All-new Fire Hd 8 Tablet With Alexa Review

Pros

Still great value

Much-needed hardware upgrades

Huge battery life improvement

Cons

£10 more expensive than last year

Fire OS restrictions remain

Tablets that don't come from Apple's factories tend to get a bad reputation, but Amazon'southward low-priced devices are unbeatable for the price and often brand great gifts for kids or commencement-time tablet buyers.

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It helps that Amazon improves things with new versions every few years, and the latest Amazon tablet to receive a fresh lick of paint is the Burn HD eight. With a more powerful chipset, extra RAM and USB-C charging, this is Amazon'south biggest tablet update withal – only is it worth the increased cost?

Amazon Fire Hard disk 8 (2020) review: What yous need to know

Still, there are many things that haven't inverse this twelvemonth. The Burn down Hard disk 8 nevertheless has an 8in screen with a resolution of ane,280 10 800, still has a quoted bombardment life of 12 hours and it still has the aforementioned tough, matte plastic casing as its predecessor.

Have a peek at the internal specifications and y'all'll discover most of the Fire HD 8's upgrades. It's powered by a faster MediaTek MT8168 processor this year, and the full RAM has seen a slight boost from ane.5GB to 2GB. Amazon has too doubled the base of operations storage to 32GB and is offering a 64GB option for the very first time.

Amazon Burn down HD 8 (2020) review: Price and competition

Whichever storage size you cull, the Burn HD eight is available in two variants: "with special offers" and "without special offers". Special offers are basically Amazon's manner of pushing its adverts through to your lockscreen – if y'all'd rather not accept this, then you will have to pay an extra £10.

The new Fire Hard disk drive 8 is available today for £90, which is £10 more than than the 2018 model. In that location'due south too the option to double your storage to 64GB for £120, or y'all can choose to upgrade to the Fire Hard disk drive viii Plus, which adds wireless charging as well as an actress 1GB of RAM. Depending on how much storage you lot want, the Burn HD 8 Plus costs either £110 or £140.

Amazon Fire HD 8 (2020) review: Design and primal features

As I mentioned earlier, the Fire HD 8's design changes are relatively small, simply it is possible to spot a few subtle differences if you lot look hard plenty. Amazon'southward budget tablet is nonetheless encased in a tough textured plastic with large screen-bordering bezels, only Amazon has conspicuously designed this new tablet to be used in landscape orientation, rather than the portrait-friendly blueprint of the previous model.

The 2-megapixel selfie camera now sits above one of the screen'southward long edges, and the power push button, volume rocker and 3.5mm headphone socket are located to the right. This area of the tablet besides includes the new USB-C port. This charges the tablet from cypher to full in less than v hours, which is still rather tiresome. A pair of speakers point up on the top edge, and the microSD slot, which can take cards up to 1TB in capacity, is on the bottom.

This is a cheap tablet, so you shouldn't expect luxurious finishes and materials, merely the Fire Hard disk viii remains a well-made, robust-feeling device. It's lightweight at only 355g, doesn't flex or bend under considerable pressure, and it'southward well congenital, with only a slim gap separating the glass-topped screen and plastic backing. The Burn HD viii can be picked up in a choice of four pastel colours: black, plum, twilight blue and white.

Amazon Fire Hd 8 (2020) review: Display

Despite receiving a fresh lick of paint in other areas, the Burn HD 8's brandish remains largely unchanged. It still measures 8in across the diagonal – information technology would be weird if it didn't – and uses an IPS panel with a resolution of one,280 x 800.

Due to the size and low resolution, a pixel density of just 189ppi makes for a screen that looks rather pixellated and fuzzy by modern standards. As well, a recorded sRGB colour gamut coverage of 70% means colours look tonally muted when compared with the punchy, vibrant screens offered by Apple and the similar.

Even so, for less than £100, the Fire HD 8 was never going to set the standard for screen quality. On a more positive note, the Fire HD 8'south screen gets bright enough, at 396cd/m2, contrast is good at 1,440:1 and viewing angles aren't as well bad either.

