[Closed] Cheap amazon fire tablet - anyone tried?

I was thinking of getting one of these, specifically I want a cheap something to use for trainer road rather than my phone,
Would this work.

Not sure that trainer road is available yet for android, which is frustrating!

Quite fancy one myself as my tab has recently died..

We bought one to aid travelling with junior. If you are on the Amazon eco system then it's a no brainer with the underground apps. Sd card slot is great, coupled with vlc player means you can rip your dvds for later viewing. Screen is pretty good, and copes with grubby fingers!

Downsides
The battery life isn't the best.
Amazon instant video downloads last for 8 hours then you need to "renew" by reconnecting to Amazon store. (For prime content).
Launcher is crap, and I can't find out how to customise it.

For us it's great as we have the prime subscription. Not sure you'd be getting the most from it without prime.

Bought one for our daughter for Xmas. She's very happy with it. Seems a nice device from my limited time with it.

My youngest daughter got one from santa, he even put google play store on it for her, along with the same games her sister has on her hudl. Cant get rid of all the amazon stuff from the home screen though.

They were £35 before Christmas- we bought two and they're great for the little 'uns

Got one last month, seems pretty fast and works well.

[quote=johndoh ]They were £35 before Christmas- we bought two and they're great for the little 'uns

I also picked up two for the kids at £35 each - on Black Friday weekend, wasn't sure how long they were that price for. They seem pretty good value at that - haven't yet put google play on, that's on the todo list, but most of the stuff they want seems to be available on Amazon Underground and TBH the whole Amazon thing isn't as intrusive as I expected - they just get a kids' locked down experience which works fine anyway.

flog your nook hd - got £40 for mine the other day

I spent a bit more and got a 10" tablet

Really? I think I only paid £60 new for mine! Interesting to hear conflicting views in the amazon stuff. I might try an android install on the nook before anything else.

Bought one just before xmas, returned it at the weekend as not fit for purpose, had to argue with shop but eventually they caved.

Terrible battery life, tiny amount of memory and annoying ads for amazon services.

Its true they are cheap, but you get what you pay for.

May be OK for the kids providing they don't play games that need a lot of storage.

Bought two for the kids when the HD version came out. Wish we'd not bothered and bought the iPad Mini's we have replaced them with then. All the downsides as above. Be better getting shut I think whilst they might be worth a little.

I was getting fed up of small bugs on the nook - figured I could flog it on and only lose £10 or so, best not to wait until obsolete I thought

[quote=sneakyg4 ]Terrible battery life, tiny amount of memory and annoying ads for amazon services.

SD card slot - I paid another £6 for a 32GB card which fixes that issue. Haven't really tested battery life, but it seems to be enough. I knew we were getting ads and planning to hack to get rid of them (or you can pay £10), but they're a lot less intrusive than I expected. So if you got one for £35, for £50 you've fixed two of those issues.

Sure it's not an iPad mini, so get one of those if you have the budget, but it's hardly in the same category price wise.

Kids got one each for Christmas, along with a card to expand storage. Not an iPad, but at £35 each it's a lot of bang for your buck.

Great thing is that if you don't like it, Amazon don't quibble about returns.

Seem to be down to £40 each now, as well.

If the Fire is anything like the Fire HD its tough as hell. I worked on the audio for Fire HD and did some really brutal testing on its headphone jack. Never managed to break it!

How different to stock android is the amazon implementation? Also, is the device rootable to stick a different android version on?

Not obviously hugely different - my understanding is that once you've installed Google Play you can run any normal Android app. Yes, it is possible to root - though I've seen reports of issues doing so, and in any case given you can do most stuff without rooting and that if you do you'll lose some of the Amazon specific stuff which is handy I don't think I'll be doing that.

We got one for the boy for Christmas and I've since rooted it, added the Play store and removed the lock screen ads. Simple(ish).

It does what he needs it to do (although I'm struggling to get it to act as a Raspberry Pi screen, but I'm a moron).

The great thing about rooting it, hacking to remove the ads and having no plans to spend any money on getting stuff for it is that my understanding is Amazon loses money on these, and they're supposed to be a selling platform.

