#KINDLE FIRE HDX REVIEW FULL#
#KINDLE FIRE HDX REVIEW FREE#

Want to watch YouTube? Chat on Slack? Nope, not happening. The selection in the Amazon app store is what you might call lacking. Out of the box, Fire HD 8 tablets do not offer any Google apps or any access to the Google Play store. Fire OS still offers the same basic experience, which isn't necessarily bad, but is limited by its app store. Other than the app-switching screen and few minor theme details, I couldn’t tell much of a difference.

#KINDLE FIRE HDX REVIEW FULL#

You want a cheap tablet? You're going to get a tablet that feels like it needs to get more money out of you at every turn.įire OS, Amazon's fork of Android, has been updated to use Android 11, which is still two full versions behind stock Android. This is, as they say, the price of admission. Don't worry, you'll still have Amazon content pushed on you every time you so much as look at your Fire HD 8.

#KINDLE FIRE HDX REVIEW FREE#

Spend the extra $20 to free yourself from some of the ads. Out of the box, Amazon's Fire tablets offer an experience that reminds me of the hyper ad-saturated world of Idiocracy.įrom the moment you try to unlock your Fire HD 8, you are confronted with an onslaught of ads and dark-patterned designs engineered to get you clicking on stuff, especially if you opt for the ad-supported models.

Still not fast, but better than the included charger, which you'd most likely want to use for overnight charging. With the 15-watt, I was able to recharge it in under three hours. The included 5-watt charger took so long that I went and found a 15-watt charger. I only managed 10 or so hours while streaming video, but that's still very good. One of the highlights of the Fire HD 8 is the impressive battery life. You can expand that storage capacity up to 1 TB using the microSD card slot. The Fire HD 8 is available with either 32 GB or 64 GB of storage-the more the better, if you can afford it. Pixelation is still painfully visible in text, but no worse than any other tablet at this price. It's the sort of thing that would send David Lynch into fits, but it works well enough if you don't care that much about deep rich colors and solid blacks. That Amazon content lands on an 8-inch, 1280 x 800 pixel display, which is … not great. Again though, it's fast enough to do what it's designed to do, which is deliver Amazon content. It gets the job done, but put it up against just about any other Android tablet on the market and it's going to lose. Considered on its own, let's charitably say that this is not a speedy tablet. In my experience using them side by side for tasks like browsing the web or playing video, you won't notice a huge difference. Amazon claims the new Fire HD 8 is 30 percent faster. The 2.0 GHz hexa-core processor is new, and in my testing was marginally faster than the previous version. I suggest wrapping your Fire HD 8 in a cover of some sort. That said, I don't recommend testing this feature yourself. I've dropped my old Fire HD 8 from about waist height (I'm around 6 feet tall) on a hardwood floor several times without doing any damage. Like the previous model, the all-plastic construction is surprisingly sturdy. The 2022 version looks identical to the previous model, but is a little thinner and lighter. Amazon has not messed much with the design of the Fire HD 8.

Kindle fire hdx review