The most recent Amazon Fireplace HD 8, up to date final month and beginning at $100, is a modest refresh, providing extra RAM, a nominally upgraded digital camera and a few new AI options. The final gross sales pitch, nevertheless, stays the identical: You get a just-competent pill for the necessities at a dirt-cheap (and often-discounted) value, and in alternate, Amazon will get to plant one other equipment for its personal apps and companies in your house. Nothing about this replace drastically modifications that settlement, however after utilizing the pill for the previous month (and after utilizing older Fireplace tablets for years prior), it might be time to demand extra from Amazon’s finish of the discount.
Amazon
The Fireplace HD 8 stays an honest worth for an off-the-cuff media consumption pill, notably when it’s on sale, however its iffy show and ad-heavy software program make it much less interesting at full value.
- Low cost, and steadily discounted
- Light-weight and cozy to carry
- Improved efficiency over prior technology
- Good battery life
- Has a microSD slot and headphone jack
- Fireplace OS is ad-heavy and Amazon-centric to the purpose of hostility
- Restricted app choice
- Show wants a refresh
- Poor cameras
- Nonetheless solely highly effective sufficient for gentle gaming and media consumption
$55 at Kohl’s
It’s positively an inexpensive pill
Bodily, the brand new Fireplace HD 8 is sort of equivalent to the final one. It’s, for sure, A Price range Pill — it’s nowhere close to premium, but it surely doesn’t really feel distractingly low cost both. At just below eight inches tall and 0.37 inches thick, it’s sufficiently small for most youngsters to function with out a lot battle and most adults to hold with one hand. For those who care extra about your pill’s travel-friendliness than its virtues as a miniature TV, this dimension must be high quality. The entire thing is light-weight at 0.74 kilos, so it’s not an anchor in your bag. Its textured plastic body is considerably slippery however altogether sturdy, with no creaking or flexing. Its gently rounded edges dig comfortably into your palms. There are pretty thick bezels across the show, however I’ve by no means minded these on a pill — they provide your thumbs a pure place to relaxation.
The show gained’t win any awards. It’s the identical LCD panel Amazon has trotted out in earlier generations, with the identical 1,280 x 800 decision. For those who’ve used any iPad, and even many midrange Android tablets, within the final decade, every part about it is going to be an apparent downgrade. The meager pixel density (189 ppi) makes photos and textual content visibly much less sharp. Colours are extra muted, too. It doesn’t get vivid sufficient to be completely usable in direct daylight; you’ll be able to learn it comfortably on the sofa, however don’t count on it to work as effectively by the pool. It’s additionally a smudge and fingerprint magnet.
Once more, although, the Fireplace HD 8 is competing in a distinct weight class than even an older iPad. The truth that the display screen is comparatively small makes the decrease decision at the very least tolerable. You possibly can watch Netflix or learn Kindle books and never suppose “man, this sucks” the entire time, particularly if you happen to purchased the factor for effectively underneath $100.
There are different {hardware} compromises. The audio system aren’t all that loud and battle to completely separate completely different components of songs. They’re solely on the left edge if you maintain the pill vertically, which all the time sounds odd. There’s an previous USB-C 2.0 port for charging and a glacially sluggish 5W energy adapter within the field. Amazon says it’ll take about 5 hours to completely cost the pill with that; you’ll be able to reduce the wait in half if you happen to convey your individual 15W charger, although that’s nonetheless not quick. There’s no water resistance ranking, so that you’ll have to be cautious if you happen to ever wish to learn within the tub. Each the five-megapixel rear digital camera and 2MP entrance digital camera are brutal, washing out colours and blurring high quality particulars even in good lighting. (As all the time, please report anybody utilizing their pill as a digital camera to the closest authorities.)
