Amazon Fire 7 (2017)

The best budget tablet

Amazon’s £50 tablet lights the way

Launched in 2011 as the Kindle Fire, Amazon’s 7in tablet was just fairly interesting until last year, when its price dropped to 50 quid. Since then, many other products have gone up by around 20 per cent, but the newly upgraded Fire 7 hasn’t, and it now includes access to Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant, which can look things up for you online, play your music on request and control gadgets such as smart lighting.

As you’d expect for the money, the Fire 7’s technical specifications are basic. Inside is a Mediatek processor that’s just barely fast enough to run Amazon’s Fireos, based on Android 5.1, and you’ll notice some brief delays when opening apps or loading a website. Simple games are fine, but don’t expect to get away with the console-style fighting or racing titles that more powerful Android devices can manage. Still, it’s usable, and 720p HD videos play without stuttering.

Not that the screen actually supports that resolution: with just 1024x600 pixels, it’s not very sharp even at the cramped size of seven inches, noticeably smaller than an ipad mini. Pages of text aren’t comfortable to read unless you increase the font size. The less said about contrast and colour reproduction the better, but it’s at least bright. The front and rear cameras are rubbish, the speaker is poor, and with only 802.11n Wi-fi it’s harder to get a strong signal than with more modern devices. But you know what? It’s still a tablet for £50, and its battery lasted a decent 8.5 hours in our video playback test, over three hours longer than the similarly priced RCA Mercury 7L (see Issue 506, page 21). The case is plasticky, but Amazon claims it’s durable and we have no reason to disagree (a Kids Edition comes with a rubber case, twice the storage and a two-year warranty that covers accidental breakage, but at twice the price). The updated Fireos is easy to use, and if you choose to subscribe to Amazon Prime (£79 a year) or Fire for Kids Unlimited (£3.99 a month, or £1.99 on top of Prime) there are plenty of videos and music readily available at no extra cost.

The superior Fire HD 8 (see Issue 505, page 21) is probably a better buy at £90. But if you want the cheapest decent tablet, the Fire 7 is the best deal we’ve seen yet.

The Fire 7 is basic, but it’s the best cheap tablet we’ve ever seen