Tech Review: Amazon Fire 7 (2017)
Ever need a budget tablet for videos and PDF reading? Look no more.
Here's my review for the affordable Amazon Fire 7. Amazon is well known as a shopping site which I also personally used way back in the early 2000s. It's a one stop shop where you can get a lot of items, similar to Lazada today. I have purchased a couple of Tarot Cards from the website before too.
I was looking for an affordable gadget where I can read PDF and other online books from. I was looking at purchasing a Kindle, however, for the price of PHP 4000.00, you will only be limited to reading documents in its black and white screen. However, I saw this tablet from Lazada and for PHP 3,400.00 pesos (or almost USD$63) and I got this with free shipping.
The Fire 7 is a budget tablet with an okay specs. For this price range, you cannot really expect to get top of the line tech. It sports a 7 inch IPS LCD, plastic build (which sad to say can be easily dented), a Quad Core 1.3 GHz CPU, micro SD card slot which can be fitted with up to 256 GB Micro SD Card, 8GB ROM and 1GB RAM, which in today's standards would be a bit lame. Battery is 2980 mAh, which, in my opinion is a little small for a tablet. It also has front and back cameras that are 0.3mp and 2mp respectively. Here are some sample pictures.
2MP Back Camera
VGA Selfie Camera
The tablet uses a Customized Android 5.1 OS which is exclusively for Amazon Apps. You wont find any Google App Store, YouTube or any other Google applications. You can download Instagram, Facebook, FB Messenger, Netflix and Spotify from Amazon App Store, which also contains some Pagan/Wiccan apps. The app store will also suggest a few application based on the apps or the contents you checked.
Amazon Fire 7 also has Alexa, Amazon's own Smart Assistant. I was disappointed at first when I used it because I need to push the home button, but after I upgraded it to Fire OS 5.6.2.0, it enables a handsfree Alexa that can be activated by just saying "Hi Alexa".
Performance wise, the tablet can handle basic stuff like FB, Instagram and other social media interaction. You can also use it to stream videos using a substitute YouTube App called "Video for YouTube". Using the tablet, you cannot really expect a very nice screen display since it only has a 170 ppi density. There are some lags when you open a lot of application, but that is expected since the tablet only has 1 GB of RAM. The camