As far as size goes, it’s the biggest mobile device screen I’ve owned apart from my iPads, and videos do look pretty good on it. And for all that, the screen really isn’t bad. If I don’t compare it to higher-end devices, it’s really quite amazing that for $55 I can get an Internet-connected device that can portably show videos in significantly better resolution than the 640 x 480 TVs I grew up with. Even my old Nexus 7 tablet was 1080p.īut those are much more expensive devices. But it’s not terribly “high definition” by comparison to my 6″ Google Nexus smartphone, which has a 4K 2560 x 1440 518 ppi screen with 3.6 times as many total pixels.
#JW LIBRARY APP FOR NOOK 720P#
The most noticeable differences include stereo speakers instead of one single speaker (though they’re not very loud) and a 1280 x 800 189 pixels-per-inch screen where the x 600 and 171 ppi.Īmazon calls this screen “high definition,” which I suppose it technically is-it can show videos in 720p HD, after all. Less visible changes include a better processor, more RAM, and a 64-bit rather than 32-bit architecture. Hardware: A Few Improvementsįeature-wise, the HD 8 is very similar to the 7, but with a number of improvements due to its newer generation (7th generation, where my old 7 is 5th) and higher price point. However, one of the biggest irritations has largely gone by the wayside: it’s a lot easier to add Google Play now. It still has the weird divide of separating the Kindle ebook reader into separate apps: “Kindle” for Amazon-purchased ebooks and “Documents” for sideloaded documents.
The “Mail” client is much improved, but still not what I’d have picked as my primary-use conduit to my Gmail. Not a whole lot has changed in the user interface from the first $50 Fire I bought a couple of years ago, and it still has a number of the same minor irritations and nice touches I remarked on for that earlier Fire.
Less than 24 hours later, it arrived on my porch, at no extra charge for the speedy delivery. Sunday night, I decided to order one of the 16 GB Fire HD 8 models on sale this week from Amazon. Sometimes it’s really pretty nice living in a city that also hosts a major Amazon distribution center.