Amazon Fire HD 8 Tablet (2018, 8th Gen)

For years I thought about getting a cheap tablet for simple browsing, but Noooo, I had to have a name brand with all the bells and whistles. Fast forward a few years and a few dead batteries later, it was time to replace my name brand "doorstops". I've always hesitated with Fire HD tablets after reading reviews that indicated that they were slow, unresponsive, limited Apps in the Amazon store, yadda-yadda-yadda. Well, I bought one for an elderly family member last Christmas and played around with while I set it up. I was very impressed with this 8-inch especially after putting the Google Play store on it in order to install the Youtube App that she just had to have. I was so impressed that less than a month later I bought the 10-inch version. About a month later, I realized that the 8-inch version was the perfect size and fits your hand well while couch surfing. I then bought the 8-inch and haven't turned the 10-inch on ever since. It was passed the return date so I'm kind of stuck with 10-ich unless I decide to regift it. But again, I'm still impressed. Does it have a storage limitation? Yes, but that's what an micro-SD card if for and they are cheap. Does it have RAM limitation? Yes, but as long as you know that upfront and try to play games that require a lot of RAM, this tablet will suit you just fine. It's perfect for browsing, checking your e-mail, causal everyday games, watching Prime videos, Hulu, etc. The screen has great resolution for the price and form factor. Sound is fairly nice for a small tablet, better than most. I honestly don't miss my old "Sammy Note" at all. Overall the latest generation of Fire HD tablets are the best entry-level tablets money can buy. Need the Google Play Store? Do a Google search for "Play Store on Fire HD" and install it using the many steps-by-step instructions found on the net. It works, it's "easy" to set up and gives you access to all the Apps you "think" you need to have on a 8-inch Android Tablet. Still on the fence? Why? Don't procrastinate or hesitate due to the negative reviews from people who were too cheap to buy a tablet with a processor and the RAM designed for more powerful Apps. For the price and the casual use cases I mentioned above, this is the best value out there. Get one and see for yourself! The Jazzman

I bought the tablet on Prime Day for a discounted price. For $50 I knew it was not going to be better than my previous tablet which was an iPad Air (1st generation) for which I paid 16 times more than the Fire HD 8. Since I gave my iPad to my daughter for school, I needed a tablet for myself. I didn't want to spend more than $500 on a tablet for sure, so this tablet was perfect for my budget. All I use my tablet for was to watch videos and reply to emails, so I knew I didn't need a powerhouse like the new iPad Pro. And most definitely I needed something portable, which the iPad Pro definitely isn't. So I decided to try out the Fire HD8. Honestly I am genuinely surprised with how much the HD8 has to offer. For $50 I was able to do a lot, so here are the cons and pros after using it for 1 month. Pros: Very affordable (get the one with ads, ads are only on the lock screen totally not intrusive, you save $15.00, close to 20% off total price) Alexa hands-free (amazing feature to control all my smart appliances at home) 720p video SD Card (unlike the iPad) Feels sturdy (I feel that if I drop the tablet it won't break fairly easy) Battery life (pretty solid battery for a small tablet, about 10 hours from my experience) Cons: Limited amount of apps from the Amazon app store (absolutely no google apps at all, made from google anyways, only knock-offs) Speakers (they are not very loud and it's very apparently once you start to consume media, but they are ok) Cameras (every time you open the cameras you'll feel as if you're back to 2005, but not a deal breaker for me though) Not a full Android experience (you will need to install the Play Store APK in order to get android apps, but not a lot of people will be able to) Laggy (it is laggy at times, especially if you have multiple apps open in the background, so try to close any apps you're not using) SD card slot is a very difficult to pop open... seriously (might have been just my unit though) Screen (resolution is adequate, especially considering the price, but it doesn't get too bright) Conclusion: In conclusion, I would totally recommend the HD 8 because I feel that for the price you are getting a lot. That being said, don't go in and expect the performance of an iPad because you won't find it. If you go in and know what to expect, you will enjoy the experience like I have. 6 Weeks Later: The tablet broke down on me. It got stuck on the booting screen. I called Amazon and the lady who helped me was absolutely not knowledgeable on how to fix the problem. She sent me a replacement instead, which I was happy for. 2 days later I receive it on my door. I opened the package and it was a refurbished unit sent to me. How do I know it was a refurbished unit? Well, it said so in the box it came in LOL. I paid for a brand new unit the day I bought it, and 6 weeks later it breaks down and now I am stuck with a REFURBISHED tablet. Needless to say, I am very disappointed that Amazon sent me a refurbished HD8 instead of another brand new one, but at least it works, for now anyways. I will post a follow up to see how the refurbished replacement holds up. Follow up: I have been using my HD8 for a while now and after the replacement was sent I have had no issues whatsoever. Battery lasts 2 days for me and I am pleasantly surprised. Definitely recommend it!

