Amazon Fire HD 8 Tablet With Alexa Review / The Best Budget Tablet In 2018

DESIGN & BUILD :-

The latest Fire HD 8 delivers faster performance, a bigger battery and more base storage than the previous version for almost half the price. Its 8-inch screen is bright, the speakers are loud and it offers expandable microSD storage and ample parental controls. 

While high-end tablets offer glass or aluminium finishing, Amazon's Fire tablets opt for study plastic around the back. It's a simple and slightly understated design, but it's a solid result. The plastics feel solid enough with ample texture to provide grip (Amazon is confident enough to say that it surpasses the iPad in terms of durability). They also withstand the occasional accidental knock and wipe clean easily enough.

The Amazon Fire HD 8 is an excellent tablet that boasts impressive battery life, good build quality, the ability to cope with light gaming demands and, most importantly, a price that is affordable to the masses.

Powered by a 1.3GHz quad-core processor and with 1.5GB of RAM, the HD 8 is rated to deliver 12 hours of juice. Amazon says that 12-hour battery rating is for "mixed-use," so it's hard to determine in our own video streaming tests if the new HD 8 lives up to those numbers, but the battery life, while not exceptionally good, is quite decent for a budget tablet. The biggest hit it took was with heavy use of Wi-Fi and playing more graphics-intensive games.

Available in four colors, the 2017 HD 8 retains its zippy feel.Thanks to the stereo speakers tuned with Dolby audio, the tablet outputs a good amount of sound and works well for movie watching. The front and rear cameras are pretty basic by today's standards (the rear captures 720p video), but at least they're there and available for such apps as Skype.

You're looking at a handful of drawbacks. While this is an 8-inch widescreen HD display with 1,280x800-pixel (189 ppi) resolution, it's not as sharp or vibrant as the iPad Mini 4's more squarish 4:3 screen and its 2,048x1,536-pixel resolution (326 ppi). But that tablet now costs literally 5 times as much -- albeit with 128GB of locked-in storage. The HD 8 will be fine for most people, but if you've used an iPad before, you'll feel it's a step down. Even Amazon's late, great Fire HD 6 has a better-looking screen because it has the same resolution as the HD 8 but packs it into a 6-inch space at a denser 252 ppi (pixels per inch).

PROS :-

• Fantastic battery life
• Great price point
• Superb build quality
• Good sound quality
• Inexpensive

CONS :-

• Terrible camera
• Reflective display
• Slow to charge

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AMAZON ECHO (2ND GEN) REVIEW / SMALLER, CHEAPER & BETTER

The new version of the Alexa-ready gadget sounds great, looks good and improves on the original, meaning nobody can touch its quality for the price...

For the past three years, Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant has been invading homes inside the case of the Echo smart speaker. Alexa has been answering questions, turning on smart lights, adding things to shopping lists, ordering things from Amazon, and playing music for millions of people. The Echo essentially established the smart speaker market, which now has entries from Google, Microsoft, and soon, Apple.

The new Echo 2 is dinkier than its predecessor – 89mm shorter in fact – so it will take up less space on your shelf or kitchen counter. It also no longer quite so Blade Runner-esque, instead looking more like something you might buy from Habitat or Ikea.

After expanding the line with the smaller and super-popular Echo Dot, the portable, battery-powered Tap, and the more expensive, but ultimately less thrilling, Echo Show, Amazon has finally gone back and updated the original Echo. The new Echo, which is heretofore known simply as the “All-new Echo,” as the original Echo no longer exists in Amazon’s world, comes with a smaller, simpler design; better aesthetics; supposedly improved audio; and, most importantly, a significantly lower price of $99.

BETTER SOUND QUALITY :-

The new Echo’s sound is sharper, with more treble than the first model. That’s good for hearing Alexa speak back to you, or for cutting through the din of a running faucet if you’re using the Echo in a kitchen. But for music, the sound is thin and flat, with even less bass than before. The old model had a softer sound with just a little bit more bass that’s much more pleasant to listen to.

