Consider it my love letter to Amazon’s entry-level tablet.
Sarah Tew / CNET
As Cheapskate readers often know, Amazon equipment is offered for sale the whole time. The Fire 7 tablet, for example, has been discounted on no less than seven occasions in the past 12 months. This agreement is therefore not very special.
Except in a way, it is. The Fire 7 was one of the first fans in the new Cheapskate Hall of Fame, and it was based on the usual price of $ 50. Now that it is for sale again, I wanted to elaborate on what makes it so incredibly much.
Simply put, this is a full tablet for $ 40. Think about it for a moment. The original Kindle e-reader costs $ 400. The first iPad: $ 500. These were large, clumsy, limited devices; the Fire 7 is thin, light and powerful. Not powerful in terms of processing, though the 1.3 GHz quad-core CPU can handle most tasks well enough; no, I mean powerful in his great ability.
It’s probably an e-reader, but also a video player, music player, game console, educational tool, virtual assistant (Alexa on board, natch), digital camera, camcorder, web browser, Zoom station and more.
Your $ 40 buys only 16 GB of memory on board, but it is easily (and cheaply) expanded to 512 GB (!) With microSD cards. Remind me again which iPads support memory expansion? Right: none of them.
Granted, the Fire 7 is best paired with a Amazon Prime Subscription, which would represent a significant extra cost if you buy it just to go with the tablet. But most of us buy it for shipping and streaming; the Fire 7 is merely another delivery vehicle for the latter.
Some may quarrel with the screen, which is 1,024×600 pixels not razor sharp. Some may argue that a 6-inch phone in your pocket eliminates the need for a 7-inch tablet anywhere.
Fair points, both. And I’ll throw in the existence of the Fire HD 8, which is for $ 25 more (based on the current selling price of $ 65) gives you a larger, higher resolution screen, a faster processor, dual speakers, a USB-C port and twice the storage. This is the smarter buy, no doubt.
But considered in a vacuum, the Fire 7 for $ 40 is an incredible deal. It fully deserves his Hall of Fame entry.
Your thoughts?
Read more: CNET’s Amazon Fire 7 Tablet Review
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