Tablet Review: Amazon Fire HD 8" - Great Little Piece of Tech!

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I'm one of those people that tends to buy a lot of personal stuff around the holidays. I'll even wait for some things until the holiday season because I know they go on sale. I've been wanting a new tablet for some time now. A few days before Christmas I decided on a Amazon Fire HD 8" Tablet.

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I've been using my faithful Chromebook as a tablet for the most part. It's lightweight and I typically use it as a bedroom computer. It plays music, and keeps the Bitcoin chart available when I wake up in the middle of the night. (Yes I often trade or check prices in the middle of the night). The Chromebook has recently stopped updating and it's getting slower and slower. I figured it was time to find a replacement.

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The Fire tablets tend to go on sale every year before Xmas. When I found this priced at $54 USD I just couldn't resist. That's almost half off. I figured I'd use it for a couple weeks before writing a review.

My main reason for ordering a tablet was because I really enjoy reading by tablet. For the most part, it's lightweight, the books don't take up space in my tiny apartment, and I can read late at night by candlelight with a glass of wine curled up under some blankets. Try that with a traditional paper book. I will admit, I enjoy traditional paper books just as much.

Considering it's an Amazon product the Kindle app works great for reading books. I do have a Kindle Unlimited account which offers me a lot of free reading, but the titles are limited and some of them are really crappy. Just saying... For $9 a month, the titles in the free category aren't the best reads IMHO. More times than not, I end up paying for a decent title. One of my goals for 2022 is to read more though, and the Kindle is making that easy. I've already bought several titles and will be posting some book reviews soon.

Alright, so it's a great reader. We'd expect that already because, Kindle.

The $54 model comes with 32GB of storage and 2GB of RAM. That seems sufficient for my needs. I haven't ran into any issues with storage or memory. I'm currently using it for music, surfing the web, and reading. The tablet has handled these tasks perfectly.

It advertises a 12 hour battery life and that has been more than sufficient for me. I do plug it in at night when the radio is on. For reading and surfing the web, the battery has lasted all day without any need for charging.

The Alexa feature is available. I have it deactivated. I've used Alexa before, setting up a smart home for a web design client. I like it, but I don't like that it's always listening. I'm sure it still is, but I feel better not having it activated. I won't get into my politics on all this stuff, I'd just prefer to opt out.

Another thing I found interesting is that it comes pre-configured with your Amazon Prime account. You literally type in your WiFi password, log in with your Amazon credentials and start using it. Not sure if I like that or not, but it was nice to start using it the moment it arrived.

One of the things I'm a little disappointed in is the screen size. 8 inches works out great for reading and surfing the web. It also fits comfortably in your hand. I tend to use my Chromebook like a TV in the bedroom while I'm in bed. It plays the morning Yahoo Finance report when I wake. I also use it for Netflix and Prime Video. The Chromebook has an 11.5 inch screen. I didn't think the couple inches would make a difference but it really does. It's a little small for watching TV on the shelf while laying in bed. So another Chromebook may be in my future when the one I have no longer works for videos. IMHO the 8" just isn't large enough to fulfill that need. (That's what she said) Sorry couldn't resist.

The sound is adequate from the tablet. With my external speakers it sounds great. I do have to plug the USB power into a USB power hub for the speakers to work though. Minor inconvenience for the great sound I'm getting from them. It's actually louder than my Chromebook, that was a pleasant surprise.

I'm not really filling this thing up with all kinds of apps. It's mainly for reading. I did take a peak into the Amazon App store and they seem to have the same apps Google has. I downloaded a metronome program for playing guitar. That works great.

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Seeing I brought up the guitar, one general disappointment I have about Kindle is that music books are hit or miss. Most of the music titles have a very hard time with musical notation. It's just hard to see. This is an improvement in the Fire device, but still really bothersome to the point that I'd much rather have a physical music book in front of me.

For the most part I love my new Fire tablet. One of the things I find weird is that Amazon now gives you advertisements for screen savers. So each time you open the device or it falls asleep it loads a new advertisement on the screen. I find that tacky, but considering the quality of this product, and the price range, I can see how they're getting away with it. I hate ads. I guess there is a way to purchase an advertisement free device for about $50 more. I guess it boils down to how much you hate ads and how frugal you are with money. I opted to save 50 bucks. Honestly though, the ads aren't that bothersome.

So that's pretty much all I got. For the most part, I think this is a great tablet for the under $100 category. At $54 I think it's a steal. If you find one of these on sale and you're in need of a new tablet I'd have no problem recommending one of these. I'll post a follow up to this in about 6 months and let you know if it's still working out or any red flags that may pop up between now and then.



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5 comments
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That is pretty cheap and a tablet can be so useful. I bought a 10" Lenovo that I mainly use for chord sheets when playing guitar, but it's great for watching Netflix too. I don't tend to read books on it, but then I have lots of paper books to get through. Digital comics could be good on it though. I had a 7" one before and that was a bit small for reading anything.

Don't you love living in the future?

!PIZZA

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10" would be a nice size for video. They had a 10" model too. I should have spent the extra money for the larger screen. Oh well, next time.

Don't you love living in the future?

The future is now. This is such a wild time to be alive.

!PIZZA
!WINE

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