Fire Tablet with Alexa, 7" Display, 16 GB, Tangerine - with Special Offers (Previous Generation - 5th)

The media could not be loaded.  UPDATED - After spending quite a bit more time with the device, I would give it a 4.5 due to a few specific gaps that are a bit annoying. However, you are still getting an amazing 7” tablet, with front and rear facing cameras, a gorgeous interface, fairly snappy performance and durability, all for under 50 bucks! I can’t imagine not buying these for myself and my whole family, but not a primary tablet for a techie adult by any means. For background, I have every Kindle, a couple Fires, and multiple tablets from Apple, Microsoft and Samsung. Note that my review with 5 stars considers the value equation, not just performance and how that may or may not compare to other tablets - if you are expecting this to compare to a tablet costing several times more, don't bother. But if you are looking for a great entry level tablet that does most of the things people want, this little tablet definitely delivers the value!PRICING/CONFIG: I prefer this tablet with ads and no accessories to keep the costs down. You have the option to spend more money, but I recommend against it. You can easily see the specs online, so I won’t do you the discourtesy of simply cutting and pasting those here. Here is the price breakdown:• 49.99 base price – what an incredible price point! Or buy 5 and get a sixth one free! This puts it into reach of schools and non-profits.• No sponsored screensaver ($15) – big deal that each time you turn it on it shows you something interesting you might want.• MicroSD card ($19.99 for 32GB) – you probably already have one laying around somewhere. Beyond that, there is memory in the device, and you are using the cloud for storage mostly anyway. If you end up needing this, just buy one off Amazon, it certainly won’t be more expensive. Also, the SD is likely less useful than you might think, since it is currently a bit limited in what can be stored on it.• Amazon Fire Case (24.99) – it is supposed to be 2x the durability of an iPad. No case needed.• Accident Protection (9.99) – who wants to spend 9.99 to insure a $49 device? During your install, they will give you another chance, and you can get the two year for 15.99 if you like. But to me, insurance is for catastrophic things, not a <$50 tablet. UPDATE - after looking into the accident protection, if I were giving it to kids, I might get the insurance. You can get a 1 year pretty cheap as long as you are in the US, and it covers everything from dropping it off a building, running it over with the car, or accidentally hitting it with a baseball bat. As long as you have the pieces, you are good, and there are no back and forth shipping charges to pay.• That is a total of $119.97, or almost triple the price. If you’re buying this device, you’re probably a bit price sensitive – if you aren’t, you’re buying a different device and this review is somewhat irrelevant.GETTING STARTED: Here is some timing for me to get started with this device:• 1 minute – open box and read instructions• 18 minutes – download and update to latest Fire software. If you are giving it as a gift, it is simply good form to turn it on first to get the updates done, even if you are not setting it up under your own name.• Battery started at 65%, so I had plenty of time to connect, download, and play around with the device.• I ordered it without my account being integrated, just as if I were buying it as a gift, unregistered. However, it came pre-configured with all of my information. If you are giving them away, I would double check this.• Tutorials are super simple and quick, and well worth doing if you are unfamiliar with the Fire interface. It is really nice that they integrate your own data into the tutorials.• HINT: While setting up, go to settings, select security, and take care of adding a passcode to your device. If you ever lose it, someone can cause some havoc if you don’t.APPSTORE: Appstore Underground is fantastic. Simple to use, lots of great apps. Nice to know I won’t get gouged here for other fees since everything is included. I have not yet explored the quality of apps available here, so more on that in a later update. Had all my critical apps – LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, Skype, etc. However, as noted, you cant use apps from the Android store, so you have to wait for them via Amazon. Not too big of a deal for me, but others might find it a problem.EMAIL: Email setup was a breeze. In less than 3 minutes, I had my Office 365 account, yahoo account and gmail all set up and flowing perfectly. The interface for switching accounts is one of the easiest I have ever used.CAMERA: The camera and video functionality were easily accessible, and I liked the quality. Not quite the same experience as using the iPhone, perhaps, but it may be that I also don’t have the apps yet installed that make it look so great, so more on that later as I experiment. The camera is 2MP, and the video is 720 HD. If you need something higher res, the Fire HD has 5 MP camera and 1080 HD. But then you don’t have a $49.99 tablet ' Same goes for the added speaker and lack of Dolby sound – this is a single speaker that sounds OK, but it is certainly not the same as the Fire 8 or an iPad. UPDATE: Have played around with the camera a bit more, and added a composite image - the first picture you'll see that it does a very poor job in low light conditions. As the light increases, you get some more detail, and brightly lit is not a bad picture at all, with good detail. This is not the same level of camera you will get on an iPhone or Lumia, so don't expect that, it is fine for casual photo, selfie, Skype, etc.OS: