Amazon Fire HD (2020) vs Samsung Galaxy Tab Active 2 (2017)

The Amazon Fire HD 8 (2020) is a great Tablet for its $89 asking price.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab Active 2 (2017), however, is merely passable at its $358 price point. If you're considering buying a Tablet in the $350 range, you might want to check out some of its competitors.

The Amazon Fire HD 8 (2020) has managed to do great in various roundups conducted by reviewers from highly trusted sources that perform objective in-depth testing, like PCmag, Laptop Mag, and Wirecutter (NYTimes) - it was dubbed "Best for Video Playback and Zoom" by PCmag, "The best cheap tablet with Alexa" by Laptop Mag, and "Budget pick" by Wirecutter (NYTimes). Any product that's held in such high regard by some of the most reliable sources should be considered by everyone who's looking for a Tablet at this price.

As for our analysis of the Samsung Galaxy Tab Active 2 (2017) - it's considered to be a great product by two reliable sources that do their own hands-on testing - it earned the "Best Affordable Rugged Tablet" award from Android Central and "The best rugged tablet" from Expert Reviews, which is no small feat.

To get a better idea of how they fare when compared directly to each other, we analyzed review scores of sources that tested both. Expert Reviews, for example, preferred the Amazon Fire HD 8 (2020), while PCmag rated both of them the same.

We also took a look at which sources had the best things to say about them. We learned that the Amazon Fire HD 8 (2020) got reviewed the highest by Expert Reviews - it gave it a rating of 10, while the Samsung Galaxy Tab Active 2 (2017) most impressed reviewers at Notebookcheck.net, which gave it a score of 8.1.

Lastly, we averaged out all of their review ratings and observed that the Amazon Fire HD 8 (2020), with its 7.8 average, performed considerably better than most Tablets - the mean score for the product category being 7.5 out of 10 - while the Samsung Galaxy Tab Active 2 (2017) managed an average of 7.2.

There's one caveat here - it might not be entirely justifiable to do a direct Amazon Fire HD 8 (2020) vs. Samsung Galaxy Tab Active 2 (2017) review average comparison since they aren't priced the same and more expensive products tend to get higher review scores from some sources.