I’ll level with you. The Amazon Fire HD 8 is not the best Android tablet you can buy. But for its current sale price of £49.99, it is one of the best value tablets out there. Amazon has slashed the RRP of its smallest colour screen tablet by 50 percent, currently offering the Fire HD 8 at half price and a penny under £50.
This latest version of the HD 8 is a basic device with an 8-inch HD screen and 32GB storage, but if all you want a tablet for is to stream content from your favourite apps such as Prime Video, Netflix, Disney+ and BBC iPlayer, it’ll do the job. If you want to store your own music or video files on it, there’s a microSD card slot that takes cards up to 1TB.
As it’s an Amazon tablet, it’s also perfect to double up as a Kindle thanks to the Kindle app. The advantage of the small colour screen means you can hold it portrait way up and it’s not too huge, plus comics will look far more vibrant than on a monochrome Kindle e-reader.
The Amazon advantage also continues with the addition of Alexa. Prop this tablet up on its optional cover case and it can be used as a handsfree screen to ask questions to the voice assistant. You can do anything from check the news and weather to looking up recipes or streaming music.
With a front facing camera you can even use the Fire HD 8 for video calls around the home via apps such as Zoom.
One thing to bear in mind is that Fire OS, Amazon’s version of Android that runs on the Fire HD 8, does not support Google apps. It means you won’t be able to download Gmail, Google Docs, Google Maps, YouTube, or any other Google service. Aside from this, most other popular apps are available such as TikTok, Instagram and Facebook.
View the Amazon Fire HD 8 on Amazon
It can even run Minecraft, but probably not very well. This is not a tablet to buy if you want to play games, and the operating system is likely to run very slowly thanks to the low-end specs.
The tablet also displays adverts on the lockscreen. If, like me, you find this abhorrent, you can currently get an ad-free version of the same tablet for £59.99, just £10 more.
Amazon claims the Fire HD 8 can last for 13 hours of use on a full charge, so hopefully you won’t have to plug it in every day. When you need to, it charges via USB-C.
Amazon doesn’t always say how long these deals will last, but this time is different. The firm says this offer will end at 11:59pm on October 14. The Fire HD 8 is available for £49.99 in black, green or pink.