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If you’re looking for a cheap simple tablet, now is a great time to pick up an Amazon Fire HD tablet. Amazon has refurbished Fire HD 8 tablets on clearance sale starting from just $39.99, nearly 50% off.
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These are fairly basic machines, released in 2018 with modest specs and moderate performance at the time, but for the budget-friendly price, it’s still a compelling deal. If you’re just looking for a device for checking emails, posting on social media, watching a few videos and just generally prodding at the internet from bed, this is perfectly capable of that.
The 1280×800 display with large bezels around it, plastic body, single small speaker, and mid-range 2018 specs aren’t going to blow anyone’s socks off, but for the price it’s still excellent value.
You can either get the variant with 16gb of storage for $39.99 or pay $69.99 for the 32gb variant. It does feature a MicroSD slot for expandable storage, so it seems to me that you’re better off getting the 16gb version and a MicroSD card if you need more space on there.
This clearance sale bundles these tablets with a Charging Dock, great for if you’re watching something on the tablet whilst it’s charging.
These would be perfect for kids wanting a first tablet, where you don’t have to worry so much about how they might take care of a pricier tablet like an iPad or a top-end Android tablet.
Regarding what condition to expect these tablets to arrive in, given that they are refurbished, Amazon says this about their condition:
“A Certified Refurbished Fire HD 8 Tablet is refurbished, tested, and certified to look and work like new.”
The biggest drawback, depending on your perspective, is how these tablets are heavily geared towards Amazon’s various services. The operating system is Android, but it’s Amazon’s custom forked version of Android, Fire OS, and it has many of Amazon’s different services deeply integrated into. Out of the box, it does not include Google Play Services, meaning you can’t easily access the Google Play store or many other android apps that you would use on any other android device. There is a dedicated community of users modifying these devices in various different ways, either just adding Google Play to expand the functionality, or even a custom rom to replace the entire operating system with a more standard version of Android. Head over to XDA Dev if you want to dip your toe into the world of modifying the software on your Amazon Fire HD 8 tablet.
They come in black, blue, red and yellow, although whichever color you pick, the front frame will be black.
Certified Refurbished Fire HD 8 Tablet [16gb] – $39.99 delivered
Certified Refurbished Fire HD 8 Tablet [32gb] – $69.99 delivered