I have been using the Fire 8 tablets for awhile now because that was the only thing I knew. I am finding the Fire tablets are slow or barley functioning. Can anyone suggest better or faster tablets to run SharpTools. It is getting frustrating.
What year Fire 8? The new models are much faster.
I am using a refurbished fire hd10 plus. I do not think a new ipad would be much faster.
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I tried to use the 2019 Fire 7 tablets for a long time, but they were slow and would never stay connected to my wifi reliably.
I finally ditched them and picked up several used Samsung A7 Lite tablets off of ebay. Been very happy with them so far. They don’t need sideloading to use the play store, the wifi is completely reliable, and I can use the normal version of FKB, not the Fire specific one. Responsiveness and overall speed is also much better than the Fire tablets.
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@Don_Seibert Here is a link the a comparisonI did of Samsung vs Fire tablets in the Smartthings forum that you may or may not find helpful.
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Same here. Performance is great.
@Joel_Kelley the 7" Fire tablets were bad for me too. The new 8" or 10" have been good though. What price did you get the A7 for? They look nice and could be a good option for that 7" size.
I was able to pick up six used A7 Lite tablets for between $60 and $75 each, final shipped cost. If you’re patient, there are plenty of them that are gently used and work like new.
They have an 8.4" screen, so a bit larger than the Fire 7, but with the thinner bezel, the overall size is similar.
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I had two Samsung A7 Lites, but they were too slow for me. Turning off tile animations helped a lot. I now use an A8 3GB and 4GB model and a 2019 A7 with 3GB. Both A8s are noticable faster than the A7s so I believe the bottleneck is the processor. Using a modern smartphone (much faster proc and ram) is lightning fast.
I remove all the bloatware and take advantage of the auto-reboot and other features (I think Samsung introduce that in Android 12). Helps a little.
Game changer for me is using Fully Kiosk Browser to preload multiple tabs and then switching between them. Much faster than other methods I’ve tried.
Edit for clarity: I use FKB, preload 6 or so tabs in Kiosk view so they’re not visible. Pressing a button that would normally load a new screen instead seamlessly switches to the relevant tab. No need to request a new page load.
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I would have gone with the A8 if it was available with a smaller form factor. A 10.5" screen won’t fit in some of the areas I keep my wall tablets, and would look oversized where it does fit. (also the higher cost)
If you have a complex dashboard or a lot of apps running in the background, the A8 will definitely be better. I keep my stuff pretty simple though.
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