![]() Even though it's a year older, you'll get a slightly better processor, a smidge more RAM, more storage space (32GB or 64GB), and a slightly improved rear-facing camera (5MP versus 2MP). If you absolutely had to get one of Amazon's cheap tablets, you're better off saving your pennies for the Amazon Fire HD 10. You need to take decent pictures of anythingįAQ Q: How does the Amazon Fire 7 (2022) compare to the Amazon Fire HD 10 (2021)?.You like to play more complex games than Fruit Ninja or Candy Crush Saga.You want a tablet that supports every Android app out of the box.Your needs are very basic and you've already bought into Amazon's ecosystem.You can get it on sale for even cheaper.You'll be able to plug in with your existing high-wattage smartphone cable, even if the tablet won't charge any faster. We do appreciate the change to USB-C, though. That's for modern smartphones and tablets the Fire 7 is decidedly retro. It'll take you a bit over four hours to charge the Fire 7's battery from extinguished to full, but you won't enjoy any kind of "get half the battery after 30 minutes" quick-charging functionality. Otherwise, both the front- and rear-facing cameras are utterly unremarkable, more reminiscent of a flip phone camera from a decade ago than what you should get on a modern-day portable device. We'd only use the Fire 7's camera if our boss was forcing us to turn it on during a group video chat. So much so, we question why Amazon even includes a rear-facing camera at all. Any picture you capture will look dated and awful. That's the "app," and as we discussed in last year's review of the Fire HD 10, Amazon's treatment can lead to some broken encounters.ĭon't expect to use the Fire 7 to take good photos its rear and front-facing cameras are only two megapixels, which puts them right in "grandparents' webcam" territory. Amazon gets around this with some apps (mainly Google apps like YouTube or Google Drive) by giving you the service's website in a shell-less frame on your tablet. You won't find nearly the level of depth that you'd get from the Google Play Store, and it's incredibly frustrating to fire up a new tablet and realize that many of the popular apps or games you enjoy are now out of your reach-unless you do a little clever hacking, which most people will not. Amazon's Appstore is the biggest offender. Amazon substitutes the ever-useful Google Play Store (and other traditional Google apps) for Amazon-branded alternatives. The absolute worst part of the Fire 7 is a mess of Amazon's own making: Fire OS. We managed to hit 250Mbps on a simple test from the same location where an iPhone 13 Pro Max topped out at nearly 500Mbps (the difference being a single-antenna, budget WiFi 5 tablet versus a top-shelf, 2x2-MIMO, WiFi 6 smartphone). The tablet's wireless capabilities, while not breathtaking, are good enough. (Its single speaker, which sounds anemic and stilted, doesn't help.) Still, it was annoying to not have clear, seamless video playback from the start, and consuming content is supposed to be this tablet's primary purpose. This was less of an issue when we lowered the video's resolution to 360 or 480p, waited a little bit, and then kicked it back up to a higher resolution to continue. Sometimes, it worked perfectly other times, the video was incredibly choppy for anywhere from 10-20 seconds until it finally kicked into gear. ![]() We had few issues watching a typical 1080p YouTube stream on the Fire 7. The trade-off, even for the money you save, doesn't feel worth it. While the Fire 7 looks better when the font is larger, you won't get nearly the battery life you'd get from a dedicated e-reader. We had fewer issues reading large-font books on the tablet's included Kindle app, but if that's your primary interest, you're better off saving your money and splurging for a Kindle Paperwhite. Text can appear fuzzy on the Fire 7's screen, especially when it's small, and it's something you'll start to notice a lot more than you'd want to. The tablet's lackluster 1024-by-600 resolution and crummy 171-pixels-per-inch density, virtually unchanged since its debut in 2011, gives it a more of a budget feeling than anything else. If you're big into desktop monitors, you might see "IPS" in the specifications for the tablet's display and think, "Oh, great images." And while the Fire 7 is fine for viewing photos and videos, especially given what you're paying for it, the same can't be said for reading text on the tablet.
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