Is an amazon fire tablet kinda useless without amazon prime?

[Klorox]

I picked up an amazon fire 7 tablet over Father’s Day weekend for myself.

My iPad mini is getting slower and slower and I wanted a replacement. I figured for $40, what have I got to lose?

It was a slow day at work and I finally got around to opening it today.

It felt like every place I turned I was being asked to upgrade to amazon prime, something I’m really not in the mood to do.

Am I correct, or am I missing something?

TIA.

[Peelee]

I couldn't say, since I already had prime when I got it. Are the programs/applications demanding Prime for access, or are they just ads?

[wumpus]

According to this review:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/07/the-100-tablet-shootout-amazon-fire-8-hd-plus-vs-walmart-onn-8-tablet-pro/
the fire exists to sell you things from Amazon. I'd at least expect a chance to browse the web without interruption, but expect most of the most useful places app locations to go straight to Amazon sales.

<spoiler>It compares it to a Walmart tablet. They managed to shove an icon for the Walmart store in the navigation panel...</spoiler>

Hopefully your Amazon fire still works. They just want to sell you Amazon prime, then everything else in their warehouse..

[tomandtish]

My folks each have one. And in looking at it, it is designed to be optimally used with Amazon.


You can certainly do other things (Netflix, Internet, etc). But the ideal use is for a person who primarily uses Amazon.

[Anymage]

The lock screen ads are one of the things that keep the price down. I wouldn't be surprised if they tried pushing prime through those, since prime memberships are a good moneymaker for them. You can remove the lock screen ads, but from a quick look they charge $15 for it.

Most of their features are obviously there to get you to buy more amazon products. Video, books, and store most obviously. Again, wouldn't be surprised if they put prime and similar premium content front and center in those places. (Edit to add: I personally have prime already because the videos alone are a good deal. So I wouldn't know how invasive the ads would be without it.)

If you feel techy enough and want the cheap tablet without all the amazon overhead, you can google for "kindle custom rom" and go from there. Note that in addition to being cheap because amazon hopes you buy more of their stuff off the tablet, kindles are also cheap because they aren't meant to be computing powerhouses. My old kindle was just fine for browsing and even youtubing, but even slightly complex games were beyond it. Don't expect it to be able to pull off what a new ipad could do, even if you do sideload the proper google play store.

[keybounce]

My fire tablet isn't even recent, but it has the following:

1. An outdated android OS, that can run most programs.
2. A special amazon app version of google store/google play, that features free versions of programs you have to pay for elsewhere.
3. No ability to install the full range of google services that google play/store require (*)
4. No ability to install things like google docs / chrome / etc (*)
5. Apparently, you can sideload APK's if you understand the docs on how to (I didn't)
6. (*) The ability to jailbreak the system so you can install all of these, as long as you don't install any new upgrade from Amazon.
7. And hey, amazon's not sending any updates to this device anymore, so lets jailbreak it and get a cheap, if low-powered, android device with a special cheap amazon store.

When I first got it, the things that attracted me were:
1. Cheap way to access amazon prime,
2. The "Really free" feature on their store products (no in-app purchasing, no "get you hooked and then charge a fortune, etc)
3. Most programs I wanted were available in their store.

Now? Well, I really should root/jailbreak it. No reason not to anymore.

[Klorox]

Once I learned how to throw the google play store on there, I was pretty good with this.

It’s not meant to be a powerful tablet or anything for me. I just wanted it to run some Swagbucks apps passively and actively be there for a few old games (Baldurs Gate 1 & 2, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights), and some YouTube videos, and it works fine for these purposes.

I’d definitely look for a higher end amazon tablet in the future if I wanted a good tablet. They’re like 1/10th the price of an equivalent iPad.

[Traab]

Yeah I got two for myself. One is a super cheapo whose only purpose is to basically be an e-reader for break time at work. I think I ended up paying like 35 bucks for it so not a huge deal if it breaks or goes missing. Small enough to be easy to lug around, big enough so its easy to read the books. The other is a wide screen version that I use to play free to download games on and read fanfiction and such online. Its also my primary purchasing device from amazon.