Wired
Amazon Content Faucet: If you join Amazon’s Prime service, you can watch all the movies, music, TV, and books included, shop all available items with free two-day shipping, and browse free Amazon Photo storage. You can do much the same thing on an Android tablet or iPad, but the Fire OS interface is designed specifically to deliver Amazon’s products, with swipeable pages for each type of media Amazon sells.
Built “good enough”: Physically, Amazon’s Fire tablets are made of cheap-looking plastic, but enough care has gone into making them that you don’t really notice the quality. The Kids Editions are top-quality kids’ tablets covered in sturdy bumpers, and they all have a microSD slot so you can add extra storage (we recommend the 128GB microSD card for $17). You can make your Fire device even more powerful by following our guide to installing the Google Play Store on your Fire device, which gives you access to all Android apps (some won’t work, but 99 percent of apps for Android work just fine).
cheap: Did we mention the price? They’re all under $200 except for the new Max 11. But if you stick with the cheaper models, they’re still a great deal. You can even get them with Amazon lockscreen ads, which will shave $15 off the price.
tired
Missing non-Amazon content: These tablets’ greatest strength is also their greatest weakness. If you’re not an Amazon Prime member and don’t plan on getting video, audio, or books from Amazon, the Fire line of tablets isn’t all that appealing. The inclusion of Alexa on the device is a plus, but it’s also heavily tied to Amazon’s content library. Amazon’s Appstore lets you download third-party apps like Netflix, but the selection is limited. far It’s more limited than what’s available in the Google Play Store on Apple’s iPad or standard Android tablets. To get around this limitation, we’ve created a guide to installing the Google Play Store on your Fire device. Once you’ve installed the Google Play Store, you’ll have access to all Android apps. You end up with a $60 tablet with 95% of the functionality of a $330 iPad.
Old Technology: The technology on these tablets is older. The processors aren’t the fastest, and you’ll notice slight lags and an overall lack of power when compared to more expensive Android tablets. Many of the apps for Fire OS are built with weaker processing power in mind, so it doesn’t bother you much. The operating system is also older (depending on which Fire tablet you buy), so some weaknesses may be hidden. Amazon’s latest Fire OS is a modified version of Android 11, released in 2020. Amazon continues to update its tablets to some extent, but not nearly as frequently as it should.
Short warranty period: Only the Fire HD 10 comes with a full one-year warranty; oddly, the smaller device comes with a 90-day warranty.
Special Offer: Over time, Amazon’s special offer ads have become more blatant and annoying, so we recommend paying the extra $15 and buying a Fire tablet without the special offer ads.
