Is It Worth Subscribing to Prime Video Without Amazon Prime Shipping?

Subscribing to a streaming service could be a large dedication. This could particularly ring true for providers like Amazon Prime Video, which provides you a number of membership choices. Here’s a take a look at whether or not it will be price subscribing to Prime Video as a standalone service with out turning into a Prime member.

What Does Amazon Prime Video Supply?

With a Prime Video subscription, you possibly can entry a large assortment of films, TV exhibits, reside sports activities, and reside TV, together with 24/7 information protection. Prime Video additionally provides Originals and Exclusives, documentaries, music titles, and actuality TV. You can even subscribe to exterior “channels” and providers from the app, which makes managing subscriptions simpler.

Prime Video has a formidable catalog of films and TV exhibits spanning genres and languages and a strategy to buy and lease particular person titles that aren’t included in your Prime Video plan.

Your Membership Choices

You may entry Prime Video with an Amazon Prime membership ($14.99/month or $139/12 months) or a scholar membership ($7.49/month or $69/12 months). If you wish to skip the Prime subscription and get the standalone Prime Video membership, you can be paying $8.99/month. You additionally get a 30-day free trial in these plans, given that you’re an eligible new member.

The Better of Prime Video

With Prime Video, you possibly can benefit from some first rate options like offline viewing, X-rays for motion pictures and TV exhibits for higher discovery, Extremely HD viewing on choose titles, and the power so as to add a number of profiles. The app additionally enables you to filter motion pictures and TV exhibits by style, with featured collections like “Dwelling Premiere” and “Critically Acclaimed” obtainable to flick thru.

You can even create a watch checklist of your favourite anticipated motion pictures and TV exhibits and a “Youngsters” profile with parental controls. I discover that Prime Video’s Dwell TV part is an efficient strategy to discover sports activities, information, and household channels that run across the clock, with a well-organized schedule and a protracted checklist of channels.

Gadget Integration

Having Prime Video means you possibly can watch exhibits and flicks anytime, anyplace, in your most popular gadgets. Appropriate gadgets and providers embrace:

• Smart TVs and Blu-ray gamers (manufacturers embrace Sony, Samsung, LG, Panasonic and extra)
• iOS gadgets (iPhone, iPad, iPod Contact, Mac) by way of the App Retailer
• Android gadgets by way of the Google Play Retailer
• Home windows
• Sport consoles (Sony PlayStation 3, Sony PlayStation 4/Professional, Sony PlayStation 5, Microsoft Xbox Collection X and Collection S, and Xbox One)
• Set-top packing containers
• Google Chromecast

Prime Video may also be seamlessly built-in with Amazon gadgets, together with Hearth TV or Hearth TV Stick, Echo devices with a display, and Fire Tablet. With the online app, you too can view your favourite titles in your browser of selection.

Prime Video Subscriptions

With a Prime Video subscription, you possibly can handle your subscriptions for channels and different streaming providers in a single place. A couple of prime subscription choices embrace Paramount+, Crave, StackTV, and MGM. There’s something for everybody, together with sports activities followers (Fubo Sports activities, Sportsnet, DAZN, and extra), anime followers (Crunchyroll), and cinephiles (Sundance Now).

After the app’s redesign earlier this year, you possibly can simply view, handle, and cancel subscriptions utilizing a streamlined interface. Whereas this could possibly be one thing that proves helpful in case you are somebody keen to commit a handful of subscriptions, it may also be tough to need to discover completely different subscriptions to unlock the very best watching expertise attainable.

Prime Video’s Restrictions

A serious drawback that you simply may face as a Prime Video person is the limited advertisements for movies and TV shows. Going ad-free requires an extra fee of $2.99 per month on prime of your standalone subscription or Prime subscription, which could be a large ache level when pondering whether or not that subscription is price it.

One other roadblock is, in fact, the necessity to shell out more money to lease or purchase sure titles that aren’t coated by your Prime Video subscription. Some titles could solely be obtainable on partnered channels, with most reside TV channels requiring a price on prime of your base subscription. This takes away from the idea of getting reside TV as a part of the app, with many reside information channels and sports activities occasions being behind a paywall. The base version also excludes Dolby Imaginative and prescient HDR and Dolby Atmos audio for supported platforms.

What About Prime Transport?

An Amazon Prime subscription, which prices $14.99/month or $139/12 months, could be a sensible method to save cash in the long term. You’d be paying $8.99/month (or roughly $107.90/12 months) for a Prime Video membership, which might prevent solely about $6 per thirty days or $32 a 12 months. Additional, you wouldn’t be getting any Prime membership advantages, which embrace:

• Free delivery on eligible gadgets once you order from Amazon
• Prime Video plan that’s just like what your fundamental subscription plan would appear like
• Amazon Prime Music
• A reduced plan on Amazon Music Unlimited
• Prime Gaming
• Prime Studying
• Prime Images, which provides you limitless picture storage on Amazon Drive

A Prime membership would additionally provide you with some bonus purchasing advantages like early entry to Prime Day offers and rewards playing cards.

The Verdict: Is It Value It?

The not-so-simple reply is that it relies upon. A great way to gauge whether or not a month-to-month subscription could be in your favor is to check out the free trial interval. If you’re a fan of the library that Prime Video provides, then the month-to-month price wouldn’t really feel like a burden in your pockets. Prime Video does supply an fascinating pool of titles, together with Originals and Exclusives. You continue to have a sensible choice of films and TV exhibits you can stream in top quality, obtain, and watch on any suitable system.

Alternatively, there are a couple of disadvantages to only going for the Prime Video membership, together with restrictions on titles and channels, the necessity to subscribe to different providers for an exhaustive library, and advertisements. This might make the membership appear much less economical, relying on how impressed you might be by Prime Video’s assortment.

One possibility could be to skip the Prime Video membership altogether and simply pay for the choose titles that you simply wish to lease or purchase. Different streaming providers, like YouTube, additionally supply this function. However this might add up you probably have a protracted checklist of titles that you’re all in favour of, through which case a fundamental subscription plan may simply be the way in which to go.

On the finish of the day, in case you are not large on free delivery and different perks supplied by a Prime membership, contemplating a standalone Prime Video membership could possibly be a attainable route.

If the advantages look interesting, nonetheless, it will be extra economical to only go together with the month-to-month or yearly Prime membership plan, entry Prime Video, and presumably take a look at channels or titles that you simply wish to purchase or lease. Past saving cash, the perks you get from this plan may supersede combing by way of Prime Video to determine what titles are included in your fundamental plan.