Technologies
9 hidden Amazon perks other than Prime shipping and video to save money now
You know the big ones: Prime Video, Prime Music and Prime’s free shipping. But there’s a ton of Amazon features that you might not know about and will want to start using ASAP to save some cash.

Amazon has made a name for itself as the supplier of just about anything. But in addition to two-day and even same-day shipping for Amazon Prime members, the trillion-dollar tech titan has dozens of other services just a few clicks away from the homepage. Some, like Amazon Prime Video and Prime Music, make headlines. Others tend to get buried in the vastness of Amazon’s super site. We’re here to help uncover the best of the bunch.
Amazon expanded its reach during the pandemic — with visits increasing 37% from February 2020 to January 2021 — as it pushed new programs, including Amazon Sidewalk, the auto-on broadband-sharing program for Amazon Echo speakers and Ring devices. But its shopping services continue to be its bread and butter.
For avid Amazon shoppers, a heap of lesser known features can score you big perks if you know where to look, including steep discounts on expensive items and free books. We’ve scouted Amazon’s jungle of services to find the most useful (and surprising) Amazon programs that you can use today.
Read more: Amazon Prime Video: The 25 best films to see this week
1. Free reading with Prime Reading and Kindle Unlimited
Prime Reading is your own personal lending library that comes with a Prime membership. With a rotating selection of over 2,500 books and magazines, you can access Prime Reading with the Kindle app on your desktop or portable device or your Kindle e-reader. This Amazon service also lets you share titles with members of your household. Some books in Prime Reading come with Audible narrations so you can multitask while you listen.
Prime Reading also includes First Reads, which gives members a sneak peek at books before they’re released to the general public.
Kindle Unlimited is a $10-a-month subscription service separate from an Amazon Prime account. It gives you unlimited access to more than 1 million ebooks and up to three magazine subscriptions on a Kindle device or Kindle app.
2. Trade in used devices to redeem gift cards and shop preowned, discounted products
Amazon is boarding the train to sustainability station, and it’s something you can directly benefit from. With Amazon Trade-In, you can send back your used electronics in exchange for Amazon gift cards. Make sure to check on the eligibility of each product — some trade-in options are only available for a limited time.
Amazon Renewed gives you access to products that may have been opened but unused by their original owners, or were refurbished. Amazon assures that these preowned items work and look like new, coming with the Amazon Renewed Guarantee. A variety of products and brands are available, even from premium names like Apple and Vitamix.
3. Shop Amazon’s Warehouse items at a discount
Amazon Warehouse resells millions of like-new or preowned items that have been returned by customers. Some of the products only had their boxes opened by original purchasers before they were sent back, unused, so they’re sold again at a discount. While there’s no regular manufacturing warranty on these products, they are backed by Amazon’s 30-day return policy and 90-day renewed item return policy.
To read more about how you can get the most out of Amazon Warehouse, check out our guide on shopping for the best deals on Amazon Warehouse.
4. Find discounts on overstock in Amazon Outlet
Just like a brick-and-mortar outlet store, but without the gas money. The Amazon Outlet features overstocked items and other products at a discounted price. Like at an outlet, you can find premium brands, items under $10 and products ranging from home furniture and clothing to books and pet supplies. It’s a good place to stay within a budget while being the first owner, unlike some items in the Amazon Warehouse.
Keep in mind that although the online shopping experience is convenient, just like an outlet, the best deals sometimes take some sifting to find. Luckily, you can do it from the couch.
5. Discover limited-time offers with Lightning Deals
Amazon’s Lightning Deals are a promotion where a product or service is on sale for a short period of time or until it’s sold out. You can find them all throughout the site, but especially on Prime Day and in Today’s Deals. On Prime Day, Lightning Deals are only for Prime members.
There is one lightning deal per customer until the promotion ends or all the deals are claimed by other shoppers. You can join a waitlist for a deal, but keep in mind that these discounts are extremely time-sensitive, so grab them fast. Unless refreshing the page over and over is your thing, these deals aren’t necessarily the tool to find something specific because of their fleeting nature and limited availability.
6. Back up photos and videos with Amazon Photos
Amazon’s online shoebox for photos and videos offers secure and unlimited full-resolution photo storage plus 5 GB of video for Prime members. To use this feature, you can choose to manually or automatically upload media in the Amazon Photos app. You can personalize the displays on Amazon devices like Fire TV, Echo Show and Fire tablets as long as you have the app. There are also ways to create keepsakes using the pictures you upload, such as custom cards and prints.
With the Family Vault perk, up to five family members can share in the same plan. If you want more beyond what Prime offers, there are paid plans available. If you choose to switch — which can be done anytime — there is a 100GB option for $2 per month and 1TB plan for $7 per month.
7. Share Prime benefits with Amazon Household
Sharing is caring, and Amazon Household lets you divvy up Prime benefits and digital content with others. Using Household, share your Prime account with:
- Up to two adults (aged 18 and over), each with their own Amazon account. Adults can manage accounts of teens and children.
- Up to four teens (ages 13 through 17). Teens can have their own Amazon login to shop with parent approval and stream content.
