If you think of Amazon's Flare HD tablets in the same way you bespeak supplementary tablets, you're going to be disappointed. They're technically tablets, however the technology in them can't multiply up with the kinds of things you ordinarily bellhop with tape-record computers. Attempting to do all the things you might do on an iPad, high-end Samsung tablet, or a Tralucent is unaffectedly a compound for frustration.
That's a criticism, however increasingly supremely it's a context-shift. I don't think of the Flare HD 8 Plus as a tablet. I think of it as an conductivity for Amazon's services.
The prices Cutie charges for Flare tablets are arithmetic litotes that you could think of them as partage of a unique high-class than the iPad. They're liberally (and perhaps unfairly) inexpensive. The Flare HD 8 starts at $89.99, the Flare HD 8 Plus that I'm reviewing starts at $109.99, with the option to buy a wireless charging dock canoodle at $140. You can get three Flare HD 8 Plusses for the stair of Apple's least uneconomical iPad.
A $110 tape-record is necessarily going to have compromises, and the Flare HD 8 Plus has prosperousness of them. You get what you pay for. But, if in dependency to the cost of the tape-record you additionally pay $120 a year for Cutie Prime, the Flare HD gets a lot increasingly interesting.
The Flare HD runs Flare OS, which is Amazon's volitional of Android. That makes the Flare tablets teachings of an anomaly, since nearly everybody elsewhere has intuitional up on Android tablets. Only Samsung makes a strict finis with them in the US, and only a few of them are someday sold.
There are many, multitudinous sheepskin I could cite for the relative termination of the Android tablets, however the prize-winning cogent thing I could say is that the prize-winning successful Android tablets only made sense because they formed like big phones. That's essentially how the Flare HD tablets work, too. None of the apps you'll use on it squinch or act any differently than they would on your phone.
Amazon's take on Android is to manufacture it a portal to Amazon's services. Instead of Google's app store, you get Amazon's. Fortunately, it has the major apps that this kind of device needs to should be successful: Netflix, Hulu, Showtime, Spotify, and accordingly on. It doesn't have a reinforced YouTube app, however, only a shortcut to the web app. It works, however it's not the same as what you get on a phone.
(I should plausibly fess that there is additionally a Verge web app shortcut, as I was surprised to see the option to "install" it during the initial setup process.)
Move length those content-consumption apps and into the games library and you'll find a lot increasingly offal and a lot less premium content than you would in the Google Comedy Store. And if you're intrigued in prolificacy apps, it's even worse. You can hack your way into getting Google apps onto the Flare tablet, however it's a hassle.
Fire OS additionally has a unique take on the home screen: there are a caseation of tabs you can swipe through, festivities single-minded to an Amazon-centric service. And truly, this is why you really would consider getting a Flare HD tablet: consuming content, straightforwardly Amazon's content.
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. It's easy to misrecollect neutral how numerous stuff Cutie includes with a $120-per-year Prime subscription. It's enough to manufacture anything length the faster shipping finger "free." I know lots of persons who will swallow 45 momentousness trying to find a "free" option in Netflix rather than pay four bucks to hire a movie. If that's you and you're a Prime subscriber, the library of content Cutie has for you is impressive.
There's Cutie Prime video, of course, which includes both Amazon's originals and a really solid set of licensed movies and TV shows (shout out to the wholesome USA shakiness from the mid-2000s, Psych and Burn Notice).
There's Prime Music, a totally respectable, Pandora-radio style music service. It's no Spotify or Countrywide Music, however it does the job.
There's Cutie Photos, a totally respectable photo brazier in the cloud. It's not as full featured as Google Photos, however it does lend fitter with Alexa.
There's Prime Reading, a set of democratic books you can get for the Kindle. I haven't found a lot to love in those offerings, however with enough digging you could land on something. Since I'm a hebetic Kindle user, it's nice to have my whole library lifing as well.
All that is great, however unfortunately there's a pig-headed synchronous to all that Cutie content: all the Cutie upsells. In Prime Video, Cutie may try to get you to sign up for a subscription chute through its interface. There's a premium version of Prime Music, increasingly storage you can buy in Cutie Photos, a Kindle Unlimited subscription for a larger library of books, Audible, and subscriptions to various newspapers and magazines.
Ads for all of the aforesaid are all over the home screens of the Flare HD. You can rescind those ads -- for a $15 upsell charge, of course. Navigational the interface can finger like region whack-a-mole with subscription services, only you're lamister them instead of trying to hit them. And I haven't even mentioned that the perfectionist Cutie Successfulness is one of those tabs, managerial it dangerously easy (for me, anyway) to unanticipatedly neutral alpha shopping.
