Kindle Fire HD 8.9 Internal Speakers
Although tablets are designed as media consumption devices, many of them have terrible internal speakers. Amazon put a little more effort into the Kindle Fire HD 8.9’s speakers, using two drivers that sit as a stereo pair on the back of the tablet.
It has a built-in Dolby Digital Plus mode that adjusts the sound to make the most of the still-weak drivers. We’re a bit disappointed that the speaker array doesn’t seem to have been significantly improved over what you get in a 7-inch Kindle Fire HD, but it remains a cut above almost all budget Android tablets.
Proper stereo drivers are a huge bonus when watching a movie or TV series, and the sound is more authoritative and powerful than a single-driver tablet.
Kindle Fire HD 8.9 Camera
The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 only offers a single front camera, facing whoever is using the tablet, which can be used for video calls and the like. There’s no rear camera, and it’s not something many taste buds are likely to miss. A phone can replace a compact camera, but a 600g 9-inch tablet cannot.
To begin with, there’s no obvious use for the front camera – there’s no dedicated camera app. However, it works with the Skype app, which has a link to it in your app folder by default, and other camera-enabled Android apps. The camera uses a 1.3 megapixel sensor, a mid-range model that will allow you to do decent video conferencing.
Kindle Fire HD 8.9 Battery Life
The Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9 is about making sacrifices in some areas to gain in others. Battery life is another solid win.
It has a larger battery than the 7-inch version and performs admirably against both the 10-inch and 7-inch Android competition. When the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 was set to play a looping video with Wi-Fi off and brightness at 50 percent, it stayed awake for 10 hours.
This is a tablet that, fortunately, can survive the duration of a transatlantic flight – in other words, a handful of movies. However, we’ll find that the brightness isn’t all that high at 50 per cent, so you’ll probably want to jack it up a little higher for a better experience.
Kindle Fire HD 8.9 value
There are some significant compromises with the Kindle Fire HD 8.9, but Amazon has made almost all of them in just the right places. The main camera, expandable memory and quad-core processor are missing. But the high-quality screen and the fairly low price make up for it.
The remaining problem is the one that’s hardest to forgive – that the Kindle Fire UI is often sluggish, relies too heavily on Amazon’s connected services, and stalls the customization that’s a huge benefit of Android. If that doesn’t sound like too much trouble, however, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 makes a lot of sense.
verdict
Like the 7-inch version, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 offers excellent value for money. There’s a lot of quality hardware on offer here at a reasonable price, with the high-resolution screen being a standout feature. However, you pay for these Amazon subsidies elsewhere. The Kindle Fire software is much slower than vanilla Android at this point, making it more frustrating to use than non-Amazon tablets.
How we test tablets
We thoroughly test every tablet we test. We use industry standard tests to properly compare features and we use the tablet as our primary device during the review period. We will always tell you what we find and we never accept money to rate a product.
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Used as our main tablet during the period
Verified against recognized industry benchmarks
Ongoing real tests
Tested with various games, apps and services
points in detail
performance 6
value 9
design 7
screen quality 8
functions 6
battery life 8