- Up to four children (children can’t shop on Amazon).
8. Shop exclusive discounted Whole Foods hauls
Healthy shopping can rack up the number at the bottom of the receipt. But if you enter your email address, phone number or scan the QR code on your Whole Foods Market app at checkout during your next grocery haul, Prime members receive discounts on select products.
Blue tags indicate sales exclusive to Prime members, while yellow tags mean an extra 10% off of an item already on sale. This gets you discounts on weekly best-sellers, including produce, packaged goods and beauty products, but note that it excludes alcohol. The few cents saved on items may seem insignificant individually, but savings do add up at the end of the shopping trip.
Also, if you don’t want to make the trip across town, Amazon offers two-hour delivery of groceries for free, as long as you meet the minimum purchase amount. But if you don’t mind the drive, there are also one-hour pickup windows depending on your location — just remember to check in with the Amazon app to see if you need to enter the store.
9. Build a wish list with Prime’s wedding registry
If the big day is coming up, Amazon’s wedding registry can get a gift wish list set up for everything from daily essentials to group presents. Amazon can help you cover all the gifting bases, and that makes it a convenient option for you and your wedding guests.
The registry includes lists of editors’ picks and best sellers to help you sort through Amazon’s options, while the browsing feature can inspire new ideas or highlight something you may have forgotten about. You can also buy any item that’s left on the registry for 20% off — which can be returned within 180 days if you decide you don’t like it.
For more, here are our picks for the best Alexa devices and which e-reader is right for you.
Technologies
A New Threads Feature Saves You From Seeing and Posting Spoilers: Here’s How It Works
Didn’t want to see that plot twist? Marvel and Netflix were the first to try out Threads’ new spoiler-blocking feature.

Social media can accidentally spoil a streaming movie or show for those who haven’t yet watched it. Threads, the popular social media platform from Meta, now has a new feature that could save you from spoiling your next watch.
The new feature allows users to mark media and text posts as spoilers. If it’s a photo, the spoiler will then appear blurred in feeds, and text will be grayed out. Clicking on both types makes the spoiler visible. Netflix and Marvel are the first major studios to use the feature on their posts. Meta says the feature is rolling out globally, but we saw it available on Friday.
Speaking of spoilers, you may want to stop reading now if you’re not logged in to Threads, the embedded plot-spoiling posts in this story may not be blurred.
Netflix posted a photo from one of the last scenes of Squid Game’s third and final season, with the caption «do not tap until you’ve finished Squid Game 3.»
Marvel teased the villain in the new Ironheart series in a post. You won’t meet the villain until the last episode. You can stream Ironheart on Disney Plus.
We Were Liars on Prime also added a post that uses the new Threads spoiler text feature.
We’ve seen several other updates from Threads this year, including the ability to copy images, thus replacing the need to screenshot. Threads also only recently started testing direct messaging, despite the app being out for around two years.
How to use the spoiler feature on Threads
Anyone can use the spoiler feature on their posts. All you have to do is highlight what you want to hide, tap and select «mark spoiler.» That will blur the text or image you selected for others.
This feature doesn’t mean you won’t see posts about your favorite pop culture and entertainment topics. It lets you choose when you’re ready to know more. All it takes is a tap.
However, it’s worth pointing out that it’s up to those who make the post to decide if they mark something as a spoiler. So spoilers could abound until most people adopt the feature. Even still, it’s good to see a feature that allows you to stay in the loop without spoiling major plot points along the way.
Technologies
Someone Help Me — I Also Need These Sonic the Hedgehog Magic: The Gathering Cards
Sega’s superspeedster is getting some genuinely awesome cards in a limited drop next month.

Magic: The Gathering hit a goldmine earlier this month when it released its Final Fantasy set based on one of the most popular video game franchises of all time. Final Fantasy was reportedly the best-selling Magic set before it even released, thanks to extensive preorders. Now Wizards of the Coast is hoping to repeat that success with Secret Lair drops themed around video game icon Sonic the Hedgehog, launching Monday, July 14.
Depending on which century you were born in, you’ll either recognize Sonic as the star of 1991’s Sega Genesis video game Sonic the Hedgehog, or as the star of Paramount Pictures’ Sonic the Hedgehog movies. (Or maybe you know him from Smash Bros. or Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games, or any of the countless other places he shows up.) Now he’s joining the storied Magic: The Gathering card game in a year where Magic is aggressively investing in crossovers with other properties.
Those crossovers started years ago with The Walking Dead, which became an official Magic series called Universes Beyond when it released a Secret Lair drop for Stranger Things. We’ve gotten Magic cards for everything from Street Fighter to Lord of the Rings, The Evil Dead, Jurassic Park and even SpongeBob. Lord of the Rings was the first full Universes Beyond set, but it set the table for Final Fantasy last month, and we’re getting full sets for both Spider-Man and Avatar: The Last Airbender later this year.
