Last week, a sad-eyed young man in an Apple Genius t-shirt said the six words no Apple aficionado wants to hear. "Your AirPods Pro 2," he said, "are borked".
He probably didn't use the word "borked", but that's what he meant: the right earbud was completely gone, and the left was on its way out too; my buds were out of warranty and I didn't have AppleCare on them either so I'd have had to replace both buds at full price. So you'd think I'd be rushing to Walmart or Amazon to take advantage of their $199 AirPods Pro 2 deals.
But I'm not, and I don't think you should either.
• See all of today's best Amazon deals
Why I'm keeping my AirPods Pro 2 powder dry
I'm hanging on for a few more days because while $50 off a pair of AirPods Pro 2 is a nice discount, it's not an amazing discount – and we've seen amazing AirPods Pro 2 discounts before.
Last summer, Amazon dropped the price of AirPods Pro 2 down to a very low $169. And last Black Friday it went lower still: AirPods Pro 2 were down to just $153.99 – and those were the USB-C ones, not the older Lightning ones.
Are you willing to hang on until next week in the hope that Amazon Prime Day will offer a bigger discount than $50 off the official price? I am.
The $153.99 price of Black Friday was an outlier, but they'd fallen to $159 on multiple occasions before that, and within in the last year their price has dropped below $175 on 10 occasions.
UK AirPods Pro 2 deals haven't been so spectacular, sadly: the AirPods Pro 2 dropped from the usual £229 to £179 just once, in December 2024, and they've only dipped below the £190 mark a handful of times. But today they're back up at £229, so I'd expect them to drop back down a bit next week, and for other places to match or exceed Amazon's discounting.
I'm not completely headphone-free, so while I do need to replace my AirPods Pro 2 pretty soon (I use them a lot for work, and for checking music mixes) I think the smart move is to wait for Prime Day next week to see how low they're going to go.
If they don't drop below the $199 mark then I haven't lost anything, but if they go much lower then buying a new pair is going to be a lot less painful.
Prime Day starts next week on Tuesday 8 July.
Amazon's early Prime Day sale - quick links
- Amazon Prime membership: free 30-day trial
- Amazon Devices: 50% off TVs, Echo & Fire Sticks
- Apple: AirPods + iPads from $99
- Back to school: deals from $5.99
- Beauty: 80% off toothbrushes & skincare
- Headphones: $120 off Bose, Apple & Sony
- Health: electric toothbrushes from $24.99
- Kitchen: 54% off Ninja, Nespresso & Keurig
- Laptops: record-low prices from $175
- Tablets: iPads and Samsung from $54.99
- Toys: 40% off Lego, scooters & Toniebox
- TVs: cheap TVs from $59.99
- Vacuums: Shark, Bissell & Dyson from $49.99