Amazon Fire HD 6 Tablet

 

Amazon announced the Kindle Fire HD 6 back in September and released them about two weeks later. The HD 6 was announced alongside updated versions of the Fire HDX 8.9 and the Fire HD 7. The Fire HD 6 is new to the Kindle lineup. It’s a mid-range tablet with a low-end price. It’s only $99 and comes with 8GB of internal storage, 1GB of RAM, and a 6-inch IPS LCD display.  

Hardware

The hardware on the HD 6 is pretty straightforward. It’s powered by an ARM Cortex-A15 quad-core processor clocked at 1.21GHz, 1GB of RAM, and comes with either 8GB or 16GB of internal storage. The tablet has a 2-megapixel camera on the back, although it’s not good for much. The IPS LCD display has a 1280 x 800 resolution, with a 252 ppi pixel density. The display isn’t bad, but it’s not great. It’s packing 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a gyroscope, and an accelerometer. The HD 6 comes in five colors: Black, White, Cobalt, Magenta, and Citron. Everything with the HD 6 is about value. For $99, these specs are not too shabby.

Performance

With low-end specs, how does the Amazon Fire HD 6 perform? Surprisingly well. I had no issues downloading and watching movies, surfing the internet using Amazon’s Silk browser, reading books, and using Twitter. For day-to-day use, the HD 6 is perfectly fine. Switching between apps was smooth. I didn’t notice very many hiccups at all. The display resolution is just a little higher than 720p, so watching HD video was clear and sharp. On a 6-inch device, the difference between 720p and 1080p is not very noticeable, especially when you’re streaming video from Amazon Instant Video or Netflix.
  
Storage

Internal storage was an issue with the 8GB variant that I tested. After the OS and pre-loaded apps, you’re left with around 5GB of usable storage space. It doesn’t take long to fill that up. A few movies, a couple of games, and some books and apps, and that storage space is gone. Amazon is banking on you using cloud storage to keep your movies and photos off of the tablet. If you don’t opt for the 16GB of the Fire HD 6, expect to run out in short order.

Camera

The HD 6 has a 2-megapixel rear-facing camera and a VGA front-facing camera. The old saying that the best camera is the one you have doesn’t really apply here. You shouldn’t expect to get much in the way of quality shots from either camera.