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Amazon has been selling its line of inexpensive Fire tablets for years, and it isn’t shy about stating that they are a method to access Amazon content while on the road. This enables the business to provide a high-quality product for a competitive price. A charming, simple-to-use 8-inch tablet, the Fire HD 8, only functions within of Amazon’s walled garden. It’s the best sub-tablet on the market right now for basic streaming services, picture books, kid’s games, and Zoom calls and has a faster processor and more RAM than the 2018 model.
However, because Amazon limits the Fire HD 8 to its own subpar app store, you won’t find nearly as many services on it as you will on other Android and Apple tablets. The Fire HD 8 has undoubtedly been the greatest low-cost tablet available for several years, especially for Amazon Prime members who can benefit from all the bundled material that comes with that membership. Even though The HD 8 isn’t a terrific tablet, it still performs admirably considering its low cost and has a sufficiently bright and clear display. also, you can check our article on Amazon Fire HD 8 review.
Design
Almost identical to the Amazon Fire HD 8 from two years ago is the Amazon Fire HD 8 (2022). Although the ports and buttons have shifted a little, they are still within a millimetre of one another in all directions. Amazon affirms that the Fire HD 8 appears to be made to be dropped. The manufacturer boasts that the Fire HD 8 is twice as sturdy as the Apple iPad mini in drop tests (2021). That makes sense because it feels like a toy.
When using one of Amazon’s cases with a kickstand flap when the tablet is in landscape mode, the front-facing camera is on top of the tablet. The camera is on the side of the screen when you hold the tablet in portrait orientation, which actually makes for a more natural appearance in video calls than looking too high or low. It’s a beautiful touch, albeit unintentional. It’s possible for the tablet to become confused about which way the volume rocker was turned up. Pressing up on the volume would occasionally result in the volume being decreased if the orientation was rotated too quickly.
The headphone jack and expandable memory on this handset are retro mobile features that we enjoy. Kids may use this item easily in the backseat, and corded headphones are more cost-effective than wireless ones. You can travel without a network connection thanks to expandable memory. All you have to do to stream without Wi-Fi is download a tonne of content to a microSD card.
Amazon Fire HD 8 review: Display
The 8-inch display is precisely the same as the previous iteration, with a resolution of 1,280 x 800 and a pixel density of 189ppi, while the rest of the design has undergone a few tweaks. This is somewhat low resolution in comparison to more expensive tablets and contemporary smartphones, but it’s sufficient for casual viewing of content like Netflix, Prime Video, or YouTube.
The Fire HD 8 (2022) at least sees a minor improvement in colour reproduction, covering 78.7% of the sRGB spectrum as opposed to the 2020 model’s 70.8%. However, the display’s mechanics haven’t altered. Don’t anticipate the richest and most vibrant colors—this is still not exceptional. In our tests, the contrast ratio scored better, coming in at 1,826:1, and the peak brightness of 457cd/m2 is a noticeable improvement.
Software
Although Amazon uses Google’s Android, it doesn’t make financial sense to licence all of the Google Play services. As a result, you get Amazon’s version of Android, which is a significantly scaled-down version of what you’d find on a more powerful tablet. Google Maps, Google Movies, and the Google Play Store with all of its games are not available. Not even a Gmail app exists. Therefore, the lock screen displayed a different advertisement each time we turned it on. you can read our article on Amazon Fire HD 8 review.
We had to swipe the screen twice or more to remove the advertisement and input our passcode because it was touch-resistant. The pages on the home screen are pre-arranged by Amazon and cannot be customized. You are presented with the Home screen, which has a locked, cluttered recommendation bar up top and each app you download tiled at the bottom. To access your Library, swipe to the left. Here you’ll find all of your apps as well as your Amazon content, such as Kindle novels, Audible audiobooks, and a Prime Video watchlist.
From Home, you may access the For You page, which provides ideas based on your context. You also get a tonne of download, buy, and try options along with the weather and your most recently used apps. Additionally, there are advices on what to talk to Alexa. The Fire HD 8 will respond if you yell “Alexa” at it. In our tests, it consistently responded later and more slowly than the Amazon Echo devices. It was more difficult to connect to and produced a lot more errors.
