Design: Similar but colorful This year’s version of the Fire HD 8 comes in Black, Canary Yellow, Marine Blue (the unit I’m reviewing) and Punch Red. These brightly colored shells coupled with moderate-sized bezels give the device a youthful appearance that can show off your personality. Meanwhile, the Fire HD’s matte plastic back is easy to grip and makes this tablet feel durable. Just like its predecessor, the Fire HD 8 weighs 13 ounces and measures 8.4 x 5.0 x .4 inches, maintaining the tablet’s lighter and thinner stature compared to the bumper-guarded Fire 7 (13.8 oz and 1-inch thick) and Fire HD 8 Kids Editions (17.6 oz and 1 -inch). Key features sit at the top of the of the Fire HD 8, such as the 3.5-millimeter headphone jack, micro USB port, volume control and power button. A 0.3-megapixel selfie camera is smack dab in the middle of the top bezel, while a 2MP rear camera is located on the colorful shell’s right corner. A pair of stereo speakers resides on the Fire HD 8’s left side, and a microSD slot is on the right for expandable storage options. Display: Middle of the road The Fire HD 8’s 1280 x 800-resolution (189 ppi) screen is acceptable for the price. When I watched a few videos on YouTube, I noticed channels, like Fine Brothers Entertainment and BuzzFeedVideo, that produce higher-quality visual content looked decent in portrait view, but the sharpness degraded significantly in landscape and full-screen modes. Despite having a muted display, the Fire HD 8’s screen reproduced 79.4 percent of the sRGB color gamut, a result that’s comparable to that of the new Fire 7 with Alexa. This isn’t much next to what higher-end tablets like the Asus ZenPad 3S 10 (113) and Apple iPad (123) produce, but the Fire HD 8’s visuals are decent for device that sells for a fraction of the price. Audio Atmos enabled With dual Dolby Atmos stereo speakers at each end of the tablet’s left side, the Fire HD 8 produced reasonable volume. The BTS “WINGS” album was able to fill a medium-sized bedroom with decent reproduction, but there was a bit of distortion in the bass and vocals. Plugging in earbuds resolved some of these faults. There’s a built-in microphone at the very top of the Fire HD 8. If you’re filming video or trying to give Alexa instructions, make sure your Fire tablet is pointing in the right direction. I shot a few short videos to see how the microphone picks up sound, and the playback sounded accurate. The screen’s top left corner contains a small notifications section for your device. Below it, there’s a search bar to help you find apps, downloaded content and web-search queries. At the very bottom of the screen lie back, home/unlock and overview buttons. Performance: Decent for the price With a quad-core 1.3-GHz processor and 1.5GB of RAM, the Fire HD 8 provides modest speed for most of your media needs. I experienced some hiccups when I navigated among multiple tabs in the Silk browser, Kindle app and Netflix, but even with all this running, the Fire HD 8 still worked pretty well. Battery Life: Nearly 11 hours of power Features: Alexa and more The Fire HD 8 supports multiple user profiles at the same time, which is helpful if you need to share your tablet with family members. Each user has his or her own apps and content, so you don’t have to worry about a relative reading your email or deleting your favorite game. Up to two adults and four children can be added to a single Fire tablet. Those wary about sharing a tablet with their children can monitor usage, restrict content and set access hours with the Fire HD 8’s parental controls. OS and Apps And some of these free apps are pretty cool, like TextMe, which turns your tablet into a working smartphone over Wi-Fi. It even includes a uniquely assigned phone number if you don’t already have one. There’s also Photo Studio, an Android photo editor that can help you get your pictures Instagram ready. Cameras Configurations The new Fire HD 8’s 16GB model is available for $80, but if you don’t want to see ads on your lock screen, it’ll cost you an additional $15. Or you can double your storage with the $110 32GB configuration. Again, if you want to get rid of those ads, you’ll have to shell out $125 for some privacy. Note that both models feature microSD slots that let you expand your storage by up to 256GB. Bottom Line Shoppers who require a more robust tablet should look towards the $329 Apple iPad (best for apps) or Asus ZenPad 3S 10 (great audio). But if you’re on a budget and don’t mind skipping Google’s apps, the Fire HD 8 is the best tablet for under $100. Credit: Laptop Mag “254562” name=“LAPTOP INTERACTIVE BUYING GUIDE”]
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