Review: Amazon Fire HD 6

Introduction

Tablets are in an odd place right now. Sales are slumping for both Android and iOS devices and with phones growing in size every few months the need for a separate, similarly sized device that lacks all the smartphone features is definitely waning.

But that isn't stopping Amazon, in fact the online shopping behemoth has recently refreshed almost the entire Fire tablet line, giving spec bumps to both the HD 7 and HDX 8.9 and unveiling possibly the most interesting of all, the Amazon Fire HD 6.

I've been using the Fire HD 6 as my sole tablet for about a week and it's surprised me, far outweighing any expectations I had when I first booted it up and tapped in my Amazon details.

But, let's start with a quick overview of things. The Fire HD 6 as you might have guessed, boasts a 6-inch display which is actually the feature that sets it apart from the rest of the crowded tablet space.

A 6-inch display is more common for a smartphone than a tablet, with most slates slipping into the 7-10-inch range. It gives the Amazon Fire HD 6 a real selling point.

There have been larger tablets this year, the Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 12.2 for example; so seeing one go the other way and offer something much smaller is hardly surprising.

The price is also a real plus point for the Amazon Fire HD 6. Starting at £79, $99 for the 8GB version (with ads) and going up to £99, $119 (also, with ads) for the 16GB model, it's the cheapest tablet Amazon has ever released and only £20, $20 more than the Kindle.

When it comes to the tablet specs, the Amazon Fire HD 6 is pretty well equipped. There's a 1.5GHz quad-core processor, 1GB of RAM and both front and rear facing cameras.

When you consider the iPad mini 2 starts at £239, $299 and boasts a dual-core 1.3GHz processor, 1GB of RAM and 16GB of storage space, Amazon's pocketable tablet sounds like a great deal.

Obviously, Amazon has had to take some shortcuts to keep the price low, but nothing on this tablets screams 'bargain bin'.

The 1,280 x 800 display is not quite as sharp as a 1080p version, or the Retina display on the iPad mini 2, but it still has accurate colour representation and films streamed at 720p look good, especially as the screen squashes more pixels in.

Design

I'd describe the looks of the Fire HD 6 as chunky and durable, almost the perfect tablet to give to kids. The plastic chassis is far from premium, but it feels reliably sturdy and there's almost no give. I even dropped it and though I picked it up fearing the worst, it didn't even pick up a scratch.

A thick black bezel surrounds the screen, while the chassis is available in a variety of hues. My review unit is what Amazon describes as cobalt (blue) and I found it clashed a bit with the black front. It's a minor quibble though as other colours are available, including the neon-like citron, magenta (pink) along with black and white for the less daring.

The Fire HD 6 measures 169 x 103 x 10.7mm and weighs 290g (10.2 oz). For a tablet this small, it does actually feel a bit heavy, though it weighs exactly the same as the 2013 Nexus 7 and less than the 8-inch Nvidia Shield Tablet (390g).

Reading a book in portrait mode was OK, though after about thirty minutes my arm started to get tired, but maybe that's just my weak arm. Watching a film in landscape is even more problematic, I had to prop the tablet up on a table to make it through an episode of Black Sails on Amazon Prime.

On the back is a single speaker, a step-down from the dual stereo speaker that sits on the HD 7 and a 2MP snapper (there's also a VGA version on the front, for those who want to engage in very blurry Skype chats or take grainy selfies).

On the top is the headphone jack, on/off switch and the microUSB port for charging, while the volume rocker is situated on the left.

Even though the materials used here are far from the metal and glass Apple uses to craft its iPad mini line, it's a big step up from older Amazon tablets and bargain Android slates of old.

It's durable, easy to grip and sturdy, if a little thick for my liking. But really this device is all about accessing Amazon's vast library of content and services, from Kindle books to Prime videos to shopping for your next batch of Sriracha hot sauce, and this it does well.

Key features and interface

If you've ever used a tablet from Amazon before, you'll feel right at home on the Fire HD 6, basically because everything is pretty much the same as it has always been.

Fire OS 4 now runs atop Android 4.4 but looks completely unrecognisable from Google's baby. Instead of a typical homescreen, you're presented with a carousel of content that incorporates all your apps, movies, books and music. When you open a new app it takes its place at the front of the carousel, though you can pin content you use most frequently so they stay at the front.

Swipe up from the carousel and a more traditional app grid appears, while dragging an app on top of another creates a folder.