It’s not all unhealthy. Whereas the Fireplace HD 8 solely comes with 32GB or 64GB of storage in-built — of which solely 25GB or 54GB is usable, respectively — you’ll be able to add as much as 1TB of further area with a microSD card. The 13-inch iPad Professional, which begins at $1,299, doesn’t allow you to do this (I’m simply saying!). The Fireplace HD 8 additionally has a headphone jack, which helps offset the mediocre speaker efficiency a bit of bit, plus there’s Bluetooth for wi-fi headphones. And one good thing about the shoddy show decision is that it makes the Fireplace HD 8 much less power-hungry: Amazon charges the pill’s battery life at as much as 13 hours. I acquired rather more than that in our (comparatively forgiving) battery take a look at, however nearer to 10 or 11 hours with extra strenuous use. Both manner, it’s good. Most individuals can safely count on it to outlive a day of primary streaming and internet shopping.
The brand new Fireplace HD 8 runs on a 2 GHz six-core processor (the MediaTek MT8169A). The bottom mannequin contains 32GB of storage and 3GB of RAM, whereas a $130 variant with twice the storage bumps the reminiscence as much as 4GB. I examined the previous. The earlier technology solely got here with 2GB of RAM — the pricier “Fireplace HD 8 Plus” had 3GB — so this can be a welcome improve.
That stated, it’s not an enormous increase. With the entry-level mannequin, the gist is identical because it’s been with previous Fireplace HD tablets: You will get by with easy video streaming, internet shopping, studying and gaming, however there’ll be hitches and occasional crashes alongside the best way, and it’ll by no means be highly effective sufficient for severe work or dependable multitasking. The fashionable internet is simply too ad-heavy and grossly inefficient for a low-end chip like this, so that you’ll inevitably should cope with some choppiness when loading media-heavy websites like ESPN or The New York Occasions. Apps take only a bit longer to open than they’d on a pricier pill, and it’s not unusual to get some lag if you leap again to the house display screen.
Nonetheless, for the cash, it’s all workable. It doesn’t take perpetually to open a Peacock stream or load an article on Engadget. The Mali-G52 GPU may even deal with an honest stage of gaming — informal card and match-three video games run high quality, and much more concerned fare like PUBG Cellular and Diablo Immortal are completely playable, albeit with severely low-res textures. On the Geekbench 5 benchmark, the Fireplace HD 8 earned a single-core rating of 193 and a multi-core rating of 907. That’s lightyears away from spectacular, however provided that the last-gen model struggled to even full the exams with out crashing, it’s nonetheless a step up.
In the end, it’s about managing expectations. You don’t purchase a $100 pill demanding a workhorse. When reductions convey that pill’s value under $60, “not consistently annoying” turns into a praise. For those who can afford the mannequin with 4GB of RAM, that ought to maintain up higher over time. Then once more, a tool like this makes essentially the most sense when it’s as low cost as potential.
The ad-pocalypse that’s Fireplace OS
The Fireplace HD 8 nonetheless runs on Amazon’s Fireplace OS, a fork of Android 11 that makes use of a customized app retailer and is designed to place Amazon’s personal apps and companies within the highlight. (For the document, inventory Android is as much as model 15.) The beneficiant learn is that a lot of these apps are in style, so having all of them entrance and heart will be handy. For those who typically stream films on Prime Video, use Amazon Music with a Prime subscription or personal a bunch of Kindle ebooks or Audible audiobooks, all of it’s proper there. You possibly can arrange completely different consumer profiles — additionally not obtainable on an iPad — together with youngster accounts that current a curated choice of kid-friendly web sites and movies. A reasonably strong set of parental controls allow you to monitor your youngster’s display screen time inside that. You may as well name on Alexa and thus management numerous sensible house gadgets hands-free, although Amazon has dropped help for the “Present Mode” that turned the pill right into a pseudo sensible show.
You possibly can set up Alexa and all of these Amazon companies on any pill, although. Most of Fireplace OS’ precise modifications suck, and so they have for years now. The app retailer performs an enormous half in that. It covers most of the huge streaming and social media gamers — Netflix, Hulu, TikTok, X, Max, Spotify, Disney+, and so forth. — however nonetheless omits all Google apps, Reddit, Apple Music, Apple TV+, Slack, tons of video games and any browser apart from Amazon’s ultra-basic Silk, amongst many others. The shortage of Google stays the largest killer; Amazon’s inventory e mail and calendar apps are far much less strong than Gmail and Google Calendar, whereas the bootleg YouTube “app” is only a internet shortcut.
