Top critical review
2.0 out of 5 starsAMzing device only for a specific purpose, also Alexa as an AI system is broken
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 13 November 2022
First ill start off with Alexa as an AI System:
This is quite a profound moment for Alexa where it is a broken system, let me explain. I came from a long time Ipod user with docks and when I would choose an artist on my ipod it would play the artist. I also came from always having the digital alarm clocks and when I would hit the stop button the alarm would stop, etc, etc. I think you get the point. I transitioned around 2017 to my first Echo with Alexa and it was really a great experience, if I would ask Alexa to play nickleback it would play just Nickleback, now no matter what I say Alexa says “nickleback and other artists or sign up to Amazon music premium, or something else to sell me something or updrgade this or that. Or add something from my order history to my basket, or how many stars would I give an item etc etc etc. Alexa has also lost the ability to decide which device to play the music through, if I am near my Echo dot and my fire tablet both of them answer me and speak, then randomly the music may play on the tablet or maybe the echo dot, or the echo flex in my bedroom etc etc etc. I woke up this morning and my alarm was going off on the echo flex and I said Alexa Stop then my fire tablet started talking to me, the echo flex wouldn’t respond (not the first time) and I had to get out of bed and unplug the Echo and then turn off the fire Tablet. And I said to myself, after all this I am going back to an Ipod Dock (where I own the music – theoretically) and a good old fashioned digital alarm clock that turns off when I hit a button. The fun of Alexa has been destroyed. Would you have an Ipod if you press play an artist and it decides to play another artist or another song? No. Yet we are now expected to accept this nonsense from Alexa. Would you keep your Ipod if it tried to sell you something while your listening to a song? Yet Alexa has introduced this nonsense. Time to go back to old school stuff that worked and away from this AI stuff that is starting to upsell you while you just needed to listen to music or have an alarm to wake up.
Fire HD 10 PLus Tablet:
BAttery: I used VLC and put a movie on repeat and the screen did not turn off to do a battery test- it played the movie from 8pm at night to 3pm the next day and it was still at 20 percent when I stopped it.
Granted I was not doing anything heavy on it, but for the battery to last that long playing a movie is insane.
The tablet is Ok for Office and Outlook - BUT BE AWARE this tablet will not work on Corporate IT systems or at especially UK University wifi systems, it lacks the backend authentication to log into these systems. This si only for coffee shops or home networks.
I love this tablet to get out of the Apple Echo system of text messages and pings while watching films, or listening to my download music only it (see the above review of Alexa being broken) and I would not use this Fire as an ALexa device unless its your only one and you still want to use Alexa even after what I said above.
I got this case for the fire: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B09QG1S4QX/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
which is a kids case, but the grey one looks more adult and its drop proof. I also bought the after market glass screen protector: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B09S3FB6PQ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I also added a 32 gb memory sd card and it gives you two options when adding it to make it part of main storage or transferrable removable storage, I chose main storage so it acts natively.
basically a great tablet with a great screen, so so sound on the cheap mobile phone side of things, great battery, but to expect many apps except te Amazon echo system like Kindle and Audible, both of those I use on this tablet. Ironically the amazon shopping app has a bit of a different design than the Iphone one and I prefer still to use the IPhone Amazon shopping app.
As a basic movie and music tablet you cant go wrong!
