[zamadatix]

Don't conflate ratings and quality. The Fire HD 8 having a 4.6/5 and the iPad Mini having a 4.8/5 doesn't mean they are about the same quality of device it means they met the expectations of the buyer about equally.

Many get the Fire tablets because they wanted a cheap way to access Kindle on a color screen. Even more love it because there are dirt cheap options to hand their kids. At 1/6 the price of a base iPad Mini it can even arrive DoA and be rated well since Amazon will just RAM without asking questions. People aren't always looking for solid metal frames with high quality software, many are happy to find the cheap piece of plastic that lets them watch a movie in the car and will give good ratings to the product that let them do that for the price of eating out for a night.

[sangd]

I'm not saying they're the same. Wouldn't you think the reviews reflect anything of the quality? If I look at other products else where, a 4.6 rating would tell me a lot about the quality of the product.

I think maybe there's a conflation of ratings and usability of some people.

[zamadatix]

The 4.6 is telling you it's great for being less than 100 dollars not that it's a great overall. Few options in the 100 dollar space are going to give you OS updates for years but every single one will have crap hardware.

As for other places it has a 4.5 or higher at every place I see on Google shopping including target and best buy.

You wouldn't rate a McDonald's a 1 star because it was shit compared to the steakhouse down the street you'd rate it based on how it performed against similar competition.