What’s important to note is that this isn’t simply a Kindle with a colour LCD screen. We were surprised by how chunky and heavy the HD 6 was compared to the new 7th generation Kindle. Because of its large bezels, the tablet is larger than many smartphones with 6in screens (phablets, we like to call them). It’s also thick at 11mm, and seems unnecessarily heavy at almost 300g.
The extra 100g of weight makes the HD 6 considerably less comfortable to hold in one hand when reading a book, and will make it a two-handed tablet for some people. It’s only a millimetre or so thicker, which you’re unlikely to notice if ‘upgrading’ from an existing Kindle eReader, but you will definitely feel the extra width – there’s 16mm more plastic to get your hand around, and it does make a difference. The angled edges – in keeping with all recent Fire tablets – don’t exactly help with comfort either. Since there are no page-turn buttons, it isn’t really possible to swipe or tap to go to the next page of a book one-handed. The headphone socket, microUSB port and sleep/wake button are on the top edge, along with the microphone, and volume controls are on the left. A single speaker sits at the bottom on the rear, Disappointingly, there’s no ambient light sensor, so you’ll find yourself having to tap, swipe down to display the control centre, tap on brightness and adjust it for different environments or times of the day. Something new – and perhaps following in the footsteps of other manufacturers – is that you don’t have to have a black Fire HD 6. Now there’s a choice of five colours including ‘Citron’, ‘Cobalt’ and ‘Magenta’. That pushes the price to £99 for the 16GB version, and it’s an extra £10 (as ever) if you don’t want the lock-screen adverts.
Getting back to the hardware, it’s good to see front and rear cameras (even if they’re basic VGA and 2Mp affairs). If you’re buying the HD 6 for a child, they will appreciate them, even though their quality is awful. Here’s a photo taken in good light – this is the full, unedited image, so you can click it to enlarge or right-click and save it.
Here’s a crop of the photo so you can see the full resolution without enlarging it:
No-one is going to choose the HD 6 based on benchmark scores, but it managed 1366 in the multi-core section of Geekbench 3, and 776 for single-core. In SunSpider, it completed the web browsing test in a decent 674ms, and this translated to real-world use: the HD 6 loads web pages extremely quickly. Wi-Fi is as basic as the cameras, but the lack of dual-band support will be inconsequential to virtually all HD 6 owners. You get Bluetooth Low Energy but no GPS – just in case you were planning on using the HD 6 as a dash-mounted satnav. One of the best features of FreeTime is that you can set different time limits for apps/games and books. The idea is that you can allow longer (or even unlimited) reading but restrict playing time. There are a surprising number of updates in the latest version of Fire OS too. The HD 6 runs ‘Sangria’ or version 4.1.1. It’s based on Android KitKat, and you can side-load Android apps by allowing installation from unknown sources.
There’s a new weather app, and the email, contacts and calendar apps have been improved. Email, for example, works much like Mail on an iPhone or iPad. Notifications now appear on the lock screen, and there are behind-the-scenes updates which help to make apps load quicker. A handy addition is backup & restore which goes beyond merely storing your content in the cloud and saves device settings, Wi-Fi configuration and bookmarks. This all makes it a lot easier to get going with a new Fire tablet if yours gets lost or damaged. It can also be confusing as you can’t always bring up the multitasking pane by swiping up from the bottom of the screen – it depends whether you’re in an app or on the home screen. It isn’t perfect, but the HD 6 is really good value. Performance is well above the level you’d expect at this price, as is the quality of the screen. Some might find the 6in screen too small, though, so it’s worth trying to track one down before buying. The cameras are dismal, and it’s a pain that it doesn’t adjust screen brightness automatically. Plus, the measly 5GB of usable storage simply won’t be enough for some people. For many, it will be well worth spending the extra £20 on the 16GB version, but at that point you start getting into ‘proper’ Android tablet territory. If you’re happy with the trade-off, then the HD 6 is a good buy, especially as it’s so much cheaper than the HD 7. Jim has been testing and reviewing products for over 20 years. His main beats include VPN services and antivirus. He also covers smart home tech, mesh Wi-Fi and electric bikes.