Amazon has added a number of new features to Alexa, the smart assistant inside of the Echo, including control of Fire TV set top boxes and improved smart home controls. Since Alexa runs entirely in the cloud, it doesn’t matter which Amazon Echo device you own, it performs all of the same functions on all of them. You don’t need to buy a new Echo to get the latest Alexa features on your first-generation model. And the new Echo performs all of those voice-controlled functions just as well as its predecessor.

The new Echo hears you just as well as the old one, even when music is blasting out of it, or the cooker hood is going hell-for-leather as you concoct your latest culinary creation. If you have more than one Echo device it’ll “echolocate”, meaning only the nearest one will respond to you, and you can play one source of music in multiple rooms using groups of Echo devices.

The new smaller Echo sounds better than the previous version. The audio is slightly clearer, and of a higher quality all round – particularly at louder volumes. Thanks to a recent software update, it has more bass too. The smaller size has not diminished the sound

PROS :-

• Lower cost
• Can always here you
• Changeable covers
• Customization appearance
• Bluetooth in and out
• Mute button electrically disconnects the mics
• More attractive design
• Less expensive than original
• Small looks
• Excellent smart home device control
• New Alexa features
• Far-field mic array works wonders

 CONS :-

• Can activate accidentally
• Decorative shells don't look great enough
• Always-listening object in your house
• Sound quality only on a par with original Echo
• Much the same as the original
• Volume-control buttons are inferior to the volume-control ring on the original

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Echo Dot 2nd Generation / Review

The Echo can control your home’s lighting, play music, estimate your commute time, operate a timer, answer trivia questions, read books and news bulletins to you, tell you which movies are at your local theater, and so much more. You can order a pizza from Dominoes, a ride from Uber, or virtually anything from Amazon. You’d want one in every room so you didn’t need to walk to the room it was in to use it, or yell “Alexa!” from across the house to get its attention.

The Echo Dot is a great-looking little product. It’s around the same circumference as the full-size Echo, but this new Dot lacks a volume ring, meaning it has an additional two buttons on its top to control volume directly, in addition to the mute and listen buttons.

The Dot also has the same light ring found on the Echo, which indicates when Alexa is listening to you through its seven-microphone array or whether the speaker is muted (useful if you’re watching a movie and don’t want to be interrupted when Alexa thinks she’s heard her name). 

The light surrounds two rows of perforated dots that indicate the speaker. An Action button, volume controls, and a button to enable and disable the microphone sit on top. The bottom is coated to feel a bit tacky, which should keep the Dot from slipping off your counter. You can get the Dot in black or white, though Amazon—as well as a number of other companies—make cases in different colors and materials, should you want to add a bit more personality.

Audio Quality :-

The Echo Dot was designed with home stereo systems in mind, so audio playback is its most important feature. Thanks to integration with Amazon Prime Music, Spotify Premium, Pandora, TuneIn, iHeartRadio and Audible, you can stream music through your home's speakers. By plugging this little device in, you can instantly modernize your setup.

Should I buy the Amazon Echo Dot?

The Amazon Echo Echo Dot is simply a better device than the standard Amazon Echo. It does everything its big brother does, but offers greater versatility and it costs half of the price. If you’re after a voice assistant to take control of your home, or even if you’re just curious to take a peek at the future of home automation, this is a no-brainer.

That lower price also means you might consider buying several Echo Dots and, um, dot them around your home. Having Alexa in every room dramatically increases her usefulness, which just isn’t possible with only a single, more expensive unit in one room.

It’s always listening, unless you press the mute button. Utter your chosen prompt word (“Amazon”, “Echo” or “Alexa”) to kick the device into action and get Alexa to do your bidding.

You can ask Alexa any number of basic questions, and most of the time she’ll be able to find the right answer on Bing

PROS :-

• Access to thousands of Alexa "skills"
• Audio out port and Bluetooth speaker support.
• Easy to set it up.
• Smart and helpful.
• At $50, it's $150 cheaper than the full size echo.

CONS :-

• Alexa app can be buggy.
• Speaker quality is not to great for music.

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