Amazon Fire HD Tablets - experiences

GotNoRice

GotNoRice

[H]F Junkie
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Jul 11, 2001
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I'm curious what people's experiences have been with these tablets. There have been many times when I've been looking for a cheap tablet, for myself or others, and these seem like decent quality for the price. There are just some things that I'm not sure about. A few years ago I might not have even considered an Amazon tablet but I've had really good results using Firesticks on older TVs lately, which certainly has warmed me up a bit to their hardware.

I know that these use a customized version of Android that does NOT have access to the Google Play store, but instead only has access to the Amazon app store. How has this limited you in practice? My concern would be an inability to use apps such as Google Maps which would pretty much be a deal-breaker. My backup plan for any "app" that I couldn't find on the Amazon store would be to use the web browser and see if there is a web-based version of the app. But now I also see that Firefox was apparently removed from the Amazon app store a few months ago?!? So the only web browser option would be "Amazon Silk" which is Amazon's Chromium-based browser (which sounds to me like an attempt by Amazon to make sure they can control what you do on their tablet, even when you are browsing the web).

Also, has anyone actually used the "ad-supported" version of these tablets? How obnoxious are the ads and how much control do you have over when they are displayed? From the description, it sounds like they are mainly displayed on the lock-screen. Does that mean it prevents your screen from turning off so that it can show more ads (and thus killing battery life)? Are they visual-only ads or do the ads have audio?

Are the devices good quality in general?

I just can't help but get the feeling that the entire purpose of these tablets is simply to force people into the Amazon ecosystem, as well as display ads. It seems like Apps are limited from the Amazon store more for anti-competitive reasons rather than technical reasons. Am I wrong?
 
I have had a great experience with the amazon tablets. Great for my grand kids and the kid in me. The later requies Amazon Freetime subscription and lots of extra memory installed for the hundreds of games they seem to like alot. I had to buy two 8" with padded cases and I keep a 10" at my main listening position in our living room home theater. It is my main remote control for Dennon AVR, lighting automation (HUE Smart Things Kasa & Ecobee) Security ( RING Smipli-Safe) and the like which requires loading the Google app store on the tablet. Doing so, which is very easy, makes the entire android app store available on the tablet. Ya, that's right anything you can do with your phone you can do with one of these. Does it have the best tablet camera? No is it the best front camera? No Is it SIM card capable? No but the wifi 2.4 or 5g works well nary a hiccup. Bottom line, The tablets won't break any speed records or be a gaming powerhouse, but what it does do, it does well with excellent battery life and I use the optional charge dock which in essence turns it into an echo show only more capable and much better. When you consider all that it can do it's a steal @ 150 bucks.
 
I have had more issues with batteries than anything else. That and the power connection. I have given a few away to friends and family, and they all seem short lived. Got lots of use daily.

I found some places that offer replacement batteries, but when I went to swap them out, they weren't the right ones. When working, they are nice, the proprietary software gets annoying and you have to force some apps on there, but easy enough to get around for most apps.

They come armed with Alexa these days, and it gets annoying sometimes if you don't kill that.
They are indeed designed around the Amazon ecosystem.
 
Got 2 for my kids. I guess it is OK, for what it is (i.e. Really cheap), but I would likely not buy again. App limitation to App Store is annoying (plus a number of apps do not work on the 2 year old now devices, only newer ones). Managing "FreeTime" and app access is a nice feature in principle, but ends up just being annoying. I liked being able to share stuff from my Amazon library with the tablets, but eliminating the ability to make purchases from the device. Adding apps to the kids accounts is really frustrating, and i keep noticing things disappearing randomly. Trying to side-load Play Store is messy with the Kids account feature. Having to log into my "admin" account on the tablet to re-enable WiFi when it glitches is annoying. Not a lot of apps seem to be able to be put on SD card, which can lead to having to go into the admin account to clean things up.
I would put ads as one of the less annoying parts of the tablet.
 
They are great for kids and the content. Cheap and decent specs but imo ipads are the only real solid options for tablets sadly. Android tablets are just all garbage or way to expensive
 
We got a few during a Christmas sale in 2020. 2 Fire HD 10s and an HD 8 for my daughter. We had HD 7s before these.

Daughters HD8 died about 3 or 4 months after initial set up. It just kept rebooting every so often. Now it sits in the closet. My wife and I wound up purchasing her an ipad Pro gen 2 right around tax refund time. My daughter uses it everyday for school work, down time, drawing, reading you name it. My thoughts were her first ipad which we bought 10 years ago worked up until last year. A week or so ago, I found a way to bring it back using a heating device to restart the battery. It charged up and for being 10 years old it still has a great battery life. My daughter quickly registered it to her account. And uses it for what I have no idea. I tend to think it is for nostalgia feelings she she used it for so long. Also my daughter had a 7 for a few years in which it was used as a music player. I loaded a bunch of songs mainly classical for her to fall asleep to. For Everything else she liked her iPad gen2.

