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Performance
The Fire HD 6 is packed with a quad-core 1.5GHz processor and 1GB of RAM and everything from opening up apps to playing games is a smooth experience.
Lag was something I never came across, even when playing high powered games like Football Manager Handheld 2015 or Asphalt 8.
The Geekbench 3 benchmarking app returned a multi-core score of 1456, a little lower than the 1476 score the Fire HD 7 gets. It's also a lot lower than some of the competition, including the old Nexus 7 which picks up a score of 1896.
Battery life
Battery life is key for a tablet and Amazon claims that you'll manage around eight hours of mixed use, so video watching, web browsing, ebook reading and web browser, before you're reaching for the charger.
Amazon, just like Apple, doesn't disclose the size of the battery, but I'd say the estimates are pretty much on point.
I got through a day of pretty heavy usage with ease. Taking it off the charger at about 9am, setting it up, installing apps, reading a book and watching a couple of TV episodes through iPlayer and Prime Instant Video. By about 9pm I had 39% left.
I also tested it out by watching The Dark Knight Rises, in HD, all the way through, streaming from Amazon Prime Instant Video. By the end of the film the tablet was down 30%, from 90% to 60%, which does seem quite a large amount.
Camera
Another tablet, another camera that is hardly worth the material it's constructed of. Amazon Fire tablets have, in the past, dispensed with the rear camera completely, but for the new Fire HD range Amazon has fitted it out with a 2MP rear snapper and a VGA one up-front.
I'll start off by saying this camera won't replace your point and shoot, it won't replace your iPad Air 2, it won't replace your smartphone and it probably won't even replace one of those disposable cameras you get at weddings.
The rear camera doesn't come with many additional features, just a basic HDR setting and a Panorama mode.
If I can think of a positive note it is that the autofocus is fast, and you can change the exposure slightly by tapping on different parts of the picture.
Pictures taken in daylight, albeit a rainy day in Clapham, came out grainy and they all lacked detail. Turn out the lights and all you'll end up with is a grainy, slightly reddish image. You can also take 1080p video, but I found that, again, to lack detail and the footage came out like I was purposely shaking the tablet.
Switch over the front-facing VGA camera and things don't improve. Selfies are not even Instagram worthy and video chat ended up, more times than not, with the person I was talking to complaining that they couldn't see me.
