Amazon Fire HD 8 (2022) review: Can you spot the differences?

The Tablet Amazon’s Fire HD 8 has long been our pick of the company’s lineup. It sits between the smaller Fire 7 and the larger Fire HD 10.

This new 2022 model is virtually indistinguishable from the 2020 model and it’s annoying to pay the same price as before for a new device with few real improvements.

We refer to the Fire HD 8 as a “brilliant combination of function and value” in 2018, a “Tablet price without question” in 2019 and said it was “still good value” in 2020.

But now, in 2022, with essentially the same limitations, same mediocre cameras, same screen, slow loading, and no noticeable performance improvements, it’s much harder to recommend.

Features and design

plastic construction
port plug
Same old design

Amazon refers to the 2022 Fire HD 8 as a Tablet “totally new”. But put it side-by-side with the previous generation and you’ll have to be a crack at the game of the seven differences to spot any external changes.

The buttons and USB-C port have been reorganized slightly, but other than that it’s pretty much the same Tablet with a thick bezel around the screen and a plastic frame and back that makes it look like a cheap product.

We’ve got a handy headset port, perfect for when boys and girls want to be entertained on long rides, and dual speakers on the top edge when you don’t want to use headphones.

They may support Dolby Atmos, but that doesn’t mean they sound good. You won’t want to listen to music on them and they’re only passable for watching Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.

If there’s one thing to point out, it’s that the Fire HD 8 has the best battery life in the range of tablets Fire with “until” 1 p.m. That’s an hour longer than the Fire HD 10 and three hours longer than the Fire 7.

How long between charges depends on how much you use the Fire HD 8. Watching downloaded videos saves a lot of power, so you should get closer to those 13 hours, but gaming Roblox or other games will significantly reduce battery life.

And the bad news is that it takes a whole 5 hours to recharge from scratch.

East Tablet it’s available with 32GB or 64GB of storage, and you can always add a microSD card to expand it by up to an additional 1TB.

Filter

1280 x 800 pixels, 189 ppi
IPS-LCD screen

One of the reasons we’ve traditionally recommended the HD 8 over the Fire 7 is that it has a larger, higher resolution screen. Most phones today have screens almost as big as the Fire 7, but with much higher resolutions.

Even now, in mid-2022, the HD 8 still has the same screen it always had, with no updates. This means a resolution of 1280×800 pixels, which equals 189 pixels per inch.

To put that into context, even the cheapest phones have screens around 400 ppi. Yet Amazon sticks to the same resolution every year. It’s not as crisp as you might expect from a new device, and it shows when reading pages of text.

I didn’t have the 2020 model on hand to compare directly, but the new version’s screen seems to be of lower quality.

It’s not particularly bright, the backlight isn’t very even across the screen, and the brightness and colors change as you move the screen around. Tablet when using it with your hands and when looking at the screen from an angle.

The colors are fine and overall it’s acceptable for a Tablet cheap, but it’s disappointing that there’s no improvement, and maybe even a slight drop in quality.

Software

Block on-screen ads
No Google app or service
Designed for Amazon Services

The most important thing to understand about tablets The fire is that they are not tablets Android. They run Android under Amazon’s highly customized Fire OS interface and can also run Android apps.

The main difference is that there are no Google apps or services. There’s no Gmail, YouTube, Maps, Photos, Drive, or anything else. And that includes the Google Play store.

To install apps, there’s Amazon’s own Appstore. It has a good selection of popular apps and games, but a much smaller selection than the Play Store.

As long as you don’t need to do online banking or use specific smart home devices from a Tablet Fire, everything will be fine.

The entertainment offering is well covered in the Appstore with apps for most major streaming services. diffusion.

You can control many smart home devices with Alexa from the Fire HD 8, but only if you have another device, like an Android phone or iPhone, to install the app and connect to Alexa.

In the Appstore you won’t find apps for Google Home, Nest, Philips Hue, TP-Link Tapo, WiZ or Samsung SmartThings.

It’s possible to use Amazon’s Silk web browser to watch YouTube and use Gmail and Google Maps, but the experience (compared to dedicated apps) isn’t as good.

Instead, Fire OS is designed to make it easier to access Amazon services like Prime Video, Kindle, Amazon Music, and of course, buying physical Amazon products.

Swipe down from the top and you’ll find a brightness control, various shortcuts to settings like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and a display mode switch.

When activated, the Amazon Fire HD 8 becomes an Echo Show, displaying rotating home screens with news, weather, recipes and more.

Performance

6-core processor, 2 GB of RAM

with the above tablets Fire, I didn’t run our usual Geekbench and GFXbench tests for two reasons. First of all, it was inconvenient to install these apps because they were not in the Appstore. Second, the results wouldn’t have made sense to most people looking to buy a Tablet cockroach.

Both apps are now on the Appstore, but neither of them works properly and gives results. Geekbench 5 crashed at the end of each test and did not record any scores, while GFXbench refused to connect to servers to download tests. landmarks.

That means I can’t say for sure if the two extra CPU cores make the HD 8 30% faster, as Amazon claims.

What I can say is that this Tablet still feels undernourished. Even when swiping the home screens and the notifications screen, you’ll have to wait for it to refresh, and apps take longer to load than expected.

Silk Browser crashes every time I try to access complex web pages, like Google Photos. It also crashed several times and returned to the home screen. A less than ideal experience if you’re trying to use Google services.

Show mode works well, although it’s not as responsive as a real Echo Show. If you have other Echo devices, they’ll probably respond sooner than the Fire HD 8.

The cameras are the same 2MP cameras found on the Fire 7 and many tablets Fire of recent years. It’s hard to overstate how bad they are. The rear captures smudged photos and shaky videos, while the front is fine for video calls, but not for selfies.

The conclusion is that it is still a Tablet cheap and has performance worthy of this entry level.

Price and availability

From $114.99
64 GB of storage for 30$ more

The Fire HD 8 continues to cost $114.99 in Europe. That is, if you think 32 GB will not be enough to store apps, games and download videos to watch. The 64GB model costs $30 more.

If you opt for the Fire HD 8 Plus, you’ll get an extra 1GB of RAM (which makes almost no difference) and wireless charging. It’s $20 more.

Obviously, you can buy the Fire HD 8 from the Amazon website, but soon you should be able to buy it from other stores as well. At the time of writing this examshortly after its release, is only available on Amazon.

Unlike other markets, in Europe it can only be purchased in black. In other countries it is also available in blue and pink.

You won’t find a great Tablet not expensive for well under 200$, but we advise you to take a look at our selection of the best pills economic.

verdict

The ace tablets The Fire may be cheap, but the new HD 8 (especially if you opt for the extra storage) is still quite expensive.

You may be happy with the Appstore limitations and lack of Google services, but know that you can buy one. Tablet Similar Android specification for about the same price. The Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 Lite is available on Amazon for around $130.

It offers similar performance and build quality, but at least you’ll have all the usual Google apps, including the Play Store.

There are also a lot of tablets Unbranded (or unnamed) Android that can be found on Amazon for even less than that.

I’m sure market forces have dictated that Amazon can no longer sell the tablets Fire as cheap as before, but with almost no improvement in recent years (unless you count the USB-C port), this Fire HD 8 2022 doesn’t represent the great value for money of yesteryear.