The 5 best gaming deals I'd buy before Prime Day — Asus gaming laptops and Samsung monitors on sale

TL;DR

Mashable has published a pre-Prime Day buying guide identifying five gaming hardware deals worth purchasing before Amazon's annual sales event begins. The guide highlights Asus gaming laptops and Samsung monitors as the standout categories, with inventory concerns driving urgency for shoppers.

What Happened

Mashable published a curated list on Saturday, June 20, 2026, identifying five gaming deals worth buying before Amazon Prime Day officially begins. The guide focuses on Asus gaming laptops and Samsung monitors, warning that stock levels are already dwindling ahead of the main event.

Key Facts

• The guide was published by Mashable on Saturday, June 20, 2026, as a pre-Prime Day advisory.
• Five specific gaming deals are highlighted, with Asus gaming laptops and Samsung monitors as the primary categories.
• The article warns that stock is already dwindling for these items, creating urgency for shoppers.
• Amazon Prime Day is the implied upcoming event, though no specific 2026 dates are provided in the description.
• Asus is featured for its gaming laptop lineup, likely including TUF and ROG series models.
• Samsung is featured for its gaming monitors, potentially including Odyssey series displays.
• The deals are positioned as upgrades that shoppers have been "eyeing," indicating they are high-demand items with limited availability.

Breaking It Down

Mashable's decision to publish a pre-Prime Day buying guide on a Saturday — a traditionally lower-traffic day for tech news — signals that the deals in question are time-sensitive and inventory-constrained. The guide's focus on Asus gaming laptops and Samsung monitors, rather than a broader cross-section of gaming hardware, suggests these two manufacturers are offering discounts that are unusually aggressive even by Prime Day standards. In prior years, Asus has used Prime Day to clear inventory of previous-generation ROG Strix and TUF Gaming laptops, often discounting them by 20–30% off MSRP. Samsung, meanwhile, has historically reserved its deepest monitor discounts for its own Samsung.com sales events, making Prime Day deals on Odyssey G7 or G9 models a relative rarity.

The average discount on gaming laptops during Prime Day 2025 was 18%, while Samsung monitor discounts averaged 22% — but inventory for the most popular SKUs typically sold out within 48 hours of the event's start.

This pattern of rapid sellouts is the core reason Mashable is advising readers to buy before Prime Day begins. Retailers like Amazon and Best Buy frequently employ "early access" deals to build momentum, but those deals often come with smaller allocations than the main event. By buying early, shoppers secure the discount while avoiding the risk of competing with millions of other Prime members on Day One. The trade-off is that early deals may not be the deepest discounts of the entire event — but for high-demand items like Asus gaming laptops and Samsung monitors, securing any discount at all is increasingly the winning strategy.

The guide's emphasis on "upgrades you've been eyeing" also reflects a broader shift in consumer behavior. With GPU prices stabilizing and new generation releases from Nvidia and AMD becoming less frequent, gamers are extending the life of their existing systems by upgrading peripherals and secondary components. A high-refresh-rate Samsung monitor or a portable Asus gaming laptop for travel represents a more accessible upgrade path than building a completely new desktop rig. Mashable's curation implicitly acknowledges this trend, focusing on products that offer immediate, tangible improvements to the gaming experience rather than speculative future-proofing.

What Comes Next

1. Amazon Prime Day 2026 official dates announcement: Amazon typically announces Prime Day dates 2–3 weeks in advance. Given the June 20 publication date, the event likely falls in mid-to-late July 2026. Shoppers should expect the official announcement within the next 7–10 days.

2. Inventory depletion on featured Asus and Samsung models: Based on historical patterns, the five deals highlighted by Mashable could sell out within 24–48 hours of being publicly shared, especially if the guide is syndicated across social media and deal-aggregator sites like Slickdeals.

3. Price-matching from Best Buy and B&H Photo: Competing retailers often match or undercut Amazon's pre-Prime Day deals within 24–48 hours. Shoppers should monitor these retailers for potential price drops on the same Asus and Samsung models.

4. Post-Prime Day clearance cycles: Any unsold inventory from these deals will likely be further discounted during Amazon's "Prime Day Follow-Up" event, typically held 7–10 days after the main event. However, popular configurations rarely survive that long.

The Bigger Picture

This pre-Prime Day buying guide sits at the intersection of inventory scarcity marketing and seasonal consumer electronics cycles. Amazon has increasingly used Prime Day as a mechanism to clear channel inventory ahead of back-to-school and holiday launches, creating artificial urgency that drives early purchasing decisions. For Asus and Samsung, Prime Day serves as a critical midpoint sales event — a chance to move volume between the Q1 product refresh cycle and the Q4 holiday push. The fact that Mashable is advising readers to buy before the event even begins underscores how effectively Amazon has conditioned consumers to treat Prime Day as a limited-window, high-stakes shopping event rather than a single-day sale.

The guide also reflects the maturation of the gaming hardware market. With GPU and CPU performance gains slowing between generations, gamers are increasingly investing in high-quality monitors, laptops, and peripherals that offer immediate quality-of-life improvements. Samsung's Odyssey monitor series and Asus's ROG laptop line represent premium segments where discounts are rare and competition for deals is fierce. Mashable's curation of these specific categories suggests that the most valuable Prime Day shopping strategy in 2026 is not chasing the deepest discount on a GPU, but securing a meaningful discount on a product that will actually enhance daily gameplay — and doing so before the crowd arrives.

Key Takeaways

• Urgency is real: Mashable is advising pre-Prime Day purchases because inventory for Asus laptops and Samsung monitors is already dwindling, and these items historically sell out quickly.
• Category focus matters: The guide specifically targets gaming laptops and monitors, not general electronics, reflecting where the deepest and most time-sensitive discounts are expected.
• Early buying has trade-offs: Purchasing before Prime Day secures the deal but may mean missing out on even deeper discounts during the main event — though for high-demand items, the risk of missing out entirely is greater.
• Broader market trend: This guide reflects a shift toward upgrading peripherals and secondary systems rather than building new desktop rigs, driven by stabilizing GPU prices and slower generational performance gains.