It’s true that you simply can install the Google Play Retailer and obtain most of what’s lacking with a hacky workaround, however that’s not the expertise Amazon is promoting (and never one most individuals will decide to do). I can’t reward an OS that works finest if you go behind its again. And as with many Android tablets, most of the apps which might be supported seem like blown-up cellphone apps greater than experiences designed with a bigger display screen in thoughts.
As a result of this can be a tech product launching in 2024, the Fireplace HD 8 additionally comes with a couple of AI-centric options, together with an automatic wallpaper creator, a writing help instrument and webpage summaries within the Silk Browser. All of those carry out moderately quick, however It’s arduous to name them game-changers: The writing help makes copy sound overly stilted, whereas the webpage summaries strip down most articles of their nuances (I urge you, simply learn the put up.) The DALL-E-style wallpaper generator is neater, providing completely different kinds and responding effectively to pure language requests, however I can’t get excited over AI artwork when there’s a lot of the actual factor on the market.
Extra egregious are the adverts. Oh, so many adverts. Upon activating the pill for the primary time, I used to be greeted with a full-screen promo for BetMGM — as a result of what budget-conscious pill purchaser isn’t trying to gamble their financial savings away — and have since been bombarded with lockscreen adverts to purchase Toshiba arduous drives, State Farm insurance coverage and SteelSeries gaming keyboards. Fortunately, you’ll be able to take away these for an additional $15, both upfront or after buy.
However the spirit of nickel-and-diming you goes past that. The primary app you see is “Store Amazon.” The house display screen itself is cut up into two sections: For You and Residence. The previous is a web page stuffed with content material options, a big chunk of that are both sponsored apps, hyperlinks to films on Prime Video and songs on Amazon Music or calls to subscribe to Amazon companies like Youngsters+, Luna and Audible. A few of these are free; many others are paid. At one level, I child you not, it introduced me with an advert to purchase a distinct Fireplace pill.
The Residence tab does have a conventional app grid, however above it’s a “Uncover” row that takes up the highest 40 % of the display screen and delivers an analogous vary of not-so-personalized options. As I write this, it features a hyperlink to the Prime Video collection Fallout, the sponsored app “Vita Mahjong for Seniors,” the Max app, hyperlinks to 2 completely different thriller books from the creator Frieda McFadden and some different issues I’ve proven zero curiosity in over my time utilizing Amazon companies.
It’s a jumbled, undignified mess. There’s a definite lack of care to Fireplace OS, a pervading sense that it doesn’t a lot have your finest curiosity at coronary heart it needs to needle cash-strapped clients into pumping extra income into the Amazon machine. This simply isn’t the case with iPadOS and even inventory Android. Truly take note of what Fireplace OS is doing, and it turns into troublesome to see Fireplace tablets as something however sponsored advert platforms Amazon can seed in properties on a budget. If you would like a product that treats you with a bit of extra respect, it’s important to pay for it.
Wrap-up
I get it, a few of us simply want to avoid wasting money. And Amazon, pretty or not (i.e., not), can considerably undercut most different first rate funds tablets on value. If price is your number-one concern, you solely desire a pill for informal media consumption and you’ll reside with the unfiltered Amazon-ness of Fireplace OS, there’s nonetheless worth available right here. Little in regards to the Fireplace HD 8 is nice, however a lot of it’s high quality for the worth, and when that value is as bananas-cheap as $55 with deals, that’s in all probability sufficient. So it goes. Simply be certain the slate is on sale earlier than you make the leap. In any other case, I’d contemplate the ten.1-inch Fireplace HD 10, which has the identical software program annoyances however a sharper, roomier show, extra CPU energy and a contact extra battery life. Both manner, right here’s hoping Fireplace OS turns into much less user-hostile in the future.