This is my third Fire . I have a 6 inch 16g , a 7 inch 8g and now this 8 inch 32g eighth generation . They all work well. I have used the first 2 extensively. And will probably use the 8 inch extensively also. What I discovered , over the long term is that built in memory is more important than screen size. Only a few functions will transfer to an add on SD CARD , that leaves you effectively limited to the built in memory. At first it doesn't matter but after awhile , no matter what else you try to delete you end up not having enough memory to do everything that you were doing. I can still do much with my 6 inch 16g , but I am very limited with what I can now do with my 7 inch 8g even though I have a 32g SD CARD in it. Practically none of the "functionality" ( APPS ) will transfer to the card. If you cannot afford more built in memory go ahead and buy the lessor memory but if you can possibly spring for the increased built in memory you will really be glad you did a little later........ The fire's are all well worth their price and are extremely useful and easy to use. ...... They are also very durable , although the screen will crack with a direct impact on to a hard surface from a high distance , but it has to be a severe drop , and even at that the device still works good . ( I dropped badly my 6 inch , I am totally amazed that it still works ) . ........ The new 8 inch has way better sound and although the screen on the older 2 devices was very nice , this new 8 inch seems even better to me. Even though the main functionality is dependent on built in storage I have ordered a high performance Samsung 128g SD CARD (cheap $24) just so I will never have to worry about "storage" storage ( like books , music and other media like PDF files , I download a lot of service manuals ) . .............. Great devices I highly recommend them !

Let’s break this tablet down because I have some important things to point out before you purchase... I wanted a tablet that I could watch movies on, search social media, listen to music on, and write. So basically I wanted it for entertainment, and that’s exactly what it’s best for. I watch prime video on this thing, and it’s absolutely amazing it has a beautiful screen! It’s a great size to carry with me in my purse which is definitely great too. It has decent sound it gets pretty loud. There’s a lot of cool things about this tablet especially if you have amazon prime there’s a tab for all of the prime benefits which is amazing! That’s my favorite thing about this tablet. A few things however, kinda had me thinking of returning it for a minute. First of all there’s not much storage it goes really fast and yeah you can’t use the google App Store although people have found a way around that.... My biggest issue was the terrible lag and how slow it could be opening up a web page. Sometimes it would just quit and make the screen go black. It would freeze and lag me all over the place. I think this might’ve had to do with the low storage as now that I have bought an sd card it seems to be running a bit better. It still can be a bit slow but for the price I really don’t mind. It does everything I need it to do and honestly I really like it now that the lagging has slowed down. It was a big problem for me as I let it sit for two months because it annoyed me so much. I’m glad I picked it back up and messed around with it a little. I’ve fallen in love with this tablet and honestly if your wanting to do everything you can do on your phone but on a larger screen pick it up it’s much more luxurious than surfing the net on a tiny screen. I’d actually recommend this to children AND adults it’s a great entertainment device for all ages. It’s super simple to use and very expensive looking and a tough cookie you could probably drop this down a flight of stairs and still be good. I like it and I think you will too! I gave it four stars because it was a bit iffy at first and in all honesty I’m still a little hesitant, but all in all it’s a quality little device that does the job.