Which reminds me for anybody getting one, something it took me a while to work out - in order to download any apps, even the free ones you have to register a cc on the account you register it with. I have a cc on my Amazon account, but didn't want to register the Fires with that, so set up a new Amazon account - for the cc number I used a test one which wouldn't work if you wanted to buy anything but works just fine for free stuff
https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/vhelp/paypalmanager_help/credit_card_numbers.htm

So this rooting lark - is it actually very easy to do? I had considered doing it before we gave them as presents but time ran away with us in the run up to Christmas so I just created accounts for my girls using my details then changed the settings so a password is required for *any* chnages.

Terrible battery life, tiny amount of memory and annoying ads for amazon services.

The battery life is long enough for my daughter to play videos and apps all day if we allowed her. It's 8gb storage, pretty standard for a £100 tablet? The only ad that I've noticed popping up on my older Fire is when I turn it on. No other ads interfere with use.

Sure it's not an iPad mini, so get one of those if you have the budget, but it's hardly in the same category price wise.

[quote=IdleJon ]It's 8gb storage, pretty standard for a £100 tablet? The only ad that I've noticed popping up on my older Fire is when I turn it on.

The irony with complaints about lack of memory and suggestions to get an iPad instead is that with an iPad you're stuck - we have an iPad3 with 16GB which is always chock full, with stuff having to be deleted to make way. Not something which is ever going to be an issue when you can insert an SD card for storage. Likewise with the ads - as I commented above I was planning on getting rid of the ads, but they interfere so little I can't be bothered.

They're reduced to 39.99 at the moment. I think I'm going to take a punt and I'll stick a different ROM on it as everyone I know in person who has one (techy types) doesn't rate the amazon one.

SD card slot - I paid another £6 for a 32GB card which fixes that issue.

Hmm, the one I had definitely did not have an SD slot, I wonder if I had been flogged a previous generation one? I could have lived with the other issues.

No matter, replaced with a Lenovo Tablet, admittedly for more money.

"alongside the normal range of laptops, older tablets, phones and Kindles of various kind"

theres a normal range ? difficult with kids i appreciate but there has to be a line where buying nearly obsolete landfill and changing it every year or so actually costs more than just buying a good bit of kit in the first place.....

fwiw we bought a fire HD and it was shit as a tablet and poor and an e reader - we returned it and replaced it with a paperwhite as it was much better at the job it was designed for.

theres a normal range ? difficult with kids i appreciate but there has to be a line where buying nearly obsolete landfill and changing it every year or so actually costs more than just buying a good bit of kit in the first place.....

Yeah. A really old laptop, just clinging on to life. A new laptop so I can do proper work. The kids aren't allowed on that. Old tablets, really cheap ones which weren't worth the money. I think we've got one or two which are just usable for slow internet access. I've got a 3 year old Kindle Fire and a new eReader. We've also got another three Fires between us, for kids and wife. And we inherited an iPad last year. The total we've spent on electronica probably wouldn't come to the cost of my first desktop Hewlett Packard.

I hope that's ok with you? 🙂

[quote=trail_rat ]there has to be a line where buying nearly obsolete landfill and changing it every year or so actually costs more than just buying a good bit of kit in the first place.....

I'm reckoning that if an iPad Mini is a "good bit of kit" which will be obsoleted in about 5 years due to iOS upgrades, then as the Kindles were less than 1/5th the price of one of those they at least don't have that failing 😉

At this point in time, the kids who asked for iPad Airs for Xmas are still calling them iPads (which occasionally results in embarrassing moments) and haven't noticed any significant differences from mum's iPad (we've managed to skirt around games which aren't available), which is good enough for me.

Yep ours have expansion slots too and have no issues with ads popping up, rather just a strong leaning towards Amazon content.

I really can't complain at £34.99 each.

I've got one. The ads just seem to appear when its turned on, doesn't bother me too much.

It takes an SD card, has a file explorer and VLC is in the Amazon app store, which means i can watch films on it whilst on the train - it's main purpose.

I've spent an embarrassing amount of time playing "Amazon Underground" games where for some reason all the in-app purchases are free (Trials Xtreme or something springs to mind).

That's about all i've used it for.

For browsing and things, I prefer my smartphone, just seems faster, smoother and has a clearer (if smaller) screen.

The screen on the kindle is quite low quality and doesn't actually seem to have the correct aspect ratio, so things seem too fat in landscape and too thin in portrait.

I mostly just use a smartphone + laptop now, especially since phones have bigger screens these days.

If rooting is easy and anyones got a how-to guide (???) I might give that a go.