TLDR Review: Fire HD 8 tablet
Verdict
The 2024 Fire HD 8 is a genuinely solid performer that punches well above its weight for the price, especially if you're into gaming or need a reliable tablet for entertainment and reading. However, it's not perfect—the browser situation is genuinely frustrating, and those screensaver ads feel like a money grab. If you're planning to use external controllers or need a truly premium browsing experience, you might want to consider a different tablet, but for kids, casual gaming, and streaming content, this is a strong value play that we think most people will be pretty happy with.
- Top pro:
- Impressive gaming performance that handles graphically demanding games like Skyrim and Fallout with ease, and is far more practical than carrying around a Steam Deck
- Top con:
- Volume buttons are awkwardly positioned and interfere with attaching external game controllers, making gaming with controllers unnecessarily difficult
Pros
- •Impressive gaming performance that handles graphically demanding games like Skyrim and Fallout with ease, and is far more practical than carrying around a Steam Deck
- •Excellent screen quality with clear, bright, crisp display that's perfectly sized for reading
- •Stellar audio with genuinely loud output
- •Outstanding for kids with an excellent selection of quality children's apps that keep them engaged
- •Battery easily lasts a full day of regular use with quick charging
- •Durable construction with screen resistance built to handle the bumps of daily life
- •Reliably versatile for everything from Kindle reading to music, streaming apps, smart home controls, and email
- •Delivers impressive gaming capabilities with Amazon Luna support
- •Exceptional value compared to other tablets in the price range
- •Intuitive interface makes it simple to pick up and use immediately
Cons
- •Volume buttons are awkwardly positioned and interfere with attaching external game controllers, making gaming with controllers unnecessarily difficult
- •Built-in browser is pretty disappointing and won't let you download Google Chrome as an alternative
- •Screensaver ads are intrusive and annoying, with Amazon charging a frustrating $15 to remove them
- •Alexa voice input defaults to text-only mode on this newer model despite correct settings, unlike older versions
- •Battery charging is finicky and struggles with non-original chargers
- •Tablet prefers saving to internal storage over any installed SD card, creating annoying storage management issues
- •Can experience slowdowns and glitches when running certain apps
- •Not a meaningful upgrade from the previous generation model if you're just doing basic everyday tasks
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How we researched this
About this review: it summarizes the professional reviews and customer ratings ShopSavvy collected for this product, alongside prices from ShopSavvy's price data.
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