[tlianza]

Biggest downside is the FireOS, Amazon store instead of Google Play, etc.

If you want to do basic web surfing stuff, this is a phenomenal deal. I doubt you'll find a better one.

If you want to experience all that modern Android tablets are capable of, these tablets will not provide that. In particular anything related to Google services (mail/apps) and Android apps that are delivered through the Google Play store but not delivered though the Amazon store. There are a lot of mainstream apps that don't bother to push their apps to Amazon's store.

[300zxkyle]

Excuse my ignorance, what prevents a savvy user from flashing it with a different OS?

[gknoy]

As @deng mentioned above, the Amazon tablets have historically had locked bootloaders -- they won't load custom ROMs. The XDA guys seem to believe it's unlikely you'll ever be able to load Cyanogen on one of them.

[gcb0]

almost no Android phone allows custom os! understands this.

all Samsung phones can only be flashed because someone leaked a internal tool. and still, there must be a huge community effort to get the kernel and drives for each model.

now keep in mind that this huge community effort doesn't exist even for for-developers v phones, such was the case with the moto x dev edition. with phones like fire, it's practically non existent!

Android devices are not open by any means. they just have a lovely stubborn community.

[jay_kyburz]

I savy user probably values their time more than its worth. Spend a little more and you don't have to.

[k__]

locked bootloaders.

got a Xoom 2ME here. decent hardware, but I never got a new OS on it