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Reviews

Amazon Fire HD

The most affordable Kindle Fire yet looks to compete

against the mighty Nexus brand

Brash but

beautiful

The Fire HD 6 comes in

a range of bright neon

colours. The citrus

yellow version we

tested was a welcome

break from normally

dull, monochrome

tablet design

Pixel not

perfect

Most won’t expect a

lot from a tablet’s

camera, but with

standards slowly

increasing, the grainy

and basic rear-facing

camera on the Fire

HD 6 is very poor

In the cloud

With only 8GB or 16GB

of internal storage

available, Amazon has

equipped the Fire HD 6

with plenty of cloud

storage options

W

hat is the perfect size for a tablet?

Some would say 7 inches, while others

would fi nd 10 inches is best for them.

Amazon’s latest budget tablet, the Fire HD 6 has

a diagonal screen measurement of just 6 inches,

which is only fractionally larger than most

phablets. Although the diminutive dimensions will

please some users, the Fire HD 6 is surprisingly

chunky and still not quite small enough for

one-handed use. The largely plastic exterior does

feel well made and robust, but adds some

considerable weight to the frame of the device.

Look around the device and you’ll only fi nd a few

ports available to users. At the top of the tablet lies

both the 3.5mm audio jack and micro-USB

connection, but there are noticeable omissions of

a microSD and micro-HDMI port here. The sole

speaker on the Fire HD 6 sits at the bottom of the

tablet and offers great clarity for songs – when

you’re not covering it up with your fi ngers, that is –

and miniscule cameras on the front and back are

the other noticeable additions.

Amazon’s latest version of forked Android, Fire

OS 4 Sangria, is in full force on the Fire HD 6, and is

a noticeable improvement over previous versions.

The smaller frame of the tablet helps keep Sangria

running nicely throughout, although we would have

liked to see a beefi er processor than the dual-core

offering used here. However, for the £79 price tag

Amazon has set for the Fire HD 6, it’s a fairly

standard cutback to make. If you’re an avid user of

all things Amazon, then you’ll fi nd the Fire HD 6 a

pleasure to use. Every form of media is covered

here and while the Amazon Appstore’s offering is

still light years behind that of the Google Play store,

most of the essential apps are present. If you’ve

not previously invested heavily in Amazon’s

ecosystem before, however, then the Fire HD 6 is

going to be a device that frustrates. The lack of any

real third-party support is disappointing, but

something that Amazon is keen to fi x.

For a media-oriented device, the display of the

Fire HD 6 is fairly impressive. There’s no noticeable

pixelation while consuming media and although

some may worry that the smaller size won’t lend

itself well to reading and watching movies, we

found no such issues during our time with it.

The review unit we tested came with 8GB of

storage and with no expandable memory option;

you’ll be relying heavily on the cloud. Fortunately,

every Fire HD 6 owner will have a large amount of

Media consumption

Whether it’s movies or books, there’s plenty to

for... choose from in the Amazon store