The design feels cheap. Performance is slow if many apps are open in the background and when downloading. The display has a low resolution and touchscreen response can be sluggish.
Gaming performance for large games is slow and the graphics can experience frame rate drops.
The Amazon Fire is a fine tablet for casual use, however it's not a good tablet, it's just good for the price.The Amazon Fire is special for one reason: it costs $50 (£50, Australia availability has yet to be announced, but pricing converts to AU$71) .
It's an unremarkable-looking tablet that runs Amazon's custom Fire OS 5 Bellini operating system, which is based on Android but can't natively access the Google Play store, and offers easy access to Amazon's vast media library. At its low price, the Fire is an attractive option for frugal customers who don't care about the latest and greatest technology. In fact, it's a great option for those who don't care much about technology at all.
For an undiscerning user, the Fire is simply an inexpensive device for watching video, reading, light gaming, browsing the Web and, of course, shopping the Amazon store. At a price this low, you can buy six of them for less than the cost of one Apple iPad Mini 2 -- you pay for five and Amazon throws in the sixth for free.
The operating system is tailor-made for consuming all of the TV shows, movies, music and games that come with your membership. You can also download them all for offline use, onto a memory card or the internal storage. No other tablet will give you these same perks for such a low price. However , if you're not a Prime member the Fire tablet does little to change your mind about what you should expect from a $50 tablet. For more details, keep reading.
Design:
The operating system of the Fire tablet is tailor-made for Amazon Prime users. The latest version sports an updated look with a few new features.The Fire doesn't have access to all of the Android apps in the Google Play Store. Instead it has the Amazon app store. It's curated and doesn't offer as great of a selection. It has many popular games, like Hearthstone and Angry Birds, but you're unlikely to find any of the new and trendy games that are available in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. Yes. With an Amazon Prime account you can download any of the TV shows or videos available in the Prime library. You can also download purchased content from Amazon, as well as load your own video files onto it via microSD card or by transferring it onto the tablet directly.
Performance:
Surprisingly no. To be sure, everything from apps to videos take at least a handful of seconds to load, especially if they're bigger files, however I expected it to be a lot slower. Similar to the Fire HD 8, download times were a bit on the slow side, but even slower than the 8-inch tablet. The screen has a 1,024x600-pixel resolution and that is not high-definition. Unlike the Fire HD tablets, it is not a Gorilla Glass screen, meaning it's not as solid and durable.There's a headphone jack located on the top edge and a single speaker on the bottom right. The speaker is loud enough for single viewer watching, but quality is poor. Highs sound tinny at loud volumes and it lacks bass. Not as bad as you might think. Simple mobile games -- like Cut The Rope and Angry Birds -- run smoothly. They can take a few seconds to launch if a big file is downloading or if many apps are open in the backgrounds.
The same can be said of big games; Dead Trigger 2 and Hearthstone take awhile to load -- anywhere from 15 to 45 seconds. Game-play is mostly smooth, though choppy graphics is very common (on top of the fact that the graphics already look pretty rough on the SD screen). There is only one version of the Fire and it comes with 8GB of internal storage. Out of the box, you have about 5.6GB of free storage (the rest is taken up by the software to run the tablet) so in reality, you have almost 3GB less than the advertised 8GB.
It does have Wi-Fi. It has single-antenna (also known as single-band) that supports current standards (Wi-Fi b/g/n) just like the Fire HD 6, which is the recommended upgrade (more on that in the conclusion), but it's not the fastest. The Fire HD 8 and 10, as well as the Fire HDX 8.9 all have faster dual-band (Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac) capabilities.
Battery life:
Our battery test consists of looping a 720p video in Airplane Mode at a fixed brightness of 160 candelas per meter squared, which is about a little over half the brightness. After one run the Fire got 12.5 hours. Check back after we're done testing for a final result.Conclusion:
The Fire tablet conundrum is rather simple; is it a good tablet? No. Is it good for a $50 tablet? Yes. For only $50 or £50, all of the Amazon Fire's shortcomings are understandable. The age-old adage "you get what you pay for" comes to mind, but if you're an Amazon Underground user, Kindle Unlimited subscriber or Prime member, it's one of the most affordable tablets for taking full advantage of Amazon's vast library of TV, movies, music, books and games.If you're not a Prime member, the Fire is still a viable option for the price, but don't expect it to change your view on what $50 tablets are capable of. Its price is appealing, but you're better off spending a bit more for something more capable.
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