Amazon has pretty much got the budget tablet market sewn up, and products like the Fire 7 are the reason why.

The tech giant has refreshed the 2019 version of its portable 7-inch tablet to improve things like the speed, battery life and software.

In doing so, it’s also added an extra tenner to the price. But, at £59.99, you’re going to struggle to find a more affordable , better supported option – anywhere.

The premise is simple: good design, decent-ish performance and a reasonable screen at a rock-bottom price. The ace-in-the-hole is how it works with an accompanying Prime subscription.

If you’re already a Prime subscriber, the Fire 7 is a cheap and portable way to watch films and TV shows, read Kindle books and listen to Amazon Music.

It’s nowhere near as good as an iPad mini but, then again, it costs a fraction of the price.

Amazon has refined the design to make it closer to the HD8 and HD10 tablets; slimming it down and reducing the bezels. There’s a 3.5mm headphone jack so you don’t need to use wireless headphones and a USB-C charging port.

A 2GHz processor is backed up by 2GB of RAM which means this tablet is capable – but you’ll certainly notice a brief delay when you tap and app or rotate the screen and wait for it to catch up.

Other things to bear in mind are that there’s no automatic brightness, so you’ll need to manually adjust it each time. And the mono speaker, while competent, won’t be heard in a really noisy room.

The base level storage is 16GB (only 9.5GB is actually available) although you can add more with a microSD card.

Thankfully, the battery life is really good on the Fire 7. It lasts around 10 hours in between charges, which means it’ll do you for a long flight or to take away for a weekend. Given how portable it is, this is a big plus.

When it comes to software, the Fire 7 runs Amazon’s own Fire OS 8.3, which is built on top of Android 11. There are no Google services here, though. You need to rely on Amazon’s app store and Amazon’s updates.

The app store is much more limited than Google Play, but you’ll find most of the big entertainment apps (Netflix, TikTok, Disney+) here. There’s just no YouTube, Chrome or Google Maps.

Of course, this tablet really exists as a pipeline for Amazon-based shopping. You get a home screen peppered with recommendations for audibooks, TV shows or magazines that can all be purchased from Amazon. If that doesn’t sound like your style, you may want to opt for an iPad instead.

But, if all you want is a cheap tablet for content consumption and you’re already a Prime member, the Fire 7 is a no-brainer.

Amazon Fire 7: the details

Name: Amazon Fire 7

Price: £59.99 (16GB)

What’s good:

• Low price
• Headphone jack
• Battery life

What’s bad:

• No Google Play Services
• Meagre storage without an SD card
• Aggressive Amazon recommendations

Where can I buy one? Where else? It’s available on Amazon here.

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