Price & availability
You get 16GB of storage as standard now, but you can have 32GB for £10 / $20 more. As always, you’ll get lock-screen adverts unless you opt for ‘Without Special Offers’ when choosing your options before buying. Doing that adds another £10 / $15 to the price.
The new colour range includes Black, Plum, Sage and Twilight Blue.
If you’re buying the Fire 7 for a younger child – under 6 or so – then you might prefer to get the Kids Edition version. It’s the same tablet, albeit with no 32GB storage option, but it comes with a chunky bumper case that should protect it from rough handling and drops. And if it doesn’t, the two-year warranty covers accidental damage so you’ll get a replacement.
Better still, you get a year’s access to Fire for Kids Unlimited which is a bit like Netflix but for apps, games, books, audiobooks and – yes – videos. All tailored to kids at various ages, so there’s something for everyone.
Features & design
If this is your first Fire 7, you might be surprised by the chunky bezels around the screen which are more 2014 than 2019, but they do at least provide something to hold onto without accidentally touching the screen all the time.
Most ports and all buttons are on the top edge: power, volume and a standard headphone connector. On the right side is a flap which hides the microSD slot.
You can now add microSD cards up to 512GB, but it doesn’t really make sense to spend more than the value of the tablet on extra storage.
At the top of the screen is an upgraded selfie camera, and this has meant a jump from ‘awful’ to just ‘mediocre’ selfies. It’s a slight benefit for anyone video chatting with you, but obviously you won’t see that yourself.
The screen is unchanged: it’s a 7in IPS panel with a low resolution of 1024×600 pixels. It’s a shame you can’t have a higher resolution, but inevitably there are compromises to still hit this price with 16GB of storage (the old model had 8GB).
You get Bluetooth, dual-band Wi-Fi and hands-free Alexa, built if that sounds like a new feature, a software update added the latter to the previous generation of Fire 7.
Performance
Clearly this is the best performance you can get for $50, and we’ve not yet heard a child complain about it. So it isn’t really a big deal.
That seven hours is definitely attainable, and it’s more than adequate when, again, considering that low price.
Software
It can also limit screen time for, say, games, while allowing unlimited reading, which is especially handy if you can’t – or won’t – supervise your kids while they use their tablet.
Though you won’t find every last app, virtually everything you (or your kids) want is there, including Facebook, Instagram, Minecraft, Roblox, TikTok, iPlayer, Skype, Netflix and more.
But it is irritating when some of the big hitters aren’t listed in the results, such as the ever-popular Snapchat.
Verdict
The new colours seem to be aimed more at adults than kids, but it’s hard to recommend the Fire 7 as a serious entertainment tablet for grown-ups (or your granny). The small, low-resolution screen and impotent processor will make you wish you’d spent more. But for kids, it’s ideal and still great value.
Jim has been testing and reviewing products for over 20 years. His main beats include VPN services and antivirus. He also covers smart home tech, mesh Wi-Fi and electric bikes.
