[tomsem]

This is something like the 7th Fire tablet I’ve bought (I returned one for a refund), Price was about $70 after trade-in discount, which is less than I’ve paid for any previous one, and the specs are better than any previous one. So, ‘a good value’ on that score.

My previous Fire was HD8 (2017 7th gen). Its battery capacity was degraded, and drained quickly in sleep mode. I think this was the result of having it in the Dock accessory almost continuously for a couple of years. In any case, it was not in my regular ‘device rotation’, in part because of this issue.

The improvements the Fire HD8 Plus brings relative to the older Fire are: 3GB RAM, 2GHz quad core CPU, USB-C port and wireless charging and a newer version of FireOS/Android. The wireless capability is a convenience for me as I have several wireless charging pads around, and I prefer to use those rather than wires.

Display is still mediocre 1280x800 resolution, and it has the same, not very customizable Fire UI as my previous Fire. And still an inferior App Store (I would rather use Libby than Overdrive, but it isn’t there). So a pretty boring device. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as I don’t plan to do anything with it other than read Kindle books (the Fire is the only device where the Kindle app supports TTS, for example, apart from very old Kindles).

I do wish they would include the same set of dictionaries that come with Kindle, in particular Russian. The 3rd party dictionary I purchased from Kindle Store is useless. The Translate feature works, but it also creates a highlight which then needs to be removed (a complaint also applying to Kindle).