One of the best ways you can support TouchArcade is by doing your Amazon shopping through a TouchArcade affiliate link. We’ve set up the easy to remember toucharcade.com/amazon too if you want to type that in or bookmark it. We get a small percentage of anything you buy through any of these links, which otherwise would just go to financing Jeff Bezos’s expedition to mine cheese from the moon or whatever else he’s up to now, and it goes a long way to supporting the site at no additional cost to you. These Amazon Items of the Day articles are all products we have used ourselves, and feel are things that the TouchArcade audience might be interested in!
If you’ve got kids or family members who aren’t super tech savvy and don’t yet have their own tablet, this is one deal you shouldn’t miss: Amazon has the 32GB Fire HD 8 Tablet with Special Offers on sale today only for $59.99. (Technically, it’s a 48 hour sale, but the sale started yesterday.) Amazon’s lineup of tablets is my go-to when it comes to my preferred tablet to gift other people because it’s the absolute cheapest way to get folks to dip their toes into the world of tablet computing and today you can get one for less than half of what a positively ancient iPad will run you. Additionally, Amazon has done a shocking amount of engineering work to make these things stupidly simple to use with many of the core apps pre-installed and ready to roll. 32GB isn’t a ton of space, but unlike iOS devices, you can utilize the micro SD card slot to expand storage as much as you want. There’s tons of different options for micro SD cards too that start at under $20 and go up to … as much as you want to spend.
Anecdotally, I’ve found tablets like today’s Fire HD 8 to be way more durable than iPads when it comes to bumps, bangs, and drops, but whenever I buy one for a kid, I also grab this $17 case which not only adds a handle but I’m pretty sure it’d allow the tablet to survive a nuclear blast. I’ve seen a Fire HD 8 in that case literally thrown down a flight of stairs and escape unscathed.
Now, being an Amazon device with “special offers," there’s a few caveats to be aware of here which you may or may not care about. By default, you’ll be getting all your apps the Amazon App Store, which means you won’t have access to any of the “core" Google apps like Gmail or Google Maps. Thankfully, it’s an Android tablet and side-loading these things is not difficult. The “special offers," like the Kindle with special offers basically is just another way Amazon has figured out how to reduce the price of these devices even further by subsidizing their cost through displaying ads on the lock screen. These ads are incredibly innocuous, but if you really don’t like looking at them you can either pay Amazon $15 or go digging around on various Android sites looking for guides like this one to hack the device. Honestly though, it seems like just paying $15 is less of a hassle as I’m sure Amazon will tell you to pound sand if you have any support issues after you’ve hacked it.
Things are so cross platform now that with few rare exceptions, you (or whoever you give this to) are going to be able to find basically everything they’d ever want on the Amazon App Store. While the 1.3ghz processor isn’t going to win any awards for its amazing performance, mobile apps in general are developed with a very low base spec in mind, and the Fire HD 8 vastly exceeds that. As long as you’re not aiming to use this as a desktop replacement or play the latest and greatest 3D games, you won’t find anything that the Fire HD 8 can’t do- Which is a pretty cool thing to say for today’s price of $59.99.
$59.99 is the cheapest the Fire HD 8 has ever been with the only sale price that was anywhere near this being $79.99. If you’re in the market for a super cheap general use tablet to watch some movies, play some games, or give to someone else who is interested in those kind of things… Do not miss today’s Fire HD 8 sale.
Thanks for checking out today’s Amazon Item of the Day, and as mentioned before, even if you’re not interested in this particular product, buying things from Amazon by first visiting toucharcade.com/amazon is immensely helpful in supporting the site at no additional cost to you. Additionally, if you’re ever thinking of signing up for any Amazon services, we’d really appreciate if if you’d do it through these links:
- Amazon Prime Free Trial – Free shipping, Amazon Prime video, Kindle books, Twitch goodies, and a bunch of other stuff bundled into one subscription.
- Amazon Prime Student 6-month Trial – A slightly different flavor of Amazon Prime, exclusive to students that costs half as much.
- AmazonFresh Free Trial – Amazon’s grocery delivery service.
- Amazon Home Services – Amazon vetted handymen, house cleaning, and similar.
- Amazon Music Unlimited Free Trial – Amazon’s answe to Spotify, Apple Music, and other similar services.
- Try Audible and Get Two Free Audiobooks – If you’re even remotely interested in audiobooks, Audible is the best.
- Join Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited – Basically the text equivalent of an Audible membership.
- Download the free Kindle app – The best ebook platform, largely because unlike iBooks, your library is totally cross platform.
- Shop Amazon Cell Phones – Wireless phones and service plans without the hassle of dealing with going to a store.
If you want to take things a step further, you can check out our Patreon, but either way we just appreciate you sticking with us and continuing to both visit and contribute to the TouchArcade community over the years! If you’ve got a product you’re interested in seeing featured in an Amazon Item of the Day, don’t hesitate to reach out. The best way to get in contact with us is via email at [email protected] and be sure to include “Amazon Item of the Day" in the subject.
