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

I bought tablet for my 2yr old son and it's been amazing. Tablet is fast and does almost anything a regular tablet would do. Fun part of it is that I can control what my son does with his tablet with my Amazon account from my phone. How cool is that!

This unit has plenty of learning programs and games to keep my 3 year old entertained.

The Tablet Is Great Specially The Case And The Sensitivity Is Amazing!

My daughter loved her tablet! Great for all kids! Cover is stronger!

My daughter loved her tablet! Great for all kids! Cover is stronger!

======= 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.

I was contemplating if I should me buy the regular tablet or the specific one for kids. And I recommend if it's going to be used by kids a lot, better buy the kids version. You get 1 year subscription of unlimited entertainment and learning stuff and many of the best stuff is already available. No need to go to the app site and think of what to download. It's a major benefit.