Above the carousel is a menu chock full of links to everything Amazon offers, from games to audiobooks, and if you keep scrolling you'll find Amazon's impressive photo storing solution, Cloud Drive.

Swipe down from the top and there's the typical notification shade, with a row of non-customisable quick settings that let you easily alter the brightness, toggle Wi-Fi and jump into the full settings app.

Customisation on the whole is completely non-existent in Fire OS and it's something I really dislike. That means no widgets, no custom icons and you can't even alter the background colour to anything other than black. It's as it comes for the entire time you have the tablet.

Many instantly disregard Amazon's UI and for smartphones, like the Amazon Fire Phone, I agree that is doesn't work. But, for a tablet solely about pushing and consuming content, I think it works perfectly. Everything is within easy reach and it's quick to jump from a book you're reading to the film you were watching last.

It's a purely visual interface, with big icons, film artwork and album covers everywhere, so finding what you want is easy. That is unless you want to get to your email or documents, which both get pushed away every time you open something new.

But, then again this isn't a tablet you'll be wanting to type out a long email on. I tried the email and calendar apps out for a few days as both work with all the usual accounts, such as Google, Yahoo and so on, but was frustrated by the lack of features and functionality. I quickly signed out and never touched them again.

Just like stripping out an Android staple like customisation, Amazon also cuts off access to the Google Play Store, instead restricting you to the brand's own app store.

While the Amazon app store has access to over 24,000 apps, including headline acts like Twitter, Facebook, Netflix, BBC iPlayer and Monument Valley, it lacks some very important apps. Notably, every single Google app. That includes Gmail, Google Maps, Play Music, Chrome - I could go on and on. It seriously hampers the usefulness of any of Amazon's tablets.

As Chrome is a no-go, Amazon's Silk browser takes care of all your web based need. It's a fairly simple tabbed browser that loads pages fast and renders everything as it expected.

As with any browser worth its salt, it lets you save bookmarks and rounds up all most visited pages into a visual page that lets you easily jump back to one.

A 'trending now' section gathers some top stories from around the web and you can easily share to Twitter and other social networks.

If Chrome was available I would install it straight away and Silk would become just another icon I never tapped, but it's not, as annoying as that might be. The truth is that the Silk browser is good enough, but it lacks a few features.

While Amazon decided not to include a few of the software features it added to the Fire Phone, like Mayday customer service or Firefly, Amazon Freetime has made the jump. Freetime is basically a profile switcher designed for kids, a very good one at that.

I mentioned earlier that due to the chunky, durable build, this tablet is perfect for kids and the addition of Amazon Freetime makes this even more so. Set-up is simple; you just tap in a PIN, set-up a profile for your child (or children) and then add in content you've purchased that you're happy for them to use.

There's one thing I haven't really touched upon yet, as I wanted to finish this section with what I feel is most key of all the features, and that's the tablet's integration with Amazon's Prime service.

If you haven't used Prime before, you'll bag a 30-day free trial when you first log-in, but if you have you'll already know the variety of features it brings. I'd recommend anyone picking up this tablet to also grab a Prime membership, the two work hand in hand.

Prime's key selling point on the Fire HD 6 is video, letting you stream Prime movies and TV shows in HD and giving you the option to cache them on the device for offline viewing.

As my review unit only came with 8GB of storage, I was limited in what I could download, but it's still great to be able to carry on watching the latest episode of Mad Men when you're without connection on the tube.

If something you're after isn't on Prime, there's a good chance you'll be able to buy it and download it.

The essentials

My review unit came with just 8GB of internal storage, but out of that I could only use about 4.5GB. Once I'd installed Football Manager Handheld 2015, Monument Valley and Ridiculous Fishing I had used up nearly 2GB.

Add in two HD episodes of Black Sails and I was down to just 700MB free. I'd recommend paying that extra £20, $20 and upping it to 16GB, but even with that you'll be quite restricted.

I also got a case to try out, one of Amazon's leather covers that protects both the rear and the front of the device. It feels good in the hand and slips on with a satisfying click; this case isn't going to fall off without you pulling at it.

Unlike a lot of Amazon's cases it's not an origami style, but part of the back does fold so you can prop it up on a desk. It doesn't feel very secure when it's in this propped up state, but it manages to just about stay up, as long as you don't touch it.

Performance, battery life and camera

Performance

The Fire HD 6 is packed with a quad-core 1.5GHz processor and 1GB of RAM and everything from opening up apps to playing games is a smooth experience.

Lag was something I never came across, even when playing high powered games like Football Manager Handheld 2015 or Asphalt 8.

