Amazon - Fire HD 8 Kids Edition - 8" - Tablet - 32GB 7th Generation, 2017 Release - Blue

======= Summary ======= The Amazon Fire HD 8 is a great tablet for the price. With its 8" 720P HD display, dual Dolby Atmos speakers, 32GB of internal storage, and a quad-core processor, the Fire HD 8 offers decent performance, great battery life, and a good viewing experience. ======= My Impressions - Hardware ======= I like the design of the Fire HD 8. It's not premium nor made of any fancy materials but it's sturdy, light, and has good weight distribution. It's comfortable to hold and use and easy to carry around. Even with the gigantic and rubbery Kid-Proof case wrapped around the tablet, the weight is still manageable and still ergonomic. The biggest testament to my evaluation is seeing how easily my 3-year-old toddler can hold and use the tablet. She has no trouble carrying it around and playing the next Youtube video. The Kid-Proof case is really great. My little girl dropped it several times already on both hard and soft surfaces and there's been no damage at all to the Fire HD 8. The case is soft and rubbery and easy to clean up. I really like that. The 8" 720P screen is pretty good. 720P resolution on an 8" screen still offers good sharpness and detail and I have no complaints. I found the auto-brightness to be kind of inaccurate and slow to adjust. It dimmed the content too much under normal lighting conditions. So I had it changed to Manual mode and set it at around 70% for indoor use. The sound from the dual Dolby Atmos speakers is nice, loud, and clear. It's definitely better than most smartphone speaker setups, even the flagships. 32GB of internal storage is more than enough for my household and I appreciate the expandability of storage via the microSD slot. I haven't popped in a microSD card yet but it's good to know it's there for when it's needed. The 2MP camera is horrible. It's slow and the pictures it takes are very grainy and there is a great loss of color and detail. I guess it's better than not having any sort of cameras but I wish Amazon had included at least a 8-MP camera. The Fire HD 8 comes with a Mediatek MT8163 quad-core chipset and it is on the slow side, especially if one compares the performance to modern flagship smartphones from within the past couple of years. App installations slow down the system and opening too many apps will introduce lag. This is no problem for my toddler who only likes to watch kids' videos on the Fire HD 8 but for myself and my wife, the performance can be frustrating at times. For the price I paid for the Fire HD 8, however, I'm content and satisfied with the hardware aspects of the tablet. The Fire HD 8 fulfills my family's and my toddler's needs completely. ======= My Impressions - Software ======= Being a long-time Android user, I did not like Amazon's FireOS very much. So from Day One, I sideloaded the necessary Google apps into the Fire HD 8 to hide FireOS and convert it into an Android setup that I'm used to. I'm currently using Novalauncher as my home screen launcher and I have installed many of my Android apps into the Fire HD 8 as well. I get app updates directly from the Google Play store. Typing is done through the Google Gboard keyboard and I also have Google Assistant. After this "conversion," I find the Fire HD 8 to be highly more enjoyable. A downside to this "conversion" is reduced system performance after the tablet has been on for a few days. In order to solve this performance loss, I installed a couple of apps to bring the fluid performance level back - "Cache Cleaner" by Frozen Developers and "Memory Booster - RAM Optimizer" by AIO Software Technology CO. The Fire HD 8 is now always fast and performant and I no longer need to reboot the tablet every few days. In order to obtain software updates, I still have to go through FireOS's Settings app. I've received a couple of OS updates since I purchased the Fire HD 8 back in November of 2017. These updates were seamless and non-disruptive. I'm still disappointed at Amazon, however, that the Fire HD 8 is still on Android Lollipop (5.1). I would've expected at least Android Nougat. Again, for the price I paid for the Fire HD 8, I'm satisfied and content for what I get hard- and software-wise. I'm just grateful that I can add Google services and apps to the Fire HD 8 without much hassle. ======= So, is it any good? ======= Definitely. The Fire HD 8 (2017) offers great value for not a lot of money. If one is purchasing this for a child in the family (like I did), then it is an especially fantastic and safe choice. The tablet is easy to use, has decent hardware, and comes preloaded with kids- and family-friendly apps from Amazon. It's a good buy.

We got this the day it came out. I have a four year old daughter, and she loves it! We have an iPad for her, but it was getting very expensive because so many of the games have buttons that you can click which then tell you about things you need to buy and she would have to have them. This tablet restricts all in app purchasing. Yay! We tried the older version of this tablet but it kept freezing and did not perform well. But so far, this one works well. I have two requests to Amazon, and I am hoping that someone from Amazon reads my review so they can make this change. Please change Amazon Freetime so that it puts the story apps that are under apps into the books sections. There are many wonderful stories that are read out loud but they are in the apps section instead of the books section, so then when I restrict her tablet to books only, she can't access them. I would love it so much if you they would fix this. A few examples of the stories she can't access when I restrict her to books because they are considers apps are the following: Nighty Night!, Charlie Brown's, The Berenstain Bears, and Dino-Store Story. The other recommendation I have is to please hide from view the activities that are restricted. As it is now, she can see all the apps but gets an error message when she selects them. I really like this product, and I think it so great for children. It just needs a few little improvements to the Freetime interface.

