Top critical review
2.0 out of 5 starsNot All It's Cracked Up to Be.
Reviewed in the United States on October 15, 2022
Let me start this out by saying first off, as a product itself - the Kindle HDX Plus Tablet 10.1 is a gorgeous design, easy to hold with the right case (see my other reviews for that) and if you're looking to upgrade from your older Kindle Fire tablet, this might be a perfect fit for you! The screen is bright and sharp, the battery charging is quick, and the applications are easy to use and install right out of the box.
Now for the really bad part. I gave this product a two star review not because there's anything wrong with the tablet itself, but the god forsaken flaws of trying to transfer your files from an older kindle to a new one.
You think to yourself this should all be a piece of cake right? It's time to upgrade my old tiny screen Kindle to a much bigger one with more space? That's what I thought too with my small Kindle HDX 7. Just plug this new tablet into to your computer with the USB-B to USB cord and start transferring your old files over that aren't apps, books, or pictures. Seems pretty straight forward.
Here's the real deal-breaker for me. I could ONLY create playlists through Amazon Music with files I bought from the store, or previous soundtracks - NONE of my downloaded/transferred files allow me to create a playlist for them! Crazy right?
What's worse, I couldn't even find my MP4 movies that weren't hosted on some streaming server. I tried everything I could to try and make this work, I really, really, did. However not being able to create playlists with my own MP3s or neatly file away my MP4 video files into an easy access folder was just too frustrating to deal with.
Your transferred files will show up on this kindle, but you will have to use the "documents folder" just to find them and you can't seem to do anything else with them in there, other than view them. You can't move them to any other location or put them in a playlist of any sort.
This really, really, really, disappointed me because I like having my own playlists to separate my music into different moods and genres. I don't know why Amazon Music changed this flexibility from my older HDX 7 tablet (which has no issues with making playlists whatsoever) - but when my music files were downloaded to this new tablet and I opened Amazon Music, they were placed into the "recently downloaded" offline music folder, and that's the ONLY place they can go.
For some dumb reason you cannot make a new playlist and add these particular files to it, no matter how hard you try it just doesn't allow you to do it! You can easily add songs from your amazon music "online" account or any soundtracks or music you purchased through Amazon itself. It's just your OWN independent files that don't take. I'm sure you could probably add all your personal files to the Amazon Music cloud and get them on this tablet, but who the heck has the time or patience to do that when you have hundreds of music files to transfer to it?
To be clear, you CAN listen to your own music files, but you can't organize them in any way. You can't even change the order in which they play in the Amazon Music app, all you have is essentially a viewable archive. When you try to add these files to a playlist, it just keeps the tabs on " - " but for any other music it has the " + " option enabled.
The same goes for your MP4 movie files.
For this restrictive reason, I reluctantly chose to return this product and go the "Android tablet" route instead which has no such restrictions placed by Kindle or any of its apps. Maybe it's not as pretty, but at least I'll have the freedom to organize things as I please, and install any app I want instead of dealing with workarounds just to get the "Google Play" store to work or mobile games not found in the app store on a Kindle tablet. For me this product wasn't worth the frustration but if organizing your own files doesn't matter to you and starting off factory fresh is no big deal with the cloud - this is a perfect device for streaming, taking photos, video calls, and anything else connected to the Amazon Kindle brand. It will transfer SOME of your apps off an older Kindle, but not all of them and unlikely none of your "amazon circle" game data either. It is NOT a seamless transition from one older kindle unit to the other and it really SHOULD be.
I don't hate this product, but I greatly dislike whatever changes were done to the applications placed on it. I dislike them so much, I will never invest in a current Kindle product again.