The new Sonic Magic: The Gathering cards are different from the game’s Final Fantasy set because these are Secret Lair products — limited-run drops of a handful of cards, rather than a full set of hundreds of Standard-legal cards. Like many Secret Lair crossover products, they seem aimed at the casual multiplayer Commander format that lets you build decks around your favorite characters and play with a group of friends.
Sonic being a legendary creature with white mana, blue mana and red mana in his color identity, means that a Sonic Commander deck allows you to include his allies Tails, Knuckles and Amy Rose in the deck. Shadow costs red and black mana, which means he doesn’t fit in a Sonic Commander deck, but he would fit in a Dr. Eggman deck.
And, gang, these cards are kinda wild. Whenever Sonic attacks, he puts power-increasing counters on other creatures with flash or haste, which not-so-coincidentally includes all of the aforementioned allies that fit in his deck. And Sonic having the haste ability himself means he can attack the same turn you cast him, virtually guaranteeing one activation. Tails can draw cards when flying vehicles enter — a nice nod to his plane, which first showed up in the late stages of Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Knuckles has a lot going on, including the ability to create treasure tokens that can help you cast spells — or just outright win the game if you have enough while he’s on the battlefield.
There’s also some mechanical synergy between these cards and the new Final Fantasy cards. Amy Rose automatically attaches equipment when she attacks and then can buff the power of other creatures, making her a great fit for the Limit Break Commander deck led by Cloud (or Tifa), which cares about equipment and power stats!
Similarly, Dr. Eggman gets to draw cards at the beginning of your end step — if you also control Y’Shtola Rhul, you get an extra end step, allowing you to draw two cards instead of one for the low, low cost of ending your turn.
All of that adds up to mechanically fun Magic cards that feature a lifelong favorite character for me. And it’ll add up financially if I can get my hands on either the foil Sonic: Friends & Foes collection ($40) or the non-foil collection ($30), the cards in which are less likely to warp from the foil treatment.
There are two other Sonic Secret Lair drops announced, including one that focuses on reprinted artifacts like vehicles and equipment and another that rounds up existing cards that synergize with the new cards. Both will be available in $40 foil or $30 non-foil versions. All three Secret Lair sets go on sale Monday, July 14, at noon ET/9 a.m. ET.
When they do, and I cannot stress this enough, you gotta go fast to get ’em.
Technologies
Steam Summer Sale: Snag 4 Major Borderlands Games for Under $25 Before Borderlands 4
This is an amazingly cheap way to get caught up before the new game launches in September.

If you want to catch up on the Borderlands series before Borderlands 4 comes out on Sept. 12, you won’t find a better opportunity than this. Every mainline Borderlands game is steeply discounted for Steam’s Summer sale, with many of them in the single digits.
You can currently get Borderlands Game of the Year Enhanced, Borderlands 2, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel and Borderlands 3 for a grand total of $22. The first game represents about half that cost, so if you’ve already played that one or want to skip it, you can get the other three for just $12. Various downloadable content is also on sale, if you want to add to the base games.
This is an absolute steal. Borderlands 2 is one of my all-time favorite first-person-shooter games, and despite being more than a decade old, it’s worth about $20 just on its own. For me, it’s the pinnacle (so far) of the series’ hero designs and enemy encounters — for my money, Zer0, Gunzerker and Gaige are three of the most fun vault hunters the series has ever made. And the True Vault Hunter Mode and Ultimate Vault Hunter Modes (the new game plus modes) really add a lot of replay value by ratcheting up the strategy through the increased importance of matching your elemental weapons to the right enemy health type — think type matchups in Pokemon, except with guns.
What I particularly love about the Borderlands series is the customization it offers. The games give you at least four vault hunter classes to choose from, and those classes offer additional options via skill trees that let you adjust the way your vault hunter plays. For instance, Zer0 has options for sniping, stealth or melee. Add in different gun manufacturers whose weapons all have a different feel, plus different categories of guns — pistols, submachine guns, sniper rifles, etc. — and elemental weapon types on top of that, and you end up with a veritable treasure trove of ways to tune your vault hunter’s gameplay.
Also, you can throw grenades that explode money. I almost crashed Borderlands 3 because I was exploding so much money.
The original Borderlands established the formula and some of the regular elements, like soldier and siren classes as well as vending machines for gear and health. It also established some of the recurring characters, like de facto mascot Moxxi. Borderlands 2 refined that formula and introduced an amazing villain who added more narrative depth. The Pre-Sequel shook things up by taking us to space and giving us laser weapons. Borderlands 3 took a step back in terms of narrative and characters, but it added some nice mechanical polish, like being able to mantle up ledges or slide into barrels to send them flying into enemies.
All four of those games will take you about 100 hours total to beat if you stick to the main quests, or closer to 200 hours if you’re the type to get sidetracked occasionally. Pro tip: Talk, finagle or blackmail some friends into playing with you. The games are significantly more fun with other players.
For the complete Borderlands experience, you can also tack on the Dungeons & Dragons-inspired spinoff game Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands for $12 and Tales from the Borderlands, an acclaimed narrative choices game, for $15.
With Borderlands 4 coming out in just a few months, you’re not going to get a better chance to start or add to your collection. Catch a riiide, vault hunters.
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