Amazon Burn HD viii (2020) review: Performance and bombardment life

Despite the cypher honey given to the display, the Burn HD 8 has seen a practiced bump in specs over its predecessor. Its quad-cadre 2GHz MediaTek MT8168 CPU is now 30% more powerful compared to the 2018 version, with more RAM at your disposal (2GB) and a larger, iv,850mAh battery.

Since this is the fastest chipset in a Fire tablet to date, operation is unbeatable at this price. The duo of Geekbench 3 single- and multi-cadre test results speak for themselves and, while rapidly swiping betwixt applications can be a scrap juddery at times, the experience remains mostly fluid. I certainly wasn't tearing my hair out in frustration as I accept done with previous Fire tablets.

Gaming performance is as improved, achieving double the predecessor's frame rate in the GFXBench Manhattan iii onscreen examination. The list of gaming applications isn't every bit far-reaching as other tablets, which I will hash out presently, but you should exist able to run almost games on Amazon's Appstore without too many hiccups

Bombardment life is some other surface area that has seen a huge increase over the previous version. Despite the small 2% bump in bombardment capacity, the Fire HD 8 lasted for 15hrs 23mins in our video-rundown exam with aeroplane mode engaged. This a massive stamina increment of almost 38% compared to the 2018 model.

Amazon Fire Hd 8 (2020) review: Burn down Bone and Alexa

Like the rest of the Amazon Fire family, the Burn down Hard disk drive eight'due south software is Android-based, with Amazon's own software launcher, Fire OS, placed on top. Fire Os 7 is the new version for this year, which uses a more recent version of Google'due south widely used mobile operating system, Android nine Pie.

If y'all've used a Burn tablet previously, then the feel remains largely the same. Your Kindle library, Prime Video content, Amazon Music tracks and more can be accessed with unproblematic swipes left and correct of the homescreen, as well as a list of your downloaded apps.

The amount of applications on the Amazon Appstore continues to be rather limited, though. As an example, we typically use the Geekbench 5 app for operation testing of various devices, but Amazon'due south store but contains the much older Geekbench 3 benchmark. Although most popular apps can exist found, such as Facebook, Netflix, BBC iPlayer and Disney Plus, many games bachelor on the Apple App Store and Google Play are missing in action.

The Burn down HD 8 likewise includes hands-gratis Alexa. This allows you to bark your orders at Amazon's digital assistant without pressing any buttons, and it functions simply the aforementioned as on Amazon's Echo devices. Y'all tin ask Alexa to tell you the weather, prove sports fixtures or play the latest TV evidence on Amazon Prime Video, for case.

Amazon Fire Hard disk 8 (2020) review: Verdict

Once over again, Amazon has cooked upwardly a fantastically priced tablet with its newest Burn HD 8. The 2018 model was already a v-star product, so Amazon's determination to boost performance, extend the battery life and add USB-C charging for 2020 was always going to pb to another recommendation.

Make no mistake, even with its drawbacks – the sometime-school screen and slight software restrictions – y'all won't find a improve tablet for less than £100. The iPad will go on to reign supreme, but in that location'southward no beating the Fire HD 8 in terms of sheer value for money.

Amazon Fire Hd 8 (2020) specifications
Processor	Quad-core MediaTek MT8168 (2GHz)
RAM	2GB
Screen size	8in
Screen resolution	1,280 x 800
Pixel density	189ppi
Screen type	IPS
Forepart photographic camera	2MP
Rear camera	2MP
Flash	No
Dust and water resistance	No
3.5mm headphone jack	Yes
Wireless charging	No
USB connectedness type	USB-C
Storage options	32GB; 64GB
Memory carte slot (supplied)	microSD
Wi-Fi	802.11ac
Bluetooth	five
NFC	No
Cellular data	No
Dual SIM	No
Dimensions (WDH)	202 x 137 10 9.7mm
Weight	355g
Operating system	Android 9 (Burn down Bone 7)
Battery size	four,850mAh

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Source: https://www.expertreviews.co.uk/amazon/amazon-fire-hd-8

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