The new OS is fantastic. It is simple to use, even for my fat fingers, and makes sense. Just as advertised, it puts the things you are likely to want to do front and center, makes it easily accessible to find new TV shows and the like, and just overall is a super clean and simple interface. Rotation responsiveness is immediate, unlike many other tablets, and I found the Silk browser on this to be quite snappy in performance. Watching video I found absolutely no lag when I streamed my Prime TV shows.FORM FACTOR: This is light and easy to hold, with smooth, rounded corners that don’t dig into your hands if help for extended periods. It is heavier than a kindle – if you are used to reading on a Kindle, it is not a replacement for that. Given the lower resolution on this device at 171ppi, I will DEFINITELY keep my Paperwhite for extended reading sessions, and would not recommend this tablet if your primary purpose is reading books, and you do quite a bit of that. I included a screenshot, along with comparison to one of our phones, and you can definitely tell a big difference when looking at fine print, and brightness does not compare. I did enjoy the fact that during several hours of use, I never accidentally hit any buttons, something that always drives me nuts on other devices, so button placement is one of the most convenient out there.SD CARD: Note that I saw in another review that you can have all of your music on an SD card, you just have to download it through your laptop first. I have not personally tried this, but I imagine that several things with the SD card will change in future updates to make it more broadly valuable, and Amazon has said this in support interactions. I don't have any view of when that update might be coming, however.OTHER: Have to love all the kid-friendly (or rather, parent-friendly features) that this comes with. Again, buying a pack of these things for the fam is definitely a no-brainer. Charging is not fast - I ran it to zero, then charged for exactly 30 minutes, which brought it to 11%. Doing the math, you're looking at somewhere in the 4.5 - 5 hour range to fully charge.SUMMARY: There is plenty more to say about this, but basic summary is this is an amazing product for the price, and delivers much more than $50 value, especially if you have a Prime account. I have absolutely no hesitation recommending this enjoyable product. This is my go to tablet for just carrying around in my car. I will still keep my Paperwhite for reading, and I have another more expensive tablet for really watching movies, doing actual work, extended email sessions, etc. But this makes a great 3rd device, and I far prefer it vs trying to do similar activities on a phone. It is perfect for Skype, games, Facebook, browsing, watching videos, emergency reading, etc. There is tremendous value in this device.NOTE: There are 3 attached pictures/videos. First is one of the Fire next to my cat to show the nice size. Yes, the cat is huge and I only had seconds before he covered it with his massive body - why do cats do that? The second is a screenshot comparison between the Fire and my phone - big difference in text clarity. The Third is a video showing my 3rd drop test, with no cracks, fractures or other damage. I am now done dropping it, rest assured, it seems quite durable.

Last Updated 11/1/15After using the fire for a month I decided to up my review to 5 stars. I think this an amazing device for $50 and couldn't recommend it any higher.There is an FAQ section to the bottom of the review since Amazon doesn't have one on the product page. These FAQs could get out of date over time so please comment if you see an error and I'll fix it.ReviewOh my dear, sweet $50 Fire. The iPad was my first love but the dirt cheap heart in my chest saw you and wanted you to be perfect. When I buy something I want to feel like I got a great deal and you give me that feeling. I had no idea I actually needed 6 tablets until you told me I could have all 6 for $250. The headrests in both of my cars have been prepped with tablet holders and my kids are confused as to why there are 6 identical looking gifts placed in the spot where my Christmas tree will be in 3 months. Now that I've gotten to know you I see your flaws but I can look past them. They say first impressions are important and from the moment I laid hands on you and turned on your screen I was initially disappointed. Lesson learned, don't judge a book by its cover, or in this case a cheap tablet by its less than HD screen.My first impression is that the plastic body feels like hard cheap plastic yet it's dense and there's a nice weight to it. It's certainly a fingerprint magnet. I pressed the button on the top and the fire logo came on the screen. Immediately I was struck by two things, the contrast on screen wasn't great and the Fire logo was a little pixelated. After sitting through about 30 minutes of updates I made it to the homepage. I had built up all this excitement for a $50 wonder Fire and I wasn't going to give up just because of a pixelated splash screen. This lumpy throw pillow I'm laying my head on while I write this review probably cost $50. The Fire has to be better than a throw pillow right? Let's see what this thing has going for it.Pros:+ Videos and games look surprisingly good despite the less than HD resolution display. The screen is not very good for reading small text on websites and books. This is not going to replace your e-ink Kindle for reading.+ Obviously the price. $50 for a tablet is a great price. 6 for $250 is an amazing deal. For less than the price of the cheapest iPad mini I can have 6 tablets.