Move beyond those content-consumption apps and into the games library and you’ll find a lot more dross and a lot less premium content than you would in the Google Play Store. (I should apparently disclose that there is also a Verge web app shortcut, as I was surprised to see the option to “install” it during the initial setup process.) It works, but it’s not the same as what you get on a phone. It doesn’t have a proper YouTube app, however, only a shortcut to the web app. Fortunately, it has the major apps that this kind of device needs to have to be successful: Netflix, Hulu, Showtime, Spotify, and so on. Instead of Google’s app store, you get Amazon’s.
#Fire hd 8 plus tablet android
None of the apps you’ll use on it look or act any differently than they would on your phone.Īmazon’s take on Android is to make it a portal to Amazon’s services.
That’s essentially how the Fire HD tablets work, too. There are many, many reasons I could cite for the relative failure of the Android tablets, but the most telling thing I could say is that the most successful Android tablets only made sense because they worked like big phones. Only Samsung makes a serious effort with them in the US, and only a few of them are ever sold. That makes the Fire tablets something of an anomaly, since nearly everybody else has given up on Android tablets. The Fire HD runs Fire OS, which is Amazon’s variant of Android. But, if in addition to the cost of the tablet you also pay $120 a year for Amazon Prime, the Fire HD gets a lot more interesting.īuy for $110.00 from Amazon Buy for $110.00 from Best Buy You can get three Fire HD 8 Plusses for the price of Apple’s least expensive iPad.Ī $110 tablet is necessarily going to have compromises, and the Fire HD 8 Plus has plenty of them. The Fire HD 8 starts at $89.99, the Fire HD 8 Plus that I’m reviewing starts at $109.99, with the option to buy a wireless charging dock bundle at $140. They’re incredibly (and perhaps unfairly) inexpensive. The prices Amazon charges for Fire tablets are another hint that you could think of them as part of a different category than the iPad. I think of it as an appliance for Amazon’s services. I don’t think of the Fire HD 8 Plus as a tablet. That’s a criticism, but more importantly it’s a context-shift. Attempting to do all the things you might do on an iPad, high-end Samsung tablet, or a Surface is a recipe for frustration. They’re technically tablets, but the technology in them can’t keep up with the kinds of things you normally associate with tablet computers. If you think of Amazon’s Fire HD tablets in the same way you approach other tablets, you’re going to be disappointed.
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