Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9in review

Darien Graham-Smith April 4, 2013

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£229

Price when reviewed

The Amazon Kindle Fire HD tablet made its UK debut in 7in form last September. Now, the 8.9in variant is here. With prices starting at £229 for the 16GB model, the new format is distinctly pricier than its 7in sibling, which comes in at £159.

Where the 7in model’s broad bezel looked cheap and chunky, however, this one is more comfortably proportioned, with thumb-sized edges sitting neatly around its 8.9in panel. And a fine panel it is: its 1,920 x 1,200 resolution represents a superfine pixel density of 254ppi – a smidgen behind the 264ppi of Apple’s “Retina” iPads, but a step up from the Nexus 7 and Amazon’s own Kindle Fire HD 7in, which both offer 216ppi. With a maximum brightness of 480cd/m2, and an excellent 980:1 contrast ratio, it’s beautifully bold and crisp, and a delight to read on. It also lends itself admirably to magazines and comics, an area where the traditional Kindle struggles.

The Kindle Fire is also a gateway to Amazon’s Lovefilm streaming service. Predictably, watching video is a pleasant experience, with rich – if not exactly vibrant – colour and excellent viewing angles. Dual-band, dual-antenna wireless helps ensure a smooth streaming experience (an LTE model is also offered in the US, although not yet here).

The speakers are nice and punchy, too, although if you turn up the volume to maximum, distortion becomes a problem. The glossy screen is rather susceptible to reflections, but a micro-HDMI port at the base makes it easy to hook up a TV if you prefer to watch on the big screen.

Naturally, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9in isn’t as light as an E Ink Kindle, but at 567g it can be thrown in a bag easily enough. Similarly, while battery life is measured in hours rather than days, it’s very creditable by the standards of touchscreen tablets. With wireless disabled, and the screen set to half brightness, our video rundown test looped for 12hrs 26mins on a single charge – enough to keep you entertained on even the longest flight. When streaming wirelessly from Lovefilm, battery life naturally falls, but Amazon still promises more than ten hours of viewing time.

Through all of this, Amazon’s custom front-end puts your content front and centre, and cleverly encourages you to build up your library by placing recommendations directly on the homescreen, ready to be purchased with a few clicks. If you’re primarily looking for a tablet for consuming books and videos, it’s all accessible and effective.

If you’re looking for a general-purpose Android tablet, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9in does a more equivocal job. In terms of processing power it’s fine, but nothing to write home about: the dual-core 1.5GHz TI design is a step up from the 1.2GHz CPU used by the 7in model, but a SunSpider score of 1,438ms is merely average – the iPad polished the same test off in 868ms. A score of 2,693 in the Quadrant benchmark confirms that this is a capable but by no means exceptional performer.

As with the 7in model, the Google services we instinctively associate with Android don’t get a look in. Contacts and hotspot details don’t sync from your phone or other tablets; funky toys such as Latitude are conspicuously absent; the browser is Amazon’s own Silk rather than the Chrome-derived app; and even web searches go through Bing by default.

Perhaps most frustratingly, you don’t get access to Google Play, with searches and purchases instead going through Amazon’s own Appstore. This isn’t as restrictive as it might sound – the store passed 50,000 titles last autumn – but it’s still some way behind Google Play’s 800,000 apps. If you’ve built up a library of apps through Google Play, you’ll need to buy them all again for the Kindle Fire.

You can’t add Google Play yourself, either: although it’s possible to side load APKs, we found the Google Play app mysteriously refused to run. This coercive trick leaves a sour taste in the mouth – and it doesn’t help that to get the best price on the hardware, you must also agree to see adverts on the device’s lockscreen. (Opt out and you’ll pay an extra £10 for the device.)

All of which points to a truth Amazon would surely prefer you not to realise: if you buy a more generic Android tablet, and install Netflix and the Amazon Kindle app, as well as the Appstore portal, you’ll get all the headline capabilities of the Kindle Fire HD in a more open and flexible package. For us, it was this calculus that gave the Nexus 7 a decisive edge over the 7in Kindle Fire HD.

However, since no-one else is offering a full-size Android tablet at this price, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9in’s foibles could be worth putting up with. Although it has limitations, there’s no denying that £229 – or even £239 without the sponsored messages – is a tempting price for a device with such a distinctive form factor and superb screen.

Detail
Warranty	1 yr return to base
Physical
Dimensions	239 x 163 x 9mm (WDH)
Weight	567g
Display
Primary keyboard	On-screen
Screen size	8.9in
Resolution screen horizontal	1,080
Resolution screen vertical	1,920
Display type	LCD
Battery
Battery capacity	6,000mAh
Core specifications
CPU frequency, MHz	2MHz
Integrated memory	16.0GB
RAM capacity	1.00GB
Other
WiFi standard	802.11n
Integrated GPS	yes
Software
Mobile operating system	Android 4