Amazon Fire 7 Tablet

I’VE BOUGHT SEVERAL Amazon tablets over the years, but they’ve generally been gifts for others. This changed recently when I grabbed a budget Fire 7 for myself in the Amazon Prime Day sale. When a tablet sets you back just $30, it seems ridiculous not to have one to mess around with. Thirty bucks! Crazy. Even before being reduced, though, it’s still decent technology for just $50.

I had actually been planning on getting one for a while, as I’ve been intending to put CyanogenMod on my wife’s Fire 7, but didn’t want to risk leaving her without a working tablet (there’s always a chance of “bricking” any tablet with such a process). So, the plan was to grab a second Fire, try it out on there, then I could safely repeat the process on hers, so that she’ll have the full gamut of Android apps to play around with. That was the theory. In reality, I still haven’t “upgraded” the tablet, because… Well, to be honest, it’s actually pretty good as it is. I’ve been using it to catch up on a bit of reading (so many friends have written books that I’ve got an impressive backlog to work through), and the apps that are available are much better than when I last looked. In fact, everything I can think of seems to be covered, even if it’s indirectly. It would seem that pushing out so many cheap tablets has made it a viable platform for developers, and while there may be some app that ultimately forces my hand, right now I’m just enjoying the crazy bargain as it was meant to be. $50, www.amazon.com