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Home / News / Amazon speeds up Fire HD 8 with new chips and longer battery life

Amazon speeds up Fire HD 8 with new chips and longer battery life

Amazon Fire HD 8 lifestyle in hand

Days after refreshing its basic Kindle, Amazon has dropped a beefed-up version of its 8in Fire HD 8 tablet, with a 30% faster processor than the previous generation and a longer battery life, now with up to 13 hours of normal use.

The standard model is $100/£100, with the £120 Fire HD 8 Plus offering larger 3GB memory, faster wired charging over USB-C and a better 5MP rear camera. There’s also support for wireless charging via Qi and as with the previous gen and last year’s Fire HD 10 Plus, a separate charging dock is available to transform the HD 8 into what is, basically, an Echo Show.

There are also two versions for Kids, too – Fire HD 8 Kids and Fire HD 8 Kids Pro (the latter is designed for kids at school) which come with the usual kid-proof case, a year’s access to Amazon Kids+ and the two-year guarantee so if your kids drop it down the stairs you can get a new one.

The tablets also now feature Tap to Alexa, a new accessibility feature that enables you to interact with Alexa through touch rather than voice. Check out our full guide to Alexa.

The new Fire HD 8 range comes with 32 and 64GB storage options, plus there’s support for up to 1TB of expandable storage, too.

The Fire HD 8 is now available in black, denim (yes, blue), and rose colours. Fire HD 8 Plus comes in a dimpled finish in grey. You can also get covers for them, too. The Kids tablets are available in red, blue or purple.

Also read: Our guide to the best Alexa smart speaker for you

Profile image of Dan Grabham Dan Grabham Editor-in-Chief

About

Dan is Editor-in-chief of Stuff, working across the magazine and the Stuff.tv website.  Our Editor-in-Chief is a regular at tech shows such as CES in Las Vegas, IFA in Berlin and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as well as at other launches and events. He has been a CES Innovation Awards judge. Dan is completely platform agnostic and very at home using and writing about Windows, macOS, Android and iOS/iPadOS plus lots and lots of gadgets including audio and smart home gear, laptops and smartphones. He's also been interviewed and quoted in a wide variety of places including The Sun, BBC World Service, BBC News Online, BBC Radio 5Live, BBC Radio 4, Sky News Radio and BBC Local Radio.

Areas of expertise

Computing, mobile, audio, smart home

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