I hate that there’s no better £100 tablet than Amazon’s Fire HD 8 (2024)

I would love to recommend that those looking for a cheap tablet buy something other than the Amazon Fire HD 8 (2024) but unfortunately, it’s still the best option available for £100.

The appeal of Amazon’s latest budget tablet centres around its affordability; bargain-basement price tag aside, it’s not got all that much going for it. Performance has been marginally improved, as has build quality, but the Fire HD 8 (2024) possesses some truly frustrating elements that Amazon stubbornly refuses to address.

Chief among these is the woefully outdated software, which is now several versions behind the rest of its Android brethren. The display is also rather unimpressive and, despite a small uptick in performance, the Fire HD 8 remains pretty pedestrian. Unless you’re strictly limited to a budget of £100, look elsewhere.

Amazon Fire HD 8 (2024) review: What do you get for the money?

The good news about the Fire HD 8 (2024) is that it at least doesn’t cost any more than the 2022 model. Starting at £100 for the model with 32GB of storage and 3GB of RAM (with ads on the lock screen), you can also get the new 64GB version with 4GB of RAM for £125 (again, with ads) and you can choose to go ad-free on either for an extra £10.

Both versions pair their respective storage and RAM with the same hexa-core 2GHz MediaTek MT8169A chipset that was used in the last generation. Also unchanged is the display, which is once again an 8in IPS panel with a fairly low resolution of 1,280 x 800, yielding a measly pixel density of just 129ppi, and a standard 60Hz refresh rate.

The build is also very familiar, with the same 202 x 9.6 x 137mm dimensions and 337g weight as the Fire HD 8 (2022). The rear is slightly different, however, replacing the cheap matte plastic of its predecessor with the same cross-hatched style as the Fire HD 8 Plus (2022), which looks and feels a little bit more premium. The 64GB model only comes in plain black but you can get the 32GB version in Emerald green and Hibiscus pink colourways.

The rear camera tucked in the top-left corner is a slightly sharper 5-megapixel unit but the 2-megapixel selfie camera remains basically unusable. Around the edges, you’ve got the power and volume keys on the top half of the right edge, with the USB-C port and 3.5mm headphone jack just below them. On the bottom is a microSD card slot, allowing you to expand the onboard storage by up to 1TB.

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Amazon Fire HD 8 (2024) review: What does it do well?

Despite using the same processor, the Fire HD 8 (2024) manages a minor improvement in performance speeds over its predecessors. The single-core benchmarks are 10% better than the Fire HD 8 (2022) and 12% better than the Fire HD 8 Plus (2022), while the multi-core scores are improved by 7% and 2%, respectively.

The Fire HD 8 (2024) is still lightyears behind 2022’s Honor Pad 8 and Oppo Pad Air but, in fairness, both of those started life in the £200 to £300 price range. They’ve since been discounted down to be serious threats to Amazon, however, with the Pad 8 now just £150 and the Pad Air down to £149, at the time of writing.

The main appeal of tablets like this is that they’re cheap enough to give to your kids and, on that front, the Fire HD 8 (2024) does have a couple of advantages. You can happily hand your child the base tablet as is but there are also two models aimed specifically at kids that add a few extra perks.

The Fire HD 8 Kids (2024) is intended for children aged 3-7 and wraps the tablet in a thick, shock-absorbing casing that includes a kick-stand and is made from non-toxic foam – ensuring the safety of both tablet and child. These cases come in three colours, with the Blue and Grape styles costing £150 and the Disney Princess-branded priced at £160.

For slightly older children (ages 6-12, according to Amazon), the Fire HD 8 Kids Pro (2024) will feel less babyish, with a slimmer plastic case that comes in a selection of styles. You can get the basic Teal version or the stylish Jungle Cat variety for £150, while the Disney Avengers style is once again an extra £10, at £160.

Both kids models come with a one-year subscription to Amazon Kids Plus, which provides access to thousands of books, apps and games that range from silly fun to educational. You can monitor children’s app usage and approve/deny downloads via the parent dashboard and you can also turn off auto-renewal here, too (after the first year, it costs £5/mth). Finally, the Kids models also include a two-year warranty that allows you to replace broken units for free, no questions asked.

Amazon Fire HD 8 (2024) review: What could be improved?

How much time have you got? As I say in every Amazon tablet review I write, the biggest and most frustrating issue with the Fire HD 8 (2024) is the abysmal software. FireOS 8 is based on Android 11 (for context, Android 15 is currently gearing up for its big rollout) and is years behind in terms of features (there’s not even an app drawer) and generally slower and clunkier than you can get on rival tablets.

Amazon’s app store leaves a lot to be desired as well, with a complete lack of any popular web browsers, leaving you to deal with the painfully lacklustre Silk Browser, and no Google apps to speak of, either. You can get access to the missing apps by sideloading them but this is an extra effort and the ill-gotten apps won’t update automatically like they would on other Android devices. Altogether, the obnoxious software is easily the biggest red flag I have here.

I wasn’t thrilled with the meagre display quality on the 2022 model but things have managed to get a little worse in several places. Peak brightness is down quite a bit (358cd/m², compared to 457cd/m²), the measured contrast ratio of 1,645:1 is inferior and the total sRGB coverage is marginally down to 77.8%. Colour accuracy is a little better at least, with the average Delta E colour variance score dropping from 2.45 on the 2022 model to 2.21 here, and the black level I measured was a slightly better 0.22.

It doesn’t feel completely fair to include gaming in the improvements section, simply because you shouldn’t expect much from tablets at this price. All options compared here can handle the likes of Candy Crush and Solitaire well enough but anything more heavy-duty requires a lot more horsepower than this.

Neither of the 2022 models ran the software we use to test the GPU (a common problem with Amazon’s outdated software) so we can’t directly compare but, as you can see below, the Fire HD 8 (2024) is in the same ballpark as the Honor and Oppo models. The onscreen results may give the impression it’s better but that’s only due to the Fire’s lower resolution – the offscreen benchmarks are where we want to be making comparisons.

Battery life is also worse than the previous model. In our standard looping video test, the Fire HD 8 (2024) lasted for 16hrs 6mins – roughly 3.5 hours less than both the Fire HD 8 (2022) and Fire HD 8 Plus (2022). It comes out ahead of the Honor Pad 8 and its more power-hungry 12in display but the Oppo Pad Air still clears it by a couple of hours, despite its larger 10.36in screen.

Once depleted, the battery takes around two and a half hours to fully recharge – if you have a compatible 15W charger, that is. The Oppo Pad Air’s 18W capacity isn’t much better but the Honor Pad 8’s 22.5W capacity gets the job done in less than two hours.

Amazon Fire HD 8 (2024) review: Should you buy it?

The frustrating thing is that there isn’t any serious competition for tablets at this price – and Amazon knows it. So despite the lack of worthwhile advancements in the hardware and the belligerently backwards software, the Amazon Fire HD 8 (2024) is the best tablet you can get for £100 – by simple virtue of there being no other serious options.

I’d always recommend considering whether you can push your budget a little higher – both the Honor Pad 8 and Oppo Pad Air have bigger displays, better performance and more accessible software, and can currently be picked up for £150 and £149, respectively. If £100 is your absolute limit though, the Amazon Fire HD 8 (2024) is just about your only option. It’s a shame that you can’t buy the 2022 model anymore, as I think that’s still marginally better, but at least the Fire HD 8 (2024) hasn’t had its price increased.