As a retired senior who travels a lot, I bought the Amazon Fire HD 8 Tablet to keep track of the things that were important to me. These are: 1) Email, 2) Facebook, 3) News, 4) Weather, 5) Calendar, 6) Maps & Directions, 7) Stock Market, 8) Amazon Store, 9) YouTube, and 10) Mobile Banking. It does all these things quite well except for one, Mobile Banking, and that is probably the most important to me. Amazon has pre-installed on the HD 8 tablet their own version of Google Play called simply the "Appstore." It has a lot of apps, but I could find only one Banking App, and that was for Wells Fargo. That was useless for me so I tried banking using the SILK browser. This is a very good browser overall and I was able to enter my online banking site without any problems. But it was still not as good as a dedicated banking app. I had problems viewing my statements which are in PDF format. I eventually found a way to view them, but it took a little bit of fussing around to make it work. Overall, the Fire HD 8 is an excellent tablet. It does nine of the ten things I wanted it for extremely well. It has exactly the right balance between a good-sized screen and the ability to hold it in one hand. I especially like the buttons being on the top surface so I don't accidentally push the volume or power button when holding it in my hand. The display is clear and bright and easy to read, even for seniors. It's not quite as crisp as an Apple iPad or Samsung Galaxy, but the difference is minimal and I'm quite pleased with it. Charging was fast and battery life between charges appears to be as good, or maybe a little better, than my Samsung 7 inch tablet. I updated the internal memory to 128 GB using a Micro SD card I purchased on Amazon for less than $20. That should be enough memory for just about anything I plan to do. Upgrading the memory took only a few minutes and was much easier than I expected. The sound is in stereo and comes out of two small openings along one side of the tablet. It is loud enough for most purposes, but I purchased a portable battery-powered stereo Bluetooth speaker to use when I want to listen to music, watch a video, or listen to audio-books. The Bluetooth speaker connected in a matter of seconds and works flawlessly. The Bluetooth connection means I don't have to mess with cables and plugs to connect the speaker, especially convenient when I'm traveling. My message to the Amazon HD 8 development team is to update the Appstore so that at least the top ten US banks are represented there. My bank has a very good app on Google Play, but I can't access it because there is no Google Play app on the Amazon Fire. I've since found out it is possible to install Google Play on the Fire HD 8, but the process appears to be somewhat complicated. I will attempt this next, but it is quite annoying that I would have to do this myself just because Amazon and Google have a slight disagreement between them. In conclusion, I hope the Amazon Fire development team can obtain the wherewithal to either offer more banking apps in their own Appstore, or provide the HD 8 with Google Play pre-installed so we users can download existing apps. If they could do that, this tablet would beat just about any other tablet on the market in terms of usability and durability.

Pros: Inexpensive for the product. 1.3gb processor 32 gb internal memory Micro SD slot that can handle up to 400 gb (can be formatted as external storage, or as internal memory) Runs Alexa & Show Can be used to access and control Alexa Smart Home devices Cons: Speakers are not everything they could be Ads - you have to swipe up every time you turn on the screen. There are other points where the ads pop in While it runs Android 7.0, loading Google Play Store takes a bit of being tech savvy. You can go on your Amazon Account to devices, and select the device - and select for no ads, Amazon will charge you $15 for each device you disable the ads for. The sale price I bought ours for, it's well worth paying that price. Also, you can't get the no ads option in any color other than Black. We got a blue one and a yellow one. Micro SD tips: Get the largest size you can afford to. For me, the Samsung on sale for $19.99 (limit 1 per customer at that price) is the winner 128gb. When I put it in, the option to format it comes up at the top of the screen. I then formatted it as internal memory (which extends the 32 gb that comes already installed). Further tips - I enabled the ability to install apps from outside sources, and I enabled the developers tools (one of which allows for saving all apps, programs to external SD cards). Other things, depending on how savvy you are, is enabling using GPU (graphics processing unit versus CPU central processing unit) for certain things. This allows it to run faster. If you aren't tech savvy, the basics are to format the micro sd memory as internal memory if you are wanting apps to download on it as well. If you are wanting to download apps that are not Amazon apps, you need to enable the option in settings to install apps from outside sources. There is a known issue with Kindle books where by they tend to download to the original 32 gb internal memory, and if moved to the SD card not read well. I have not tested this out yet myself. However, it's part of the reasons for the settings I opted for. If you go the route of installing Google Play Store by downloading the APK files (there are 4) and installing them, realize that you are disabling Amazon apps of certain types in that process. You will notice right off that Google Play will then update Alexa for instance to their version. The other thing is, you will then switch to the Google locator instead of the Amazon locator. There are a lot of other considerations. However, for the money, I find the tablet to be a real winner. Especially with the recent CPU upgrade from 1g to 1.3g. I highly recommend these tablets if you are looking for a more affordable option from the Echo Show alone.

