- Let's see if we can help you answer the question today.
And that question is, is Amazon Prime worth it?
Is it worth me buying Amazon Prime?
We will try and answer that today on Dotto Tech.
(upbeat music)
Steve Dotto here, how the heck you doing this fine day?
And I thought we would take a look at the benefits
of Amazon Prime today because there are a lot.
There's some that are really evident
and there's some that are not quite so evident,
that might make a difference whether or not
you decide that Amazon Prime is worth the investment.
But before we dive, in full disclosure,
I am an Amazon Prime user.
I use it here in Canada and some of the benefits
might be a little bit different
than they are in your country.
So you'll just have to verify the benefits yourself
before you choose to purchase.
The other thing is if you do decide to
sign up for Amazon Prime and you click through
using the link that included in the description,
then I will be compensated as an Amazon affiliate
for you signing up.
Just in the spirit of full disclosure.
Now Amazon Prime, as you know,
is primarily a club that allows you to get some extra
benefits from Amazon, and the most relevant benefits
are the free and fast shipping.
When you go shopping on Amazon
you'll see that little Prime badge
next to a variety of different products.
And for people who are Prime members,
we typically look for that badge
because it means A, you get free shipping,
B, you get fast shipping
and C, its probably a product
that has a fairly good track record with Amazon
in order for them to be part of the Prime program.
Now Amazon doesn't sell all of their products themselves,
they're a marketplace where there are thousands of companies
selling their products through Amazon's website.
And the quality of those vendors can vary from
excellent to not so excellent.
But overall you can expect that you're gonna get
reasonable support, reasonable service
and reasonable quality,
if you're buying Amazon Prime product.
There's a certain peace of mind that's attached
to purchasing something with Amazon Prime,
plus you get it super fast.
I think that the free shipping,
the one and two day free shipping,
is probably the reason most of us are initially drawn
to Amazon Prime.
I know its the reason that I was first drawn
to purchase Amazon Prime because I hated tryna figure out
how much it was gonna cost me to ship it.
'Cause the shipping varied so much on different products
that I would order, that the peace of mind
of knowing that its going to be included,
that made the Prime membership, kind of something,
that I really was drawn to right at the beginning.
But after I bought the membership I discovered
all of the additional benefits,
of which there are so many.
One that probably has been the most delightful to me
is the Amazon Prime video service,
which is called Prime Video.
Now you can download the app on your smartphone or tablet
or on your computer, very similar to Netflix,
with of course a completely different mix
of content available.
Amazon licenses a lot of existing content
and I don't think that their licensed content
quite compares with the value
that you might get on a Netflix,
which is far more aggressive as far as that's concerned.
But Amazon does have some Prime properties they do license,
as well, they have a lot of original series
that they create themselves,
which are proving to be very entertaining.
They're winning all sorts of awards for
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel for example.
If we take a look at the Amazon originals here,
if we go through the list here.
Let me scroll down and take a look at the original series.
Look at what they've got.
They've got the Jack Ryan series, the Tom Clancy series.
The Man in the High Castle,
which is a very popular series, which is now and its,
what it's, fourth or fifth season.
That they've got, available of that.
As I mentioned they have The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
They have the somewhat controversial Good Omens series,
which is doing quite well.
So they've got a lot of series that they've released
and they're creating themselves.
And you got to recognize the fact
that Amazon is committed to this delivery platform
and they're gonna continue to invest.
There's gonna be lots of competition in the space.
Apples getting into the space, of course,
Netflix, Hulu, there's lots of other streaming services.
But Amazon is a player,
and having it included with your Prime membership for free,
effectively, is a big bonus.
As is Amazon's music service,
especially if you use Alexa as your smart home device.
Amazon Music, is again, a very good collection of music.
There's no complete music collection,
they've licensed a lot of songs.
So for background music, enjoying listening to songs,
Amazon Music is another option for you
that's incorporated in the cost of your Prime membership.
And every one of these things that we add on
layers some additional value to your Amazon membership.
Now I think those are the kind of the top level things
that most people think about, shipping, video and music,
as the main benefits that they get
with the Prime membership.
But the stuff that's kind of pleasant surprises,
that's also included, Amazon Prime Reading,
which i think is so cool.
This one surprised the heck out of me.
Amazon allows us to get access to quite a broad selection
of best-selling books and good quality books for free.
It's called Prime Reading and you can download
a Kindle app onto your smartphone, onto your tablet,
or if you have a Kindle reader you can use that of course.
So it's pretty much device independent
as far as reading these books.
But if you take a look, as you scroll over,
this is what books that they have available.
But you see the price?
It's $0 for Prime.
The original Harry Potter, Michael Crichton book.
We can go through and we can see non-fiction, fiction,
science fiction and fantasy.
French books, if you want, mysteries and thrillers.
We've got a pretty broad selection of books.
Now I will let you know right off the top,
that most of this series of books,
you'll often get the first book of a series of
three or five or seven books.
When they got multiple books in this series,
you'll often get the first book in this series for free,
seldom will you find all of the books
in the series for free.
For example you don't get all seven Harry Potter books,
you only get the first book for free.
But having said that its still great to decide
whether or not you're interested in the book,
and there's lots of standalone books available as well.
Amazon Prime Reading,
a really pleasant surprise from Amazon.
The last benefit that I'm going to talk about in this video
is one that, frankly, I'm surprised
more people don't talk about or are not more aware of,
and that is Amazon Photos.
Amazon includes Amazon Photos in your Prime membership
and the big difference between Amazon Photos,
which is for backing up and storing and sharing your photos.
The big difference between Amazon Photos and Google Photos,
which is of course a very popular photo app, is this,
unlimited, full resolution, photo storage with Prime.
You don't have to compress your photos,
they are the full resolution photos
that you're backing up and it's unlimited.
You have all of the ability to create albums,
to share them, to create automatic syncing
and have apps for your smartphone or your desktop computer.
All of that is built into Amazon Photos
as you would expect,
but the key is it's full resolution.
You don't have to compromise the quality of your photos
at all in, so this is especially valuable
for more serious photographers out there.
Now before I wrap things up,
depending on what geography you're in,
you might have some additional benefits
that are included in your Prime membership
that I don't have access to.
But as far as I'm concerned the benefits that I've outlined,
the free and fast shipping,
the extra deals, the extra pricing deals,
the video, music, photos.
I know I'm missing, oh, the reading.
All of that combined to make Amazon Prime,
as far as I'm concerned, great value.
But you can decide for yourself,
and now I think you know a little bit better.
Would love to hear your thoughts.
Are you using Amazon Prime?
Did I miss your favorite feature in Amazon Prime?
Let me know in the comments below
and until next time Steve Dotto.
Have fun storming a castle.