Hardware and performance
Budget tablets aren’t recognized for having the power and speed of an iPad Pro, so Amazon had to strike a balance by creating a tablet that could accomplish what you needed it to without being too cumbersome to use. For the most part, that’s what you get from the Fire HD 8’s newest 2.0GHz processor. We put it through its paces with a variety of apps and games to see how it fared, and according to Amazon, it has a 30% speed improvement over the previous generation.
The tablet was more than capable of keeping up with the visuals and animations in casual games. There were a few games where it had some difficulty. As an illustration, Asphalt 9 might occasionally see some stuttering and frame dipping, but never to the point where it would hang or crash. Real Racing 3, even if its resolution wasn’t very sharp, didn’t seem to present as big of a problem. That didn’t stop us from enjoying using it when we felt like playing a quick round of Crossy Road or another light-hearted game, though.
Running out of storage space with Fire tablets is one issue we frequently experience while using them. Only 32GB or 64GB of storage are currently available from Amazon, which is a small amount of space. But if you purchase a fast microSD card, you may increase that storage and have the memory card used as internal storage, allowing you to instal apps and save files and photographs on it. The one issue we had with “adopting” a microSD card in this manner was that it led to more instances of game crashes when the card was used instead of the internal storage. We’d much rather see Amazon provide greater capacities right out of the box.
Amazon Fire HD 8 review: Camera
Amazon equipped the Fire HD 8 with front and rear cameras, but it didn’t enhance the cameras to an acceptable level. The majority of users don’t buy tablets specifically for their cameras. They both still only have 2 MP. You may expect to be disappointed with the device’s image quality, even in well-lit circumstances. Despite having a little quantity of megapixels, you’ll nonetheless discover that the cameras are adequate for capturing unimportant images or making emergency video calls.
You shouldn’t purchase the Amazon Fire HD 8 if you want to take pictures. Unless you want to try out a camera because you’ve never used one before. The 2MP cameras on the front and back of the Amazon Fire HD 8 are a step forward from, say, a truly dated feature phone from the early 2000s. However, these entry-level cameras work well enough for what they are.
Sometimes you just need to take a shot for reference without worrying about the picture’s quality, or you need to perform something like scan a QR code. In contrast, video calls are the most likely application for which you’ll use the front camera. And it does that quite fine, offering 720p video at 30 frames per second, which is on par with even some high-end laptops introduced in the previous two or three years. Even if the picture quality isn’t the best, it serves its purpose just well, like most other aspects of this tablet.
Battery life
Fire devices’ battery life keeps getting better. With the new Fire HD 8 tablet, Amazon now guarantees up to 13 hours of continuous use, up from the previous 12 hours. Keep in mind that you cannot wirelessly charge this gadget, unlike the Fire HD Plus variant. In our testing, we used the device heavily in the nights and went two whole days without charging it. also, you can learn our article on Amazon Fire HD 8 review.
It takes about 5 hours to fully charge the gadget using the supplied 5W adaptor. However, because the tablet includes a USB-C charging port like the majority of smartphones, you may charge it more quickly by using a power adapter and cable that are significantly more powerful. A 45W charger we tested took just 3 hours to fully charge from zero, which is significantly less time than the recommended 5 hours.
Amazon Fire HD 8 review: Price and availability
On October 19, the Amazon Fire HD 8 (2022) will be available for purchase. The 32GB and 64GB models have beginning prices of $99.99 and $129.99, respectively. More RAM and 3GB of memory are included with the larger storage option, compared to 2GB in the smaller model. That might matter, but the tablet’s performance wasn’t strong enough to persuade us that it would.
The Fire HD 8 (2022) is more expensive than the model from 2020. Although we are aware that increasing prices are a result of the current economic situation, it still hurts when you don’t get much more for the money. Two additional cores on the processor might be worth a few dollars apiece.
Conclusion
For people who want something for basic media consumption but don’t want to shell out for a gadget like the iPad or a more expensive Android tablet, the Amazon Fire tablet series has long offered a big-screen experience. These gadgets do prominently feature Amazon’s apps and services, but for the money, they’re hard to beat.
The Amazon Fire HD 8 from 2022 is the most recent item in this line-up. The 2022 Fire HD 8 improves upon the previous generation model with a quicker processor and a marginally larger battery. The modifications are slight, but they result in a tablet that, at this price range, is still hard to beat.