Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsWhat is it? Is it a bird? Is it a Plane? No it's an android tablet which is intentally held back.
Reviewed in Canada on May 10, 2023
I am going to preface this with the following. I have a Android Tablet and an iPad.
I purchased this device for 1 and 1 reason only. To listen to Audiable.
As an Android tablet, it is inoffensive. The buttons are not placed in a way I'd like making the top of the tablet very busy. But with the addition of a USB-C port and a headphone port more than makes up for it.
From a "official" software experience wise, if you just want a device to entertain your kids with. Disney Plus, some books and Netflix. Then it's a cheap and "safe" buy, if you are OK giving Amazon your usage data.
However the minute you try to use anything outside of Amazon's "ecosystem" it turns into a nightmare. Wanna read a Kobo Book or listen to a Audiobook from Google Play? Good Luck sideloading everything, or being force to use the browser to get some functionality.
What's worse is that if you live in Canada, Audiable can't be found anywhere and refuses to install even if you figure out how to side load.
However after too much time here is my steps to get this device... mostly usable.
1) Install a F-Droid Client, (droid-ify my go-to), here you can install third party launchers (important for later), third party browsers, ePub readers for DRM-free books (KOReader FTW), and more if you so desire.
2) On you F-Droid app, download Aurora Store. A open source Google Play client which makes side loading offical apps easy. You may want to sign in to the app with a Google Account if you want to search on it.
3) On Aurora Store you can download pretty much anything else you needs (and keep it up to date), from Kobo, and Libby. Sadly Google Play books won't work since you are missing Google Play's frameworks, but with Adobe Digital Editions and VLC you can download and read Google Play books from the downloaded acm files from Google Play, and audio books can downloaded directly to your device.
4) Now remember how I said that Audable doesn't work on the Fire Tablet, despite saying that it's the reason I got it. Well with a third party Launcher like Lawn Chair, you can see all the pre-installed apps Amazon didn't want Canadians to play with... including Audable.
Now with all this said if you want to keep the device upto date, then you can't change the default launcher (-1 star), and the fact that amazon's own services are knee-caped which makes even the unbranded tablets look like a better deal (-1 star). It makes it hard to recommend.
However it's easy to setup, and it comes from a reputable (both good and bad) company. So please do with this as you will.