This review is for those stuck between purchasing a Fire 7 or a Fire HD 8 Tablet: Let me just get this off my chest first. I DO NOT RECOMMEND a Fire 7 AT ALL if your looking for a quality tablet that’s small and inexpensive like I was. The only reasons I can see anyone buying a Fire 7 is if it’s for a very, very young child as a starter tablet or if your an adult who will only use it to read books. Otherwise the Fire HD 8 is going to be your best bet. The Fire HD 8 is great quality for it’s size and yes even it’s price. It’s the perfect size unlike the Fire 7 which to me really isn’t much larger in screen size than my iPhone 6+. The Fire HD 8 comes with an ample amount of storage to be able to handle whatever updates it throws at you upon setup, and that’s just the 16GB. Anything below 16GB is not enough to handle device updates and allow for storage space for much of anything. There’s not much money saved either in buying a Fire 7 8GB with a micro SD Card, been there, done that and I won’t do it again! Now onto the fun stuff. The Fire HD 8 is HD! It has a longer battery life, downloads faster, has better sound quality and video quality than the Fire 7. It’s also easier to start up a game and actually play it than the Fire 7. Everything that is possible to do with a Fire HD 8 Tablet is much more fun and less time consuming than a Fire 7. I highly recommend the Fire HD 8 Tablet if aside from reading, gaming and watching videos is also as important. The only problem I have encountered with both Fire Tablets is their very finicky Location Services. I would have given the Fire HD 8 Five Stars if the Location Services worked better and therefore enabled me to restore from a backup. I will always have to setup as a new device every time I upgrade a device because it takes this brand tablet almost 24 hours to find my location if it even ever does?! With all of that being said I highly recommend the Fire HD 8 Tablet. Although it’s no iPad by any means. At times I find myself forgetting what device I’m on and that speaks volumes! If you’re like me and enjoy utilizing everything a device has to offer, this one is the only way to go for it’s compact size, the quality and the price!

OK I must say that I REALLY LIKE this tablet for several reasons, and just a couple of minor dislikes, which I will cover. 1. L-O-N-G Battery Life. I got this tablet primarily for use with Kindle. I prefer the Kindle App to the dedicated Kindle e-reader. My other tablets tend to drain too quickly when I use the Kindle App. NOT THIS ONE! And I leave the Wi-Fi on all the time too. With that said, I will go over some of the main problems I had with other tablets and the Kindle App, which I do NOT have with this one: a. Kindle App on other tablets does not play well with Wi-Fi. I kept having to exit the app any time I turned the Wi-Fi on or off. That problem is gone now! b. Returning books. On the other tables it was a headache and I would usually just return them from my phone instead of the tablet. c. Syncing. Again, somewhat of a headache with other tablets. On the Fire, no headache. 2. Lightweight. Not nearly as heavy as my older Asus 8" tablet 3. Fast recharging. Using the included charger, it takes 2 hours to go from almost 0% battery to 100% 4. Dual Band Wi-Fi. With both 2.4 and 5 Ghz bands available, it can really rock on the net. 5. 16 or 32 GB storage. I got the 32 GB storage and was glad I did. 6. Built in Alexa. 7. Handles up to 400 GB SDHC Cards. I have a 256 GB card I put in and it works like a champ, and I have tons of storage now. More room for Kindle Books. Now the couple of minor dislikes: 1. Special Offers. I saved money by taking them, but I will probably opt out of it for the $15 offer removal charge. I do NOT like getting ads on my lock screen. 2. Silk Browser. Definitely needs improvement. Don't like it and am not using it anymore. The tablet does not have options for other browsers, even through the App Store. 3. The Fire OS is based on Android. That's good since I much prefer Android to IOS. BUT, the one thing it is missing is the Google Play Store. It does come with the Amazon Appstore, but not nearly as many apps are available. With that being said, You CAN install Google Play Store on the tablet through a process called sideloading, but that is beyond the scope of what I can cover in this review. Rest assured it CAN be done, since I have installed it on mine easily. Google Play Store on Fire if you want to know the steps involved. It took less than 10 minutes to install it, and now I can get back some of my more esoteric apps. All in all though a great little tablet which suits my Kindle Unlimited needs. It gets 5 stars.

