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Amazon Kindle Fire HD 7-inch
9.0
final rating

reviewed on
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Criteria Comments Rating
  • Features The Fire HD has everything I would want in a tablet: good screen, good speakers, video out and the ability to side load Google Play apps. great!
  • Display Very nice, especially compared to the OG Fire, but I find it to be a bit...off. Also, there is some backlight bleed through in the corners. good
  • Battery life Not bad, but you're definitely paying the price for the upgraded tech in the HD model. Generally I seem to get a day and a half of moderate to heavy use. so-so
  • Ease of use Some settings are buried in menus farther than they need to be, but overall it's not too shabby. I wish the carousel wasn't the focal point of navigation. good
  • Storage capacity For what I mainly use it for (light gaming, books, video streaming), the 16 GB option is more than adequate. great!
  • Design and form factor I actually prefer the feel of the OG Fire over this one, but the speakers, camera and physical buttons make up for it. good
  • Portability (size / weight) Light enough to hold for a while and small enough to be easily toted around. I love the 7 inch form factor. great!
  • Durability Seems like it could take some abuse, but also doesn't feel as tank-like as the old Fire. good
Detailed review
For the money (and heavily dependent on what you're going to use it for) the Fire HD is a very nice product. Is it the best 7 inch tablet? Maybe not. But it does have a nice screen, great speakers and access to Amazon's Prime Video library, so streamers rejoice.

Also, it's worth noting that if you have a Google Play equipped Android device and a Dropbox account handy, you can sideload a lot of apps that make the Amazon App Store situation more than bearable.