+ Build quality feels decent. Amazon claims it’s twice as resistant as the iPad to breaking when dropped. That’s not saying much because my iPad shattered into a million pieces the other day when I whispered the words “You look fragile” to it.+ Cheap Car entertainment. We like to go on road trips and my wife has been asking me to install screens and a dvd player in the back of our Tahoe for the last 3 years. This solves that problem for me. For much less than I planned on spending for a car entertainment center I can attach these tablets on the headrest of both of my cars and the kids have their movies.+ Browsing the internet is quick, playing games and switching between screens is very responsive. Prime movies load instantly while also allowing me to skip back and forth very quickly. The Fire isn't as fast loading pages or as smooth at switching screens as my Samsung Galaxy S6 or iPad but it's good, much better than I expected.+ Playing games is simply fantastic. I've tried Goat Simulator, Cut the rope, Kingdom Rush, Final Fantasy 4, Bloons TD 5, and a ton of free Amazon Underground Apps. Bloons TD 5 was probably the best test. Once you get to round 100 the game warns you that at some point there will be so much stuff on the screen it will be unplayable. I played up to round 115 and there was lag but I was still able to play and could have continued. The hardware is simply outstanding at this price.+ It has an external SD card slot that let's you insert up to a 128gb micro-SD card. This is huge for my family! I call myself Heart Dad because I have a 2 year old son who has had 6 open heart surgeries. We spend a lot of time in the hospital, laying in bed trying to distract him with movies. My 16 gb iPad air only fits around 5 movies before I run out of space. Kids get bored of movies! I want a tablet with 128gb so that I can fit 32 4gb movies on it. What are my choices? Apple charges $600 for the new 128gb iPad mini. Amazon sells 128gb micro-SD class 10 cards for around $55 and 64gb cards for about $20. I decided to get the Fire with 2, 64GB cards and it cost me $90 total.+ Amazon provides free unlimited cloud storage for photos taken with the fire.+ The specs. 7 hour battery life. Quad-core processor, front and back cameras, 7 inch IPS 171 ppi ‘almost’ HD screen, 8gb of built in memory.+ The fire is Kid friendly. There are a bunch of kid friendly features for limiting viewing time, playing kid friendly movies, and adding permissions to the tablet so that kids can’t accidentally buy things.+ If you have a Fire TV, PS3, or PS4 you can “fling” movies and TV shows to your TV from the Kindle.+ There’s a 3.5mm aux port for listening through headphones. This is perfect for road trips where both kids want to watch a different movie.+ This is subjective but I think that the OS interface is much improved over previous versions of the Kindle Fire.+ The Amazon ecosystem that this plugs you into (if you have prime). The new Amazon underground app store is fantastic, prime music has thousands of free songs, you have access to millions of free tv shows and movies, etc...+ I ran some tests and found that download and upload speeds are exactly the same as my Galaxy S6 and iPhone over Wifi.Neutral:* It comes in 1 color, black.* The body is smooth with no texture. I'd recommend getting a case if you've got slippery fingers like me.* There’s a new feature called “Word Runner” that lets you read a book by showing you one word at a time in the middle of the screen for various lengths of time based on how fast you read. It slows down for more complicated words. I tested this out and I personally don’t like it, but you might. It’s certainly an interesting idea and Amazon claims it can help you read faster.* What Amazon has done with the volume buttons is very interesting. The up and down volume buttons automatically swap as you rotate the screen so that volume up is always on top (when held sideways), and on the right (when held vertically). I've never used a tablet that does this before and it led to a funny experience the first time I went to watch a movie. It was about 1am and I accidentally mistook the volume up button for the volume down button. My wife freaked out on me, the baby started crying, and I couldn't turn it down because I kept mashing the volume up button. Never wake a sleeping baby. I hope my experience with the volume buttons will keep such terrible things from happening to you.Cons:- The screen is poor for reading small font. I prefer reading books with small font and browsing some websites including amazon.com using the normal non-mobile versions. When I tried this the font became very pixelated and hard to read. Increase your font size for books and browse the web using mobile sites only and the screen looks decent. Contrast on the screen is low, especially when viewed from an angle and it's also very reflective in sunlight.- The Kindle app cannot read eBooks off the external memory card, however you can side load books onto the internal memory of the Fire. I can only assume this is a move to stop piracy or an oversight. I included this because a lot of people are complaining about this in reviews and on the internet. It personally doesn't affect me because the books I read take up a small amount of storage space and if I run out of memory I just delete the books I've read. I can always side load the books again later if I want to re-read them. Others with image heavy, large sized books will run out of internal space more quickly and need to delete their books more often.- The Audible app does not allow you to store audio-books to the external SD card. Audible allows this on regular Android phones so I'm not sure why it doesn't work for the Fire. Audible books can be really large. This limitation means you'll only be able to store a couple audio-books on the Fire for off-line listening.