Make no mistake: the new Amazon Fire HD 8 is the best tablet you can buy for less than £100. It’s capable enough to tackle everyday tasks, offering decent battery life, impressive speakers and reassuring build quality – all tied together by Alexa’s assistance. But there are several caveats. Screen quality is average, performance mediocre and there’s no longer support for a Charging Dock, which means it can’t meaningfully stand in for an Echo Show. More fundamentally, it only makes sense if you’re a Prime subscriber. Stump up £7.99 a month and you’ll unlock a vast catalogue of content, transforming the tablet into an entertainment companion you can take anywhere. If you don’t, you’ll instead find the Fire a middling device with a restrictive Amazon skin and a limited selection of apps and games. Should you buy it? If the previous Fire HD 8 already has a place in your satchel, you won’t notice a huge difference. But if you’re a Prime member in the market for a fresh slate, it’s an unbeatable proposition at £90.

Properly affordable; Solid battery life; Decent stereo speakers;

Restrictive Amazon interface; Screen quality remains average; No Charging Dock option;

The Fire HD 8 certainly isn’t perfect. There are far more advanced tablets out there, with sharper screens, fancier design flourishes and more capable cameras. But they also cost a lot more. For £80, you get a stonkingly capable tablet that does everything most people need it to, and then some. Throw in the optional Show Mode Charging Dock, and you’ve effectively got an Echo Show smart speaker for almost £100 cheaper. At this price, we really can’t see anyone catching Amazon.

Bargainous price; Dock is a very useful accessory; Expandable storage;

OS is heavily skewed in favour of Amazon; Iffy cameras; Silk browser isn’t the smoothest;

The Amazon Fire HD 8 is a tablet designed for people who are dedicated users of the company’s entertainment offerings, with the tablet working well as a portable media system. However, it’s not a huge upgrade from its 2018 predecessor, with only a few tweaks, so unless you think you’ll make the most of the extra storage and faster charging on offer here, you may not need this newer model.

Super-low price; Great front camera placement; Headphone jack and USB-C;

Poor screen quality; Locked to Amazon’s ecosystem; Feels cheap in the hand

Just like Disney World, the Amazon Fire HD 8 is fun for the whole family. Unlike The Happiest Place on Earth, this tablet won't cost you an arm and a leg. Starting at $150 (around £130 or AU$215 if converted), the Fire HD 8 offers tons of features for adults and children and its potential is truly unleashed if you subscribe to Amazon Prime.

Amazon Fire HD 8 is an affordable way for the whole family to take advantage of all the Prime media library perks that come with the cost of membership.

The Amazon Fire HD 8 is affordably priced and houses a microSD card slot for extra storage; The screen is bright and the speakers are satisfyingly loud; Amazon Prime members can stream or download movies and TV shows in the Prime library, and download games that are exclusively free for Amazon users; It has extensive parental controls.

The plastic design feels cheap; Large games are slow to load and gameplay gets occasionally sluggish; Performance can also lag when downloading apps or video; To truly take advantage of what the tablet has to offer, you need an Amazon Prime membership.

This tablet delivers on its value proposition, but is also a great entertainment prospect. It's a good size, has access to the right content, and its boosted by great speakers to make for an ideal travel companion.

Great value for money; Impressive speaker quality; Good battery life; Solid build; Alexa smart home dashboard;

A little on the chunky side; Display brightness could be better; Appstore not as good as Apple or Google equivalents;

Amazon has sold its low-cost Fire tablet lineup for years now, and it isn't shy about making it clear that it's a way to enjoy Amazon content on the go, letting the company offer a quality product for a relatively low price. The Fire HD 8 ($89.99) is a cute, easy-to-use 8-inch tablet that works entirely within Amazon's walled garden. For basic streaming video, picture books, kids' games, and Zoom calls, it's the best sub-$100 tablet available today, with a faster processor and more RAM than the 2018 model. But because Amazon restricts the Fire HD 8 to its own inadequate app store, you don't get nearly the range of services you'll find on other Android and Apple tablets. Our Editors' Choice overall for an inexpensive tablet is the bigger Fire HD 10. It has a faster processor and more RAM, giving it better performance all around, although it uses the same limited app store.Features and Performance The Fire HD 8 comes in black, blue, purple, or white. The base $89.99 model has 32GB o...

Amazon's inexpensive Fire HD 8 tablet continues to be an excellent value for the price, but its poor app store is really starting to feel limiting.

Inexpensive; Long battery life; Excellent audio; Hands-free Alexa support

Limited app compatibility; Sluggish performance

Properly affordable; Solid battery life; Decent stereo speakers;

Restrictive Amazon interface; Screen quality remains average; No Charging Dock option;

Bargainous price; Dock is a very useful accessory; Expandable storage;

OS is heavily skewed in favour of Amazon; Iffy cameras; Silk browser isn’t the smoothest;

The tablet market is in an odd spot. Apple dominates, and the iPad is our top pick for those who can spend up to around $300. If you can’t spend that much (or don’t want to), however, or you just don’t like Apple’s ecosystem, your options are limited. Amazon is one of the few alternatives, offering ultra-low-cost tablets for years — and it recently unveiled a refreshed version of the Amazon Fire HD 8 tablet. Amazon’s new Fire HD 8 isn’t radically different compared to the previous-generation Fire HD 8, but it does offer a few upgrades. For example, there’s now a USB-C port on the bottom, along with a new chip that claims 30% better performance. However, the headline feature is still the price. At a super-low $90, the Fire HD 8 may well be the best option under $100 — partially because it’s one of the only options under $100. But what are the sacrifices? The Fire HD 8 offers an 8-inch display, with half-inch bezels around the display. The tablet comes in a range of colors, which is perh...

Amazon integration; Ultra-affordable; Good battery life; Alexa;

Software can feel like an advertisement; Sluggish performance; Under-par display;