idea, with Amazon Photos you download an app from your phone’s app store and you can then upload and save unlimited photos on Amazon’s cloud service. This works like Google Photos or Apple’s iCloud – files are automatically uploaded so you know your shots are always backed up, and you get unlimited storage too.
Again, this is a service that you could pay a lot of money for, but Amazon just uses it to sweeten the deal. You can store photos directly from a phone, and there are also PC and Mac apps for your computer.
Like all the services of this type you should use it if you can, as it will keep your images backed up. The only slight warning you should bear in mind is that if you cancel your Prime, then you’ll drop back to the standard storage allowance. You do get 90 days to re-download any images you uploaded though.
6. Amazon Prime delivery
When it launched it was really the next day (UK) / two-day (US) delivery that was “Prime”. As time has gone on the service has evolved and added in new features, but it was the fast, free delivery that kicked it all off.
At the most basic level it allows you to place an order on a Monday and, as long as you don’t miss the cut off time, get it Tuesday/Wednesday. In some regions you can also opt for an evening delivery if you order early enough. Be warned though, the stock available for a same-day evening delivery is not as comprehensive as that for next day. Amazon will tell you what options you have for a delivery though.
My personal experience of Prime’s fast delivery is somewhat mixed. I have ordered things to be delivered same day before and been told as the slot approaches that the order can’t be fulfilled. When this happened the item was then sent the next day. If you’re not a Prime customer when this happens Amazon will refund the delivery cost.
During the course of this review I’ve also ordered things with Prime next day and had some pieces arrive, and some not. Amazon, to its credit, always communicates these problems via email, so there’s never an unpleasant surprise, but it can still be a little annoying and sometimes quite confusing.
My suspicion with all of these deliver hiccups is that Amazon might have some stock accounting problems. If you’ve ever worked in retail then you might have experience similar, perhaps when an item is returned to the store, counted as stock back in but not saleable because it’s been opened. I don’t know how Amazon’s system works, but it could be this or a badly damaged package discovered only when the pick the order from the warehouse that causes problems.
Prime is good, and when it works it will leave you open-mouthed at how Amazon can get you a product you bought in the morning that same evening. It’s not, however, entirely perfect.
Another aspect of Prime’s shopping is access to what’s called “Early Access”. This gives Prime customers a 30-minute head-start on the day’s lightning deals. These are price-reduced products that are available in limited numbers for a limited time. On very popular items it’s handy to be able to see them before the general public, as you can reserve one and jump the queue.
In reality Lightning Deals and Early Access are of limited appeal because you have to simply be in the mood to spend money on something, but have no idea what you might actually want or need. It can be handy for Christmas and Birthday presents, where the deals act as inspiration, but I rarely check the lightning deals because I usually only buy things I’ve planned to buy.
In common with a lot of Amazon’s services through, discovery is an issue. One of the reasons we cover events like Black Friday and Prime Day is to help people find tech deals that they might miss – Amazon needs to work on how it promotes its wares.
7. Amazon Prime Early Access
One extra perk that Prime subscribers get is early access to Amazon’s lightning deals. These are deals that are limited by stock and by time, so it’s a huge advantage to get early access to them. This is particularly important during ‘deals season’ – for example on Prime Day, or Black Friday.
8. Amazon Pantry
Here’s another one of Amazon’s gloriously weird offerings. Pantry costs extra – there’s a $5.99 delivery charge in the US (£2.99 in the UK) but what it gives you is a box which you can fill with various items. It’s nifty for things like bottled water, confectionary and other supplies.
There are sometimes free shipping deals too, which add to the attractiveness of this. That said, the whole business of Amazon’s grocery and household goods is way too complicated. There are at least three different services that offer the same range of things, and all are billed differently. Amazon Fresh, for example, is an additional monthly subscription over your Prime membership.
This one might suit some people, but it’s sort of hidden away. I only found it because I’m being paid to test the Amazon Prime service so I’ve been digging into it.
9. Amazon Prime Now
I’m lucky enough to live in an area served by Prime Now, a service which offers you deliver of certain items within one hour. In traditional Amazon style there is some considerable confusion about the various services.
There is another service, called Amazon Fresh, which is designed entirely for, you guessed it, food. Fresh isn’t available in my area, so I haven’t included it in this review. We will update at some point to include it though.
Prime Now is also another one of the Amazon services that, for some reason, needs its own damn app. In the US there’s a website to order from, but the UK doesn’t offer this so you have to use your phone. This is fiddly and a reasonably poor user experience. I asked the Amazon UK team if it was changing this, it told me it had no current announcement to make.
Where Amazon Prime Now comes into its own – and the good thing about the app – is the incredibly precise order tracking. Amazon drops you a text when the package leaves the depot and from then on you can see the name of your delivery driver and his location. If you’re out for some reason, this could be incredibly useful as it gives you time to get home for the delivery.
Now offers delivery slots that are either “within the next hour” or slots of two hours after that. I made my order at roughly 6pm, and was able to get a slot of 8pm to 10pm. You can also pick the next day if you want, but really this is about same day delivery for items you want quickly.
I ordered some fresh fruit and vegetables in my Amazon Prime Now order, I did this specifically because even normal supermarkets mess this sort of thing up. They arrived in good condition, without bruises.
There is also some considerable promise here. You could wake up in the morning, discover you didn’t have anything for lunch, and have a delivery within a few hours. That’s an interesting addition to the home delivery market, and one that could be a nifty bonus for those in eligible areas.
There is some weirdness though. For example, Amazon asks if you’d like to tip the delivery driver. But it doesn’t do this after the package has been placed in your hands, it does it when you’re buying. Amazon is American, and thus concludes that tips are basically mandatory. I, however, believe they should be for good service. I fear that Amazon uses tips to top up driver pay, and that seems wrong.
Also, it’s not made clear if the driver knows if you tipped or not. I would hope that tips are given as an anonymous lump sum, along with their normal pay, but what if the driver knows? What if he takes longer to get to you because he’s annoyed with your tip? Argh, British people should never tip, it causes a breakdown in the very fabric of our tea drinking universe.
Verdict
This review is thousands of words long. The reason it’s long is that Prime is really an incredible service that offers all sorts of benefits. For a modest subscription fee you get all of the things mentioned above thrown in. It’s cheap, useful and even if you just use next day, or evening delivery a handful of times it’s arguably worth it.
Factor in the amazing Amazon Video, and you find yourself with a proposition that’s nearly impossible to turn down. It costs less over a year than Netflix, and you get a lot more for your money. That’s not to say you shouldn’t subscribe to Netflix too, because that service is remarkable for the modest monthly cost as well.
There is plenty about Amazon that annoys me but the question here is really about the value of Prime. In that regard, I really can’t see how you’d conclude anything other than it being a total bargain.
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