A complete guide to Amazon Prime including Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Prime Music (and Amazon Music Unlimited) , Amazon Prime delivery, Amazon Prime Reading and more.
Amazon Prime is continuously growing, both in popularity and in features. To begin with, Amazon Prime was simply a way to get unlimited next day delivery at no extra cost, but it now encompasses a video streaming service, music streaming service, digital books, magazines and comics, unlimited cloud-based photo storage and its newest feature: Amazon Channels.
Read on to find out everything you need to know about Amazon Prime, including its latest new features and how much Amazon Prime costs.
Before we get started, now is a great time to join Amazon Prime because the company is offering a special deal ahead of its Prime Day shopping event on 11 July.
Get £20 off Amazon Prime here .
You can find out more about Amazon Prime Day here .
Quick links Amazon Prime Free Trial Amazon Prime Music Free Trial Amazon Prime Video Free Trial Amazon Prime Student Free Trial
In this section, we’ll be listing all of the different benefits you’ll get if you decide to sign up for Prime, and you can read on further to find out how much it costs and more detailed information about each feature.
The core feature of Amazon Prime is delivery. You’ll get unlimited one-day delivery at no extra cost for millions of eligible items. In some postcodes, which we will go into more detail about below, you can even get unlimited same-day delivery on some items.
Plus, if you’re not in a hurry you can choose no-rush delivery to get promotional credit as a thank you.
Amazon’s Netflix rival is called Amazon Prime Video, and there you’ll find thousands of films and TV shows, some exclusive, to stream. Better yet, you can download them to watch offline. See: Best movies to watch on Amazon Prime.
Amazon’s latest feature, called Amazon Channels, adds to the TV streaming service by introducing 40 TV channels available at an additional cost for Prime members.
Additionally, you’ll get Prime Photos, which gives you a secure way to store unlimited photos in the cloud.
Prime Music is a fairly new addition to Amazon Prime but it is one that is rapidly growing and improving. It’s Amazon’s answer to Spotify with thousands of songs available to stream.
(Amazon has now unveiled Amazon Music Unlimited in the UK, too. It differs to Prime Music by offering more songs but at additional cost – subsidised for Prime members. See Amazon Prime Music vs Amazon Music Unlimited for more.)
If you’re a bargain hunter you’ll like the Prime Early Access feature, which means you’ll get 30-minute early access to Amazon’s Lightning Deals to ensure that you don’t miss out.
And for readers, you’ll enjoy Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, which lets you borrow a book per month for free, as well as a book from the Kindle First picks.
Amazon Pantry is another benefit that offers access to purchase everyday essentials in a virtual box for just £2.99.
Some of these benefits aren’t limited to one individual, either. With Amazon Household, you can share delivery, Prime Video and Kindle Owners’ Lending Library books with one other adult member of your household.
Amazon’s newest feature is called Prime Reading, which lets members download and read unlimited books, comics and magazines from its library of more than 1,000. You can find out more about Prime Reading here.
To get all of the benefits listed above for a year, you can pay an upfront sum of £79, which works out at £6.58 per month. Don’t forget to take advantage of the 30-day free trial first, though.
Some users will have the option to pay the full Amazon Prime service monthly for £7.99 per month, but Amazon tells us that this is limited to a select group of users for now.
There is an option to pay monthly if you only want the Video benefits, but that’ll still cost you £5.99 per month so we think it’s worth paying the £79 if you think you’ll make use of any of the other features.
Read: How to cancel Amazon Prime
For students, there’s a brilliant Amazon Prime six-month trial, after which you’ll pay £39 per year. Amazon Prime Student members do miss out on a few benefit during their free trial, though. You won’t get access to the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library or Kindle Frist, and you can’t share the membership with another member of your household.
And of course, to get access to Prime Student you’ll need to actually be a student! After you graduate, or at the end of your fourth year of the membership, your membership will become an Amazon Prime membership at its full price of £79 unless you cancel.
Another option is to join Amazon Family, which in addition to all of the Amazon Prime benefits listed above gets you 20% off nappies subscriptions and exclusive offers and discounts. The trial is 30 days just like Amazon Prime and costs the same £79. You’ll need to provide a few details about you and your family in order to qualify, and only one membership is available per household.
Below, we go into more detail about each of Amazon Prime’s different services to give you a better idea of what you’ll get if you sign up.
Amazon Prime Video started life as LoveFilm but was purchased by Amazon and transformed a few years ago. It’s a Netflix rival that provides unlimited streaming of more than 15,000 films and TV shows for a monthly fee of £5.99 or as part of the Amazon Prime £79 membership (£39 if you’re a student) .
You’ll find many exclusive Amazon Originals available, including the hugely popular The Man in the High Castle and Mr Robot. You’ll also find the likes of The Walking Dead and Arrow as well as films like The Dark Knight and Paddington. See: How to download Amazon Prime videos.
However, it’s worth noting that not all content is included in the monthly fee, which is where it differs from Netlfix. If the film or TV episode has a Prime banner and you’re already subscribed to Prime, it won’t cost you any extra, but within the service you may also see films and episodes within Amazon’s library that are available to watch ly but require you to cough up some extra cash if you want to buy or rent them.
An added bonus is the fact that you can download many (but not all) of the shows and films available on Amazon Prime Video to watch offline whenever you choose to, perhaps on a commute or on a flight. You can download videos to iPads, iPhones, Android devices and Amazon Fire devices at no additional cost. For more, read: Netflix vs Amazon Prime Video
In addition to Amazon Prime Video, Prime members now have the option to subscribe to further TV via its Channels service. There are 40 TV channels available, each with its own additional subscription fee ranging from 1.49 per month right up to £9.99 per month.
Channels include Discovery for £4.99 per month, Eurosport Player for £6.99 per month, ITV Hub+ for £3.99 per month and more. For the full list of Channels and their prices, visit Amazon Channels.
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If you’re a Prime member, you can get Same-Day evening delivery for no additional charge if you live in an eligible area. For non-Prime members that service would cost £9.99 per delivery.
So far, Amazon has made Bath, Birmingham, Bristol, Dudley, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Hemel Hempsted, London, Milton Keynes, Northampton, Slough, St Albans/Welwyn, Walsall, Woverhampton and Worcester part of the service, and you can check your specific postcode here .
If that’s not quite fast enough for you, you can even get deliveries within the hour thanks to Prime No. Exclusively for Prime members, Amazon Prime Now is an app that you can download for iOS, Android or Amazon devices with a large selection of products that are available to order for delivery within one hour. It’ll still cost £6.99 but that seems a small price to pay if you’ve forgotten to buy an anniversary present and your partner will be home in an hour and fifteen!
You can order from Prime Now for two hour delivery, too, and that’s available for free as part of your Prime membership.
Amazon claims Prime Now servies 30% of the population after it launched in Glasgow on 27 July 2016, adding its first Scottish city. It now covers London, Birmingham, Newcastle, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Portsmouth, South Yorkshire, Surrey and a few surrounding areas.
Yet again, Amazon is going after popular London service – Deliveroo. It has introduced Retaurant Delivery in London via the Prime Now app, for select postcodes to take advantage of.
