As streaming service prices continue to rise, and with only so much time available to watch your favorite new series and movies, it's more important than ever to be wise about which services you're paying for and which ones you're skipping.
A cluttered OS makes navigation tedious
Paid options obscure free titles
Prime Video has one of the most exhausting interfaces to navigate. It's a confusing portal that purposefully mixes in titles that are free on the service with titles that you have to pay for. Because Prime Video is both a subscribed streaming service but also a marketplace, it throws at you a bunch of channels and individual titles that it wants you to purchase. That mix makes it really hard to find what you want to watch.
That is, of course, by design. Prime doesn't really care about getting you to what you want to watch; it wants to overwhelm you with options that get you to pay more money. So as you scroll, you'll quickly encounter titles that are on channels you haven't paid for, and new movies that were just released on VOD that cost a lot of money to rent for a short period. There's no easy way to get around the paid options to find what you're looking for, and even when you do, the Prime algorithm is among the worst available.
Ads and commercials are everywhere
Prime Video encourages shopping
One of the biggest problems is the prevalence of ads on Prime. While lots of streamers are problematic when it comes to ads, Prime is by far the worst. If you pay for the ad-free tier, you're still not immune from some of the sneakier ways Prime will grab your attention. You'll still get promos before playing titles, although these can be skipped.
It's not just standard commercials that are an issue though. Amazon is keen on pairing its streaming service with its giant online marketplace, aiming to make shopping while streaming an easy and common occurrence. Prime wants you to be able to tag items on screen, such as clothes or accessories, and place them in your Amazon cart for purchase. What's more, it looks like dynamic ads will be coming to Prime next year, in which targeted billboards, posters, or even whole commercials within the show you are watching will be displayed in the background.
User experience is uninspired
Scrolling through Prime is a chore
Prime Video doesn't do a lot to make the user experience of finding and watching titles particularly enjoyable. While they do allow you to customize profiles with icons from Prime originals, an offering that just about every other streaming service has, once you get into the service there isn't a lot that's eye-catching or remarkable. It doesn't have the beauty of Apple TV or the creativity of Netflix. It's not even organized in a sensible way like Disney+ is.
The carousels are vague and limited, making scrolling exhausting. Prime has a lot of titles in its extensive library, but you wouldn't know it if you were simply scrolling to find something interesting to watch. Prime is designed to get you to watch whatever new title it wants you to watch; it makes searching its catalog discouraging.
You also have to be ready as a viewer when your title is finished, because Prime will put something new on as soon as possible. It doesn't want you to sit and watch the credits or soak in what you just watched. It will automatically put on a new and often unrelated title as soon as possible so to keep you watching, a ploy that is both irritating and insulting.
Prime has poor original programming
Titles follow trends and algorithms
What makes these habits by Prime even more egregious is the fact that it doesn't make particularly good originals. The shows that are creative, thoughtful, or actually original are few and far between, and they don't tend to last long. Instead, Prime creates shows through algorithms, pumping money into movies featuring big stars and bland scripts. These titles are meant to be played on in the background while, Prime hopes, you're shopping on Amazon.
Most shows are derivative, with one category containing shows about tough men doing tough things (Terminal List, Cross, Reacher, Jack Ryan), or attractive, affluent young people creating melodrama (We Were Liars, The Girlfriend, I Know What You Did Last Summer). These are all shows that are just going off what's trendy and what people are watching. Major action productions, like Red One, G20, and Citadel, were huge misfires and mostly unwatchable. Then there is War of the Worlds, which is basically a 90-minute commercial in support of Amazon and billionaires.
Prime is expensive and superfluous
Enjoy free trials before jumping to a better alternative
Prime Video is part of Amazon's huge ecosystem, and Amazon wants you to take part in all of it. It's not really enough for them to simply have you on Prime; the company wants you on its marketplace place, subscribing to Audible, and listening to Amazon Music. It's a large group of interconnected services that wants you to keep adding to your cart, keep subscribing to new channels, and keep renting new movies. As an ecosystem, however, I would argue Apple is the better deal. Apple TV also allows you to buy and rent new movies as well as subscribe to additional TV channels, but the interface is much better, and OS is more enjoyable and less intrusive. There are also better deals to add on Apple Music and other services that are superior to Amazon.
You also just don't need to be paying for Prime that often. Amazon gives out a lot of free trials throughout the year, and it's easy to snag anywhere from one to three months for free. That should be plenty of time to get through what you want to watch on the service before taking a break and returning next year. Don't pay if you don't have to.