Bought this Kids Kindle at the Westland in a sealed box. Purchased this because of the 2 year warranty against anything and the 1 year access to Kindle software. It was purchased for a 2 year old. My daughter and her Marine husband were going to an Army base in Missouri the next day about a 12 hour drive. This Kindle has a SD slot so I wanted to load up a bunch of kids movies to keep him entertained on the trip, and then be able to get kids educational software later. The trip went fine and the Kindle worked great. Attached it to the headrest of the front seat with rubber bands. Unfortunately when they arrived in Mossouri and my daughter tried to register the Kindle, Amazon said it wasn't a Kids Kindle. I contacted the local Best Buy and explained the problem and they said it could be exchanged no problems. So the next week my daughter and her husband made the 75 mile drive from the Army base to Jefferson City the nearest Best Buy and made the exchange no hassles. While still in the store my daughter contacted Amazon and successfully registered the Kids Kindle. They've made several long road trips since and the access to kids movies on the SD chip have been a blessing. It's held up well to a 2 year olds handling and overall works very well. Great service from Best Buy.

Great toy for a 6 years old nephew, which was the reason why I buy this tablet. Had all need it for hours of entertainment for my nephew, I download a few games and load a couple of movies, the performance was great but then I found a couple of issues. First, I was unable to directly download any app from the tablet, receive a constant error saying than I need to activate ONE-CLICK DOWNLOAD, I follow all instructions and had to create a virtual credit card (I never insert my real credit card on a 6y/o toy, never), even if my intentions was only download free apps. Nothing works, change the address, change the credit card, try everything and nothing works. Finally I found a bypass method which is use my browser on my pc, connect to the amazon account and link the tablet, then I was able to install new apps. The second issue was to discover than the tablet can be only use on US, my surprise when I try to add more apps when I travel outside US and after hours of trying, found the answer on a forum when indicate than the tablet was created to be use on on US.

My granddaughter was thrilled to see her new tablet on the day of her birthday. The color and size was perfect for her little hands. She could not wait for the tablet to charge. She kept asking if the tablet was ready to turn on. When the tablet finally charged, she could not put it down. She went from room to room showing her brothers what she could do with her tablet. Everybody wanted to do something with her tablet. As a parent, I just love the rubber bumper. The rubber bumper around the tablet is an excellent bonus to the tablet. It helps protect the tablet if it drops or falls accidentally. We all know how little hands sometimes drops things more than once. I only wish we could have bought this tablet much sooner. Being a first grader this year, my granddaughter can really benefit while using this tablet. Also, there are many educational opportunities for young children to engage themselves in instead of being glued to the television on a daily basis. This tablet is more child-centered and parental controlled.

Got this for my kids this xmas (3 yr old twins). They absolutely love it and have become very adept at navigating everything (ridiculously easy for them which is a little scary). They've dropped it many times and the cushion on this thing has paid for itself already. Lots of kid-friendly apps - although it seems like you can only pick from their set list of apps - this might be an android/amazon thing I haven't figured out yet. My only complaint is it can be a little slow sometimes, particularly with downloading apps. Sometimes it shows the icon for an app like you have it, but then when they click it the wheels start spinning and it begins downloading, and it takes a couple of minutes (whereas my iPad would do it in about 15 sec). I don't mind the wait, but 3 yr olds get impatient quick. At least it's teaching them patience if not anything else. :)

Got this for my kids this xmas (3 yr old twins). They absolutely love it and have become very adept at navigating everything (ridiculously easy for them which is a little scary). They've dropped it many times and the cushion on this thing has paid for itself already. Lots of kid-friendly apps - although it seems like you can only pick from their set list of apps - this might be an android/amazon thing I haven't figured out yet. My only complaint is it can be a little slow sometimes, particularly with downloading apps. Sometimes it shows the icon for an app like you have it, but then when they click it the wheels start spinning and it begins downloading, and it takes a couple of minutes (whereas my iPad would do it in about 15 sec). I don't mind the wait, but 3 yr olds get impatient quick. At least it's teaching them patience if not anything else. :)

I had originally tried getting an At&T or a Sprint tablet for my young daughter but she (or someone else) would inevitably end of breaking the screen and making the tablet unusable. Screen protectors would make the sensitivity too difficult for her to use and I couldn't ever find a good drop-proof protective case. I finally discovered the Amazon Fire Kids edition and wish I had known of this 3 broken tablets ago. Aside from the awesome drop-proof case, it has a nicely done custom kids view that removes all the things I don't want my daughter having access to (Youtube, the Google play store, web browsing). I already had one issue with it (99% certain it was my fault) but Amazon's "Worry Free Guarantee" had me a replacement tablet in 2 days for zero cost and no questions asked. If you have a young child you want to get a tablet for, this is it.