Kindle Fire HD – 8GB or 16GB or 32GB?

The Amazon Fire HD 6, Fire HD 7, Fire HD 8, and Fire HD 10 are nice mid-range tablets in the market right now. They come with different storage options, 8 GB, 16 GB, and 32 GB. Would the 8GB be enough for you, or it’s better to go for the higher storage? Here we will help you decide.

If you are buying the device for kids, the Fire HD Kids edition is a good choice.  It is a Fire HD 6 bundled with a child-proof case, a 2-year extended warranty and a 1-year subscription of Amazon FreeTime. But you still need to make the same decision on which memory size to get.

Storage Options for Amazon Fire HD Tablets

First, we look at how much space are available for your use, after deducting the space used by the system files. All the Fire HD tablets come with the Fire OS. So no matter you get the 6 inch, 7 inch, 8 inch, or 10.1 inch model, the following is the storage you get on the device:

• Fire HD 8GB – 4.5 GB free for your use (only available for the HD6, HD7, and HD8 models)
• Fire HD 16GB – 11.6 GB free for your use
• Fire HD 32GB – 26 GB free for your use (only available for the HD10 model)
• 32GB is the largest for Amazon Fire HD tablets. For larger memory size, you get to go for the Kindle Fire HDX, which has the 64GB option.

If you look at the actual free space, there’s actually a 2.5 times difference between the 8GB and 16GB models, which is quite a big difference indeed.

The case is better for the newer Fire HD 8 and Fire HD 10, as they have microSD memory card slot for memory expansion. However, some content like Kindle books and Audiobooks can’t be stored into the SD card, so it’s still better to reserve more free space on the internal memory.

Storage Occupied by Digital Content

Below are the list of content that you may possibly put on your Kindle tablet:

• Videos – A HD movie might consumes over 2 GB. If you download one HD movie on a 8GB model without SD card, you will already have used up nearly half of the available storage. You should only watch movies via streaming (which is done via Wi-Fi, and won’t consume storage) for the smaller storage model.
• Music – On average, a few hundred songs take up around 1 GB. If you’re a music lover, then you’ll need quite a lot of storage for this.
• Photos – Just like songs, a few hundred photos can take over 1 GB. If you want to load many photos on the device, then you get to count the space in when deciding the storage to opt for.
• Apps – Sizes of apps vary. While some apps are small, some larger apps can use well over a hundred MB space (1 GB is 1,024 MB).
• Games – Sizes of games can vary a lot:
  • In general, games that are graphic intensive, 3D, or those that need a lot of data to run, take up much more space. Quite a lot of games use over hundred of MB space.
  • It’s not uncommon for games to occupy over 100MB, or even over 1GB. Some examples (on Amazon Appstore) are Dead Trigger 2 (over 500MB), Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft (over 1.5GB), Vainglory (over 2GB), etc. The sizes listed on their sales pages are only the game install files download sizes, they need much more storage space for install and during the play.
  • Some games may not load well on the SD card too. If you are a game lover, it’s better to choose higher internal storage models.
• Books – 1 GB of space can store a few hundred Kindle eBooks. Unless you’re a lover of a great variety of books, space used by eBooks should be a lower concern.
• Audiobooks – They are quite big, and 2 or 3 audiobooks can occupy 1 GB already.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the free space on the 8GB model is quite inadequate for use for average user, unless you manage the storage on both the internal storage and microSD card very carefully. Since some content can’t be loaded on the microSD card, the 16GB model will be a safer and smarter choice.

The following Amazon customer review mentioned how to choose the size of internal memory of tablet and SD card (around the middle of the review), it should help your decision:

http://www.amazon.com/review/R3NUYSZAF2QLX3…