Now to my wife and I got the HD 10s. The wife said it's OK but doesn't feel anything special. She does use it to read, recipes, and music.

Myself, I'm not on board with the HD 10. I think it's flimsy and not much of an upgrade besides the usb c port. My HD 7 feels more solid in a case and out of a case. It's nothing better than my HD7 I thought having the larger screen and better hardware would be a nice addition, well I was wrong. So I don't use it. Heck I haven't use my 7 in awhile.

If had a need, I would look at Apple for a tablet. Not a fan boy of any one product however the 2 ipads we own, they are just have a better feel and usage for the need.
 
shaggy77 said:
We got a few during a Christmas sale in 2020. 2 Fire HD 10s and an HD 8 for my daughter. We had HD 7s before these.

Daughters HD8 died about 3 or 4 months after initial set up. It just kept rebooting every so often. Now it sits in the closet. My wife and I wound up purchasing her an ipad Pro gen 2 right around tax refund time. My daughter uses it everyday for school work, down time, drawing, reading you name it. My thoughts were her first ipad which we bought 10 years ago worked up until last year. A week or so ago, I found a way to bring it back using a heating device to restart the battery. It charged up and for being 10 years old it still has a great battery life. My daughter quickly registered it to her account. And uses it for what I have no idea. I tend to think it is for nostalgia feelings she she used it for so long. Also my daughter had a 7 for a few years in which it was used as a music player. I loaded a bunch of songs mainly classical for her to fall asleep to. For Everything else she liked her iPad gen2.

Now to my wife and I got the HD 10s. The wife said it's OK but doesn't feel anything special. She does use it to read, recipes, and music.

Myself, I'm not on board with the HD 10. I think it's flimsy and not much of an upgrade besides the usb c port. My HD 7 feels more solid in a case and out of a case. It's nothing better than my HD7 I thought having the larger screen and better hardware would be a nice addition, well I was wrong. So I don't use it. Heck I haven't use my 7 in awhile.

If had a need, I would look at Apple for a tablet. Not a fan boy of any one product however the 2 ipads we own, they are just have a better feel and usage for the need.
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Amazon sells them at loss or very little profit. They are there to sell you shit and for you to shop with them :)
 
Vengance_01 said:
Amazon sells them at loss or very little profit. They are there to sell you shit and for you to shop with them :)
Click to expand...

Interesting take... Interestingly enough I myself never ordered any thing off of Amazon from Fire HD. I know my daughter hasn't. My wife maybe.. I don't know. I have ordered more stuff off my phone and laptop than this thing. I'm pointing out the fact the build quality was crap from our original Fire HD.
 
shaggy77 said:
Interesting take... Interestingly enough I myself never ordered any thing off of Amazon from Fire HD. I know my daughter hasn't. My wife maybe.. I don't know. I have ordered more stuff off my phone and laptop than this thing. I'm pointing out the fact the build quality was crap from our original Fire HD.
Click to expand...
That's been Amazon's MO with a number of its devices. The Fire Phone failed in no small part because its UI and even some features (such as product scanning) were designed primarily to help Amazon, not users.

Fire tablets are somewhat better, but if you don't like an interface that promotes Amazon services, you'll want to look elsewhere.
 
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I bought a few HD10s last Christmas for $80. There’s a free script you can run that blocks the Amazon ads and installs google play. I also installed a web adblocker. Works great.
 
I finally decided to buy one to try it out. I went with the Fire HD 8" 2020 model. I thought about the 10", but in the near future I'm probably going to get something better like a 10" Samsung S6 Lite or the S7 Lite if/when they release it. I'll use the Fire HD 8 until then and then as a backup afterward. One thing I was sort of disappointed about, that I didn't think about until after I ordered it, is that the Fire HD 8 does not have GPS. I thought that the only obstacle to using Google Maps on there would be installing the Google Play store but I guess it's just not meant to be. With no GPS, that means no apps like Sky Map for viewing stars either. I was surprised that it did not have GPS. Even my super-cheap, extremely low-quality Elipsis 8 HD tablet that I got for free from Verizon with my Samsung S8+ back in 2017 had GPS in it. That tablet ended up destroying itself when the battery swelled and snapped the connection to the LCD. Even my Motorold Droid 2 phone from like 11 years ago had GPS and that thing was about the size of a pack of cards. I would have thought that the Fire HD 8 would have GPS if for no other reason than to provide location data to Amazon for better targeted advertising 🤷
 
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