5050 SEPTEMBER 2019 |COMPUTERSHOPPER|ISSUE 379
DESPITEBEINGSOcheap that close
competitionis practicallynon-existent,
Amazon’s Fire tablets have always offered a
decent feature set. The new Fire 7continues
this approach:it starts at amere £50 forthe
16GB model, or £60 forthe 32GB model, yet
as abasic slate, it does the job well.
Instead of luxuriousfinishesand materials,
the Fire 7avoids feeling toocheap by going
foramore robust build, with amatt-finish
plastic casing. It’s the kind of tablet that
could be hurled across the room by achild
(indeed,the low price and variety of light
colour optionspoint to acertain kid-
friendliness)and still work afterwards.GETWITHTHETIMES
Some specifications,however,are looking
increasinglydated. The 1,024x600-resolution
IPS screen looks fuzzy and pixellated by
modernstandards,while the broad black
bezels are ugly,and the 2-megapixelfixed-
focus camerasare functionalat best. It’s
also high time that Amazonmoved on
from the Micro USB chargingport, which
severely limits chargingspeeds.
Still, the tablet has, at the very least, twice
as much storage now than it used to,which is
not an upgradeto be sniffed at. The old
tablet’s8GB of space was toosmall to hold
anythingmore than asmall handfulof apps,
forcing you to regularlyuninstallsome to
make room fornew ones. Even the base 16GB
option is farmore generousand, don’t forget,
there’s also a32GB model foramere £10
more.You can also add more space via
microSD,uptoanadditional512GB.
An even bigger upgradeis Alexa support.
Both the (more expensive)Fire HD 8and Fire
HD 10 alreadyhave built-in supportfor
Amazon’s digital assistant,but the Fire 7is
the first where you don’t need to activateitby
holdingdown abutton. It’s totally hands-free,
asort of tablet-meets-smartspeaker.AMAZONFire7
★★★★★
£50•From http://www.amazon.co.ukVERDICT
It’shardlyabigstepforward,buttheFire7is
unbeatablygoodvalueFIRE OS 5.0TABLET
Youhavetogive
voice commands
much closer to the
Fire 7than you
would with an actual
Echo speaker,asthe
microphonesaren’t
as sensitive,but
otherwiseit works
well. There are no
restrictionson
features such as
calling, messaging
or drop-in,and you
also get added visuals with certain requests
(such as ‘what’sthe weather?’),along with
tips on how to use Alexa. It’s agreat
introductionto the technology.
Core performance,onthe other hand,
hasn’t moved on significantly.Beneath its
chunky, plastic skin, the AmazonFire 7is
fitted with a1.32GHzquad-coreMediaTek
MT8163processorand ameagre 1GB of RAM.
That’s the same setup as the Fire HD 8, but
with half agigabyteless memory.
Suffice to say, this is not aparticularly
responsiveor quick combinationof
components.In Geekbench4, the Fire 7only
scored 638 in the single-coretest and 1,650 in
the multicoretest, both about half those of
the Fire HD 10. Then again, it’s good enough
forwatching Netflix and YouTube,orsimply
browsingthe web.Thanks to the low
resolution,you can even run basic games on
it; GFXBench’s Manhattanonscreentest
returnedascore of 11fps, which is what you
might get on abudget smartphone.STOPAND START
However,itcan get frustratingwhen apps
frequentlytake an age to load, while tapping
onscreenswitches and buttons can feel
disappointinglysluggish.The Fire 7’s low
price earns it adegree of forgivenessforlow
performance,but with cheap
smartphonesdeliveringever-
improving responsiveness,such
patiencewill eventuallyrun dry.
Likewise,battery lifeis
underwhelming.We haven’t
been able to run our usual
handheldbattery benchmark
software on Amazon’s operating
system, but in aless scientific
test we found it falls between
eight and eight-and-a-halfhours
of continuoususe.That’s lessPROCESSORQuad-core1.32GHzMediaTekMT8163•
SCREENSIZE7in•SCREENRESOLUTION1,024x600•
REARCAMERA2megapixels•STORAGE16GB•
WIRELESSDATAN/A•DIMENSIONS192x115x9.6mm•
WEIGHT286g•NFCNo•OPERATINGSYSTEMFireOS•
WARRANTYOneyearRTB•DETAILSwww.amazon.co.uk- PARTCODEFire7
SPECIFICATIONSthan both the Fire HD 8and the Fire HD 10,
both of which made it past 10 hours.
It’s also worth noting that the displayis
exactlythe same as it was on the previous
model –which is to say, mediocre.One strong
point is that it uses an IPS panel, so viewing
angles are reasonable.Unfortunately,itcan
only reproducearound60% of the sRGB
colour gamut, which means colourslook a
touch on the flat side.Itisn’t very bright,
either,peaking at amaximum374cd/m^2 ,
and althoughcontrastis decent at 1,205:1,
colour accuracyisn’t great.
Having said all that, it’s no worse than
the AmazonFire HD 8, which is sharperbut
deliverssimilar results in these tests.BURNINGDESIRE
That brings us on to our ultimatequarrel
with the Fire 7: even with Alexa support,
which has been done very well, it’s arguably
toohappytocoast along on old components
and hardwareformulas instead of making
bigger improvements.
However,for £50 it remainshard to
complaintoomuch, and it’s not as though
Alexa is the only step forward; double the
storage is aserious upgrade.Temper your
expectationsand you’ll be perfectly happy
with the AmazonFire 7–it’s the very
definitionof cheap and cheerful.
JonathanBray