- There's no way to truly dim the screen. After dropping the brightness to the lowest setting and turning on airplane mode, the screen is much too bright for me to use in bed at night if my wife is trying to sleep. My phone gets really dim on the lowest setting but the Fire doesn't. I wonder if this is something they can fix in a software update.- The two cameras are both mediocre quality. The front camera is a measly 2mp which is just decent enough to do 720p videos and take some pretty low quality pictures. The front facing camera is low quality VGA. It works well enough for skyping but don't expect to take any amazing selfies with it.- The speaker is just OK. It suffices for riding in the car and playing a movie. It’s just a single channel speaker. You have to upgrade to the $99 kindle to get dolby audio and up to the $149 kindle to get two speakers.- The built in wireless card does not support wireless AC, only N, G, and B. Wireless N is still what most people have and N is faster than most people's internet connection at this point but I feel this is still a con. Wireless AC is the immediate future of the internet and it would have been nice if the hardware supported this signal but I suppose it was probably too expensive for the hardware to support at this price point.Honestly, I'm having a lot of fun with this tablet and my 6 year old loves it. No the screen is not HD, but my kids don't care. All they know is that I’m able to put 32 of their favorite Disney movies onto their new tablet using this external micro-SD card that slides into the side. In my opinion this is a 4 star device only because the screen resolution is mediocre and low contrast. Amazon should be applauded for giving us this hardware for only $50. If they could somehow fit a couple extra pixels in the screen this would be a 5 star tablet no questions asked.The new $50 Fire is not the nicest tablet in the world but that’s not the point is it? It costs 8x less than my iPad and 14x less than my smart phone. You’re not buying this because you want the best tablet on the market. You’re getting this because it’s cheap and worth every penny of the $50 you'll spend on it. Great job Amazon, the Fire is most certainly the best tablet you can buy for $50. My expectations were high and you've blown them away.FAQsQ. How much of the 8GB internal storage space is actually available for use when I first turn on the Kindle?A. Mine has 5.63GB. The rest is taken up by the Fire OS and required applications.Q. I only want this for reading, is this tablet a good replacement for a regular e-ink Kindle or Kindle Paperwhite?A. In my opinion no, here's why. The $50 kindle has a screen with 171 ppi (pixels per inch). This is actually really close to the regular Kindle which has 167 ppi but the new Kindle Paperwhite and Kindle Voyage have 300 ppi. Why does that matter? Basically the higher the ppi, the clearer the text will be on your screen. The other huge advantages the Kindles have for reading are:1) Kindles have a very long battery life (weeks vs hours for the Fire).2) E-Ink screens look like natural ink and are much easier on your eyes for reading long periods of time because the screens are not back-lit like the Fire.3) Kindles are much lighter and easier to handhold for hours. Kindles are 6-7oz vs 11oz for the Fire.4) Kindles can easily be read in bright daylight unlike the fire. The Kindle Paperwhites can also be easily read at night in bed where the regular kindles need a lamp in order to see them at night.Q. Can I download Apps, Movies, TV Shows, Photos, and Personal Videos to my external SD card?A. Yes. By default these options are on. When you put your memory card in and download an app or a movie it should go straight to the memory card.To turn on external memory card downloads:1) Go to the Home tab on the Fire and click the Settings Icon (it looks like a gear).2) Under the Device settings click "Storage".3) Enable the options to download supported apps, movies, tv shows, photos, and personal videos to your SD card.Q. Can I store and read books of the external SD card using the Amazon Kindle app?A. No, unfortunately not at this time. In order to read a book using the Kindle app you need to move it to the internal memory of the Fire.Q. Can I side-load e-books onto the internal memory of the Fire?A. Yes.Q. Do I need a wireless router in order to connect the Fire to the internet or does it have it's own 3G, 4G connection?A. Yes, you need a wireless router in order to connect the Fire to the internet. You could also use a wireless hot spot if you have one. Several of the other Kindles have 3G and 4G connections. Search amazon for Kindle 4G or Fire 4G. Example http://amazon.com/Kindle-Fire-HDX-Display-Wi-Fi/dp/B00BWYSOEWQ. How are the Wifi internet speeds of the Fire?A. The Fire is comparable to other portable devices when tested using a 100MBPS connection from Cox.I tested the Fire vs my Samsung Galaxy S6, iPhone 6, and laptop. Here are the results after running the test on each 5 times using OOKLA.Fire: 47.23 Mbps download, 13.46Mbps upload, 13ms ping.Samsung Galaxy S6: 48Mbps download, 14.85Mbps upload, 10ms ping.PC: 84.15Mbps download, 14.80Mbps upload, 10ms ping.iPhone: 45Mbps download, 15.20Mbps upload, 10ms ping.Q. Can I move music (.mp3s) that I've purchased from Amazon Prime Music onto the external SD card using the Prime music app?A. No. According to reviews of the Amazon Prime music app and Amazon customer service there is a limitation at this time that prevents you from moving music you've purchased through Amazon onto the external SD card.Q. Is the Fire tablet Bluetooth compatible for audio, i.e., external speakers?A. Yes. The Fire has Bluetooth.