The Amazon Fire HD 7” is a FireOS tablet released in 2014.) At 39$ refurbished (50€ in Europe), it is one of the cheapest tablet you can get out there.) I would have recommended it, if it wasn’t for FireOS…

FireOS is ass !

It’s closed down, full of ads and it is also very slow.) Worst of all, the bootloader is also locked on this thing !) It’s almost as bad as iOS, i swear…

Thankfully, a Cyanogenmod port is available for this device but due to the locked bootloader, you are stuck with Lollipop.

To put CM on it, you need to install KingoRoot on it and gain initial root, install Chainfire’s SuperSU, install Flashfire and flash your CM zip with it.

Why would you do that ?

Well you get better perf, the stock user interface, no amazon bullcrap, it’s more secure and you can also if you want to, put Google Play on it.

I assume you are going to install CM on it but if you don’t have the courage to hack it, stay away seriously.) It’s more trouble than anything else.

Hardware

The tablet has a headphone jack, volume buttons, a micro-usb port, a power button, a crappy back camera as well as a micro-sd slot.

It comes with a MediaTek SoC with two Cortex A15 clocked at 1.5 Ghz and two other Cortex A7 cores also clocked at 1.5Ghz.) Yes my friends, it’s a BIG.little configuration, which should in theory result in better battery life.

In practice however, it isn’t the case and this tablet drains up really fast.) The sleep mode on this thing is absolute bullcrap thanks to the crappy Amazon kernel and it eats as much battery as if the screen was turned on.

Definitively don’t buy this if you care about battery life) The PowerVR G200 is also not very fast and it will be a bottleneck in many games but it should be ok for most games.

Games

The tablet scores 26921 pts and Antutu classify it as a medium-range tablet.) It’s not too bad actually : only the disappointing GPU brings this down.

Naturally, i also tried some emulators in there and the two Cortex A15 definitively helps it.)

Reicast runs fullspeed in most games, which is quite nice.

PPSSPP on the hand, you can see the GPU is the bottleneck, especially after you play Metal Gear Solid : Peace Walker.) That game runs at 45 FPS only in non-buffered mode and sometimes runs at 25 FPS.) Don’t even attempt to play God of War or GTA on it, it will be very slow.

Minetest plays great on it at minimal settings, no surprise here.

Other games running great are Naught 2, Numolition, Angry Birds…) Most casual games will run on it but don’t expect huge performance if you want to go beyond that.

Other things

This device supports USB-OTG, which is great.

What is not great though is the fact that the Micro-usb can quickly become hot with a USB hub with a flash drive and a controller plugged to it.

No wonder it’s called Fire HD.

As far as i know, support for it is not great : It is stuck on Lollipop and it is semi-abandoned by Amazon.) It really sucks, especially with that locked bootloader.

Conclusion

If you are just looking for a tablet to get into, the Fire HD might be great for you.) But even in this case, you will only get its full potential if you install Cyanogenmod on it.) Without that, you are stuck with Amazon’s limited ecosystem, with a slow launcher full of ads that eats your battery really fast.

If you are looking for a cheap emulation then i would suggest to pay for a more pricier device such as the GPD XD or even buying a Google Pixel C with a IPEGA or MOGA controller.

I’m quite disappointed with this piece of shit :) i’m pretty sure Amazon sells it at a loss so it can promote its Appstore.) (Maybe it’s using semi-slaves to build the device who knows)

So there, that’s the Fire HD 7” for you.

Unless you can unlock an Amazon device (like the HDX 8.5”), my suggestion is to not buy it.) Simple.