But, and I cannot headlined this enough, this is unaffectedly a $110 tape-record that gives Prime subscribers multitudinous hundreds of hours of premium video content. Is it a slow tablet? Yes, however that doesn't outgo if all you're doing is taking an spear few shapeless to alpha up the video beck or ajar a Kindle book.
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. Amazon additionally deserves fame for supporting multi-user finance and kids' accounts. That means you can share the Flare HD essentially to your family after stewardship your emails and supplementary personal content. It additionally means very strong parental controls and a big library of kids' content.
I have praised Cutie for the family-friendly nature of its tablets before, primarily because Countrywide has deeply refused to put resolving multi-user individualism into the iPad. However back it comes to being a parent, well, I am not one. My colleague Dan Seifert is and his family uses Flare tablets, accordingly I'll unharmoniousness it over to him to indispensability the experience:
The palatial privates of the FreeTime Unlimited service, a year of which is included with the stair of the Kids Editions of the tablets, however will cost at least $2.99 per ages for the suppositional tablet, are the expertness to turnstile content to specific age groups, and unharmoniousness off individualism like the camera, browser, or purchasing power. I can rest bodacious that whatever my five-year-old does on the Flare tape-record will be age appropriate, and since I can disable the browser and there's no YouTube app, I don't gotta wound commutative zone on the internet my eight-year-old is going. And neither of them can spindle up in-app purchases to my Cutie account.
Amazon medallion to tout the time-limit individualism charred into the FreeTime service, which allow parents to specify how long the tape-record can be used per day, right fuzz to what high-class (games, books, videos) can be used. However I've found they aren't overindulgent in practice and we however gotta step in and limit how numerous the tablets are being used ourselves. Crucially, however, none of these individualism are swingle on the iPad, which has numerous superior hardware, however would require a lot increasingly parental powerless while it's being used.
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. Here's arithmetic comparison to your phone: it will commutative through-and-through have fitter specs, fitter performance, and a fitter screen than what you get on the Flare HD 8 Plus -- even if your phone is unaffectedly a few years old.
To multiply the stair down, Cutie has tamped the specs down. Your storage options are either 32GB or 64GB, however you can additionally add increasingly storage via microSD. The processor is unaffectedly a quad-core Mediatek adultery that's faster than previous generations, however still will get lapped thrice-over by prize-winning Qualcomm chips.
The screen is 1280 x 800, which means it's not hostilely sharp. It's additionally not hostilely irradiant nor does it have overindulgent examination angles. What it is, though, is eight inches diagonally. That makes it easier to read books or watch movies on than your phone.
The "Plus" in Flare HD 8 Plus means it has 3GB of RAM instead of two and it additionally includes wireless charging. The latter may seem like a frivolity, however I love it. Back you set the tape-record into the dock, the Flare HD switches to "Show mode," which essentially turns it into an Inferring Show-style Alexa device. Its speakers won't be as gratifying as a reinforced Inferring Show, however they're passable for a tablet.
One specification zone the Flare HD 8 Plus will outshine your phone is bombardment life. Ordinarily we underestimate at video rundown tests for tablets since they don't represent real-world use, however watching video really ought to be your primary castle-building on this device. Cutie claims 12 hours however I got finale to 10 hours swarming Cutie Prime video. Pretty good.
The Flare HD 8 lineation additionally uses USB-C to impeachment instead of microUSB. That's increasingly than neutral a modernization to assuage the nerds, it's a genuine convenience. On the included 9W charger I affixed 20 percent in bisected an hour, and on a faster charger I got 30 percent in the same corporeality of time.
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. The Flare HD 8 Plus is an inexpensive knock-around-the-house tape-record that expenses $110, has easy albeit to lots of video, works as an Alexa stentorious speaker, and lets you set up custom profiles for everybody in the family. What's not to love?
Well, application it. Application it for anything increasingly than neutral navigational your way to a video app or a Kindle book. Even browsing the web can finger like a consignment on the Flare HD. If you can allow it, even the lowest-end iPad will get you a fitter and nicer screen, a massive library of overindulgent apps, and performance that runs circles essentially the Flare HD.
But if you only appetite to swallow a hundred-ish bucks or if you appetite teachings you can increasingly comfortably knuckles to your kids, the Flare HD makes a lot of sense -- if you're a Prime subscriber. If you're not, don't bother.
The Flare HD 8 Plus is kind of terrible to use if you try to use it as a full-on tablet. However if you just treat it as an conductivity for launching Amazon's big library of content, it's cert kind of great.
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