Update 3: Unfortunately I am now decreasing my rating to 1/5 and here is why. In Update 2 I mentioned speaking with an Amazon rep who advised me to pay more to remove ads, but I paid for an ad-free tablet so that was not something I was going to do ... during the conversation however, a popup appeared on the Fire 8 that said something like "special offers removed from tablet." I thought great, problem solved. Well not so fast. Over the next few days, began having to watch more and more videos advertising mostly apps for games directed at young children. At this time, no matter what I'm doing on the Fire 8, such as reading the news on the NBC app or playing MahJong or Freecell games, in the middle comes -- often more than one -- video ad. If you click it, ends up you download the product so you must wait until it plays through and offers an "X" you can click to end it. So I initiated a call from Amazon and was told that setting a parental lock or resetting to factory would stop the ads. I knew resetting to factory would not remove ads, I told the rep. I'd reset to factory just a few days ago and have ads. And I don't need a parental lock. I was finally able to speak with a knowledgeable supervisor who informed me that the ads I'm seeing come along with the software apps, such as NBC News, MahJong or Freecell. Amazon cannot remove those, and a factory reset would not (as I knew already). So bottom line, there's no such thing as an "ad-free" tablet, when you pay extra for one without "special offers," those pertain to Amazon's offers, not the ads of apps which you will continue to see. And, believe me, they are annoying. I suppose ad-free versions of apps are available for payment but no thanks. About the only thing my Fire 8 is actually useful to me for is: Backup device for helping troubleshoot other devices eg when they can't get online Book reading (I'm told there shouldn't be ads when reading digital books on the Fire 8.) Update 2: Unfortunately I am now decreasing my rating to 2/5 and here is why. I purchased this tablet "without special offers" ie, without ads and paid an added price for the ad-free version. When the tablet was received new, it had ads. Contacted Amazon and they promptly fixed that. Fast forward 4 years and now, due to an issue with the tablet not loading, for which the only solution was factory reset, performed a reset (please see Update 1 for details). After the reset the tablet worked ... but ads were back. As 4 years ago, I contacted Amazon to request they do whatever they did the first time to remove the ads. But this time, the rep, who said they were trained on no-ad Fire tablets, did not know what to do except to guide me to go to Content and Devices and choose "remove special offers" and then PAY. Was unable to understand I purchased the tablet without special offers and ALREADY PAID for that. It was highly frustrating. On account of this, lowering my overall rating to 2/5. If Amazon offers an option to pay a higher price for a tablet without ads, it should SEND a tablet without ads, period. Time-wasting hassles -- for both the customer and Amazon front-line reps who are being given NO training in how to fix this -- are simply inexcusable. Update 1: I finally found a post online that has reset my Fire 8 tablet to factory. It wiped out my games but I can see links to my books as they live in the cloud on Amazon. Here's how I did it (this expands on the original solution posted online): 1-Turn off other devices so your router is free for Fire 8 2-Turn your Fire 8 to portrait mode with the charger plugged in at the top and screen facing you 3-Press hard on the "on" button (small button to the right of the cord) until a solid black screen. Release. 4-Now quickly hold down the "volume down" button (to left of cord furthest from the cord, and while holding that down, immediately press hard again on the "on" button also, both together. When Amazon comes up, release. 5-In a few seconds you should see a list of options. Use the "volume down" button to scroll down and "volume up" to scroll up and the "on" button to choose the "factory reset" option and confirm. 6-You will see a welcome screen and then a screen to log onto your wifi router with the password. 7-Connected to wifi, you should see "updating" and your router light that shows activity, is blinking. Wait for it to update, it takes a while. 8-Updated, you should see a screen for your Amazon password. Now I correctly entered my PW but it's long and Amazon did not accept it the first time but did on the second time. 9-Now you get a video and then are able to set up your Fire as when it was new. I emphasize if this procedure does not work the first time, keep trying. It is good for Fire 8 but every Fire version may have a different means of factory resetting. Since this has worked for me and at this time my Fire has booted up and is working, I'm raising my rating to 3/5. Pros: -Nice size to carry with you in a purse. -Can browse online and save passwords. -Good for digital books. -Can be a backup for your laptop in case something goes wrong with that. Cons: -I Nowhere near as functional as a Chromebook. 2-The Fire 8 tablet's volume is very low even turned all the way up. 3-It's slow -- albeit I have a slow Internet connection but on my Chromebook I can watch YouTube videos, videos stop and start on the Fire 8. 4-A lot of the tablet is devoted to leading you into purchasing monthly subscriptions to music and movies, and purchasing books and other merchandise, in other words, it appears mainly a device to entice spending money on Amazon. 5-Seems geared to kids more than adults. 6-Paid for tablet without "offers" (ads) and received tablet with ads. Amazon fixed it but when I had to reset the tablet to factory, ads were back (please see Update 2 for details). Original Review: I purchased this Fire HD 8 tablet in 2019 but have not had reason to really use it. I kept it on the charger and in airplane mode. Today needed to use this tablet online. It showed fully charged. It began by working flawlessly. It said it updated 1 game. I kept it online on wi-fi with the cover closed but plugged in as it turned off a couple of hours after starting it. Fast forward a few more hours and need to use it but screen was black, unlike earlier today when could touch screen to open it, it stayed black until pressed Power. But it only got as far as the screen with the "fire" logo and below that, 3 dots in a line that in sequence turn on and off. It's been like this for a couple of hours. The router shows me no updates are currently being downloaded on the Fire. Appears many others have had the same experience. Found various advice online from, for example, Amazon forum to press/hold power for 40 seconds and "Amazon" shows then hold 40 more seconds until charging light comes on. No luck. Another article from a trusted site said unplug the device from the port and wall for 10 minutes. No luck. A reviewer here said there's a certain known issue of some update bricking this tablet. So at present, I got a total of a few hours use out of this tablet and appears it's done for. In contrast, years ago purchased a Lenovo tablet on Amazon and, although it no longer gets any updates and the version is out of date (so not secure for browsing) it still at least boots and can play games on it. Not with the much newer Fire. I don't see any excuse for a product made and sold such as this. If there was a bad update it should be fixed by a newer update. Right now, if I buy another tablet it would not be a Fire. If there is a change will update this review.

I bought and promptly returned this device because it is too crippled. If you want any google services or content, or to be able to cast to a chromecast, you are out of luck. It may be possible to hack install the necessary services, but probably not version 8 yet. And you shouldn't have to hack a crippled android based OS to get the pieces Amazon have stripped out. I do not like having my hand forced through hardware crippling. If Amazon wants me to not use Google services, then they should engineer competing services that are technically superior or more cost effective. UPDATED REVIEW: I missed the deadline to ship this back, so let it sit a while. In the months that have passed, it is now possible to get this device to work as one expects of an "Android Tablet". Because of that I have raised my rating from one star to three. To be fair, I stand by my original review because when you type "Android Tablet" in Amazon's search bar it should not put Fire 8 Tablet as the first result. This product is not an "Android Tablet". It is a custom Android derivative OS which has lacks any services or features that one typically associates with an "Android Tablet". Specifically, you don't get: - Google Play Store: so any apps you've bought over the years won't carry forward to this device. Even worse, the Amazon App Store offers a subset of apps, and even if you wanted to re-purchase an app you can't. Example, "This War of Mine" and probably an endless list of titles. - Google Play Music: So if you subscribe to Google play music, you are out of luck here. Oh, but you can subscribe to Amazon's music service. Wee! - Google Maps - Google Movies - You can't cast to Chromecast And the list goes on and on. The Amazon App Store is, and there is no better way to say it, just full of crapware. Not crapware in the sense that it is pre-installed -- although a lot of crapware is pre-installed --but in the sense that you just can't find much quality. As an example, if you want GPS navigation, you can't install Google Maps, you can't find any of the big brand alternatives like Garmin or TomTom, and all you can find are.... wait for it.... crappy apps by independents. What is worse than the lack of quality, is that you have no idea what these apps might be doing in terms of spying on you. For example, you