The Geekbench 3 benchmarking app returned a multi-core score of 1456, a little lower than the 1476 score the Fire HD 7 gets. It's also a lot lower than some of the competition, including the old Nexus 7 which picks up a score of 1896.

Battery life

Battery life is key for a tablet and Amazon claims that you'll manage around eight hours of mixed use, so video watching, web browsing, ebook reading and web browser, before you're reaching for the charger.

Amazon, just like Apple, doesn't disclose the size of the battery, but I'd say the estimates are pretty much on point.

I got through a day of pretty heavy usage with ease. Taking it off the charger at about 9am, setting it up, installing apps, reading a book and watching a couple of TV episodes through iPlayer and Prime Instant Video. By about 9pm I had 39% left.

I also tested it out by watching The Dark Knight Rises, in HD, all the way through, streaming from Amazon Prime Instant Video. By the end of the film the tablet was down 30%, from 90% to 60%, which does seem quite a large amount.

Camera

Another tablet, another camera that is hardly worth the material it's constructed of. Amazon Fire tablets have, in the past, dispensed with the rear camera completely, but for the new Fire HD range Amazon has fitted it out with a 2MP rear snapper and a VGA one up-front.

I'll start off by saying this camera won't replace your point and shoot, it won't replace your iPad Air 2, it won't replace your smartphone and it probably won't even replace one of those disposable cameras you get at weddings.

The rear camera doesn't come with many additional features, just a basic HDR setting and a Panorama mode.

If I can think of a positive note it is that the autofocus is fast, and you can change the exposure slightly by tapping on different parts of the picture.

Pictures taken in daylight, albeit a rainy day in Clapham, came out grainy and they all lacked detail. Turn out the lights and all you'll end up with is a grainy, slightly reddish image. You can also take 1080p video, but I found that, again, to lack detail and the footage came out like I was purposely shaking the tablet.

Switch over the front-facing VGA camera and things don't improve. Selfies are not even Instagram worthy and video chat ended up, more times than not, with the person I was talking to complaining that they couldn't see me.

Camera samples

Click here for the full res image

Click here for the full res image

Click here for the full res image

Click here for the full res image

Click here for the full res image

Click here for the full res image

Click here for the full res image

Verdict

Amazon's smallest and cheapest tablet yet has a lot going for it, and that's not just the £79, $99 price-tag.

The 6-inch screen is big enough to watch a film on and the processor is just beefy enough to play the latest and greatest graphically intense games.

We liked

The integration with Amazon's Prime services is excellent and works like a charm. From caching videos, in HD I might add, for offline viewing, to syncing up where I was at in a book on my Kindle Voyage, everything just works as it should.

I also really like how every bit of media I consume shows up on the carousel, making it easy to jump back into it when I want to resume watching. Normally, I'd have to open up an individual app before this was possible.

Making a 6-inch tablet might seem a bit odd, especially when phones like the Nexus 6 posses a screen only 0.4-inches smaller, but I grew to appreciate having something so small that I could use solely for media.

I chucked it in my bag when I was getting the train home, knowing that I'd have something to watch, without having to buy single episodes or mess around with syncing.

While it garners a lot of criticism, I actually really like Amazon's UI for tablets. It puts content right in front of you and if you like the traditional app grid, just swipe up. Yes, it doesn't work on phones where you're using a load of different apps and opening up a multitude of messaging clients, but when all you're doing in watching and reading, it's all you need.

We disliked

And, at the same time that last comment leads right into one of the things I really dislike - all I did was watch videos and read books. On my iPad mini I can draw, write, make a song, read the latest issue of T3, along with also reading books and watching videos.

The Amazon ecosystem is restrictive and it's not built for productivity, it doesn't even have Google Drive and Docs access, something that I use everyday.

While Amazon has improved its email, calendar and web browsing apps in recent years, they're still poorly designed and lacking features. Just let me download Gmail, Google Calendar and Chrome.

Having an 8GB option is great to keep the costs down, but when you only have about 4.5GB of that you can actually use, it can become full with only a few games installed. There's no microSD expansion either.

Final verdict

I've spent a good amount of time with the Amazon Fire HD 6 and it has already inserted itself into my regime. The mixture of durability, small footprint and access to Amazon's Prime service combine to make a device that's great for watching movies on the go, but not so great for actually getting things done.

If you've only got £80, $100 and you want a tablet, this is the best that you can get, just don't expect it to replace your laptop, or even your iPad.

First reviewed: November 2014

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