Looking for fun? Look to a tablet, which can serve up movies, TV shows, books, games, music and lots more. Amazon’s Fire tablets are basically entertainment-slinging screens, and every few years they get a modest update. So it goes with the Fire HD 8 and Fire HD 8 Plus, which were refreshed at the tail end of 2022. These were already great models for the money; now they’re a bit better, with faster processors, more storage and slightly longer battery life. Here’s my Fire HD 8 review, with some thoughts on the Fire HD 8 Plus as well.
Amazon
VERDICT: The Amazon Fire HD 8 offers amazing bang for the buck, especially if your chief goal is consuming entertainment.
- Inexpensive, and frequently discounted
- Expandable storage
- Hands-free Alexa voice assistant
- Solid battery life
- Wired headphone jack
- Attracts lots of fingerprints
- Amazon’s app store not as robust as Google Play
- Interface needs work
The Fire HD 8 costs $100 with 32GB of storage and $130 with 64GB. If you plan to download a lot of movies for offline viewing, it’s worth the extra money to get the extra space. That said, you can easily add more storage to either model by popping in an inexpensive microSD card. (Example: Here’s a 64GB card for just $8.)
To put that in a little perspective, the similarly sized iPad Mini (64GB) costs $499 — and it’s not expandable. You could literally buy five Fire HD 8 tablets for the same money. But let’s throw the HD 8 Plus into the mix as well.
Fire HD 8 and Fire HD 8 Plus: Which one should you choose?
The Fire HD 8 and HD 8 Plus have 8-inch screens (both of them fingerprint magnets, alas) with a display resolution of 1200 x 800 pixels. Although that’s far below what you get from modern iPads, it’s sharp enough for the likes of books, games and movies. It’s also noticeably better than the Fire 7’s 1024 x 600-pixel screen, which I found so grainy that I ultimately couldn’t recommend that tablet.
Similarly, while the Fire 7 is a fairly sluggish device, the Fire HD 8’s upgraded hexacore processor affords the horsepower needed for basic tablet tasks.
This is where I’ll pause to recommend spending an extra $20 for the Fire HD 8 Plus, which offers three key advantages: 3GB of RAM instead of 2GB (that helps with performance and multitasking), support for wireless charging (via Amazon’s $50 Wireless Charging Dock or any Qi charging pad) and a much better rear-facing camera: 5 megapixels, to the Fire HD 8’s 2 megapixels.
In fact, if you add that dock to the mix, you can better take advantage of something called Show Mode, which effectively turns the Fire HD 8 Plus into an Echo Show 8 smart screen. Although you get hands-free Alexa voice controls regardless, Show Mode turns it into a full-screen experience.
Returning to the cameras, they’re…fine. Good for kids to mess around with, decent in a pinch for Zoom meetings, that kind of thing. Sure, iPads offer vastly superior cameras, but ask yourself if you’re really going to take photos with your tablet anyway. I do so once in a blue moon.
The tablet’s built-in stereo speakers are, as you might expect, tiny and tinny — fine for listening to podcasts and watching videos, but ultimately you’ll be happier with a paired Bluetooth speaker or headphones. (There’s also a traditional headphone jack if you prefer something wired.)
As noted, the Fire HD 8 Plus supports wireless charging, but both models have USB-C ports and come with both a USB-C cable and an AC adapter. Amazon promises up to 13 hours on a charge, which is extremely good battery life, and my informal testing bears that out.
Let’s talk about the ad elephant in the room…
Like other Fire tablets and Amazon’s Kindle e-readers, the Fire HD 8 shows ads on its lock screen. I honestly don’t mind this, and in fact barely notice it, as the ad disappears the moment you swipe to unlock. But if you find it objectionable, you can pay a one-time $15 charge to banish the ads forever. (On the HD 8 Plus, it’s a $25 charge. Don’t ask me why.)
The other cost consideration here is Amazon Prime. While a subscription to the service ($139 annually; free 30-day trial available) isn’t strictly necessary, it does afford quick and easy access to mountains of movies, music, books and TV shows. But even without Prime, you can install apps to access Netflix, Spotify, TikTok and more, and read any books that are already part of your Kindle library.
Thus, I don’t agree with the common refrain that “Fire tablets are good only for Prime subscribers.” If you already have a subscription, great; you’ll no doubt like all the extras it affords. But will you find this tablet wanting without it? I don’t think so.
The bigger caveat is that Amazon limits you to its own app store (which, again, has nothing to do with Prime). Although most popular apps are available for Fire, a few aren’t — most notably YouTube. There are ways around this limitation (starting with: open YouTube in the tablet’s web browser), but you shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to use the world’s most popular video app.
Another gripe: Amazon’s Fire OS isn’t the most intuitive operating system. For example, if you increase the font size for better visibility, many app names get abbreviated because the text no longer fits. And I’m not sure I follow the logic behind the For You, Home and Library screens, because there’s so much duplication between them and not much organization within.
The warranty remains a sticking point, too: It’s just 90 days. That’s kind of a head-scratcher; Amazon’s Fire HD 10 is covered for a full year, like most modern electronics. Finally, the Fire HD 8’s color choices have shrunk to just three: black, rose and denim. The HD 8 Plus comes only in gray.
Let’s remember, though, that we’re talking about $100 and $120 tablets that are often discounted by nearly 50%. So a few nitpicks are easily forgiven.
Indeed, if you want a ton of entertainment at your fingertips, in a size that strikes the right balance between visibility and portability, it’s hard to beat the Amazon Fire HD 8 or HD 8 Plus. For the extra $20, I’d choose the latter, but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the former. These are value-packed tablets.