can't find Google's Gm ail app, but you can find apps that provide you access to your gmail mail. That has to be done by allowing this third party app to have your gmail credentials. There is no other way, because the underlying Google Services are not on the device. What that means, is if you have a real Android device and your google account has all your passwords saved, credit card numbers, etc. as soon as you expose your gmail credentials to some third party app, you just compromised yourself in a big way. Ok, now some good things to say, which is why I cam back to update this review. If you happen to be very subscribed to Amazon and reject anything Google, this is definitely a good deal for you. If you do need Google services and the full Google Play App Store and all the core Google apps, you can do it. It is a bit hackish but not too bad. You can find plenty of tutorials on it. When you are done doing that, it works well and you have the best of both worlds. That said, there is no way to guarantee that the next FireOS software update won't remove all the Google stuff, and also make it impossible to put it back. You are hoping and trusting Amazon won't do that to you, and in my experience you can't bank on that trust. The very fact that you have to uncripple this device to use anything Google is evidence of that. Furthermore, Amazon's history of holding customers hostage in their battle with Google is very troubling. But as soon as you hack install the right APK's, your Fire 8 Tablet will then work as you would expect any "Android Tablet" to work. Ok, so here are the good points that I can see now that it works like an "Android Tablet": 1) It is very cheap. You can't beat the price. If you want to remove the ads, that will cost you $15 more. 2) It is very light, which means it is going to survive drops a little better. 3) It has excellent power management. Because it is light, I expected it to have poor battery consumption. I was pleasantly surprised to find it manages power very well and has a good amount of usability without plugging in. 4) It performs well for the price. If you expect to be able to compare performance to $399 devices, it will never win. I am sure it can handle some games, but it isn't going to handle games that have fast moving 3D graphics. 5) The display doesn't look bad at all, and exceeds my expectations given the price. Before I close, let me say that if Amazon ever does strip google services from your device and make it impossible to put them back, as a last resort you can flash a custom ROM to the device and be freed from Amazon's clutches for good. You can root this device, but it does require taking the back cover off and shorting some test points so that a bootloader can be loaded. If that doesn't sound like something you can, or would want, to do then you just have to hope it never comes to that. As a footnote, I should say that if you want to change the launcher, a.k.a the home screen, that requires yet some more hackery. For example, if you don't like the Amazon launcher UI and would rather use Nova Launcher, you can install Nova but there is nowhere in the device settings app to change the launcher. Yet another thing they strip out to tether you to Amazon. Luckily some people made an app to allow you to change the launcher on Fire devices, but Amazon then made it so that app cannot be executed. You can get around that by using an app cloner, to change the name of the app (the way Android sees it) so you can run the app to change the launcher. Again, that really puts a sour taste in your mouth and demonstrates the lengths Amazon is going to in order to lock you in. I absolutely hate that kind of corporate monopolization behavior. A quick update in July 2019, not even a year after buying, to come back and reduce 3 star rating to 2. I can no longer recommend this table under any circumstances. Aside from the crippling aspects that you may have to work around, it is a buggy device. Recently, probably due to an OTA update, this device will no longer play music while locked. Yeah, about 2 minutes into music, it auto locks and stops playing. This is literally the only thing I had found this device was useful for, and it can't even play music. Yes, I have the option in settings turned off to automatically close apps or disable wireless to save battery. I am guessing that option is bugged. In addition, it sometimes stops working. The display goes blank and you can't wake it, and holding the power button won't even reboot it. I have found that I have to tap the screen randomly and it will turn back on. Perhaps a lose battery cable. This device has not been abused, dropped, etc. The good news is, I can still get same value out of this by letting my son play This War of Mine. But, it can only do that because I installed Google Play store etc. because it wasn't in the Amazon store. Ugh. It is sad to see such poor quality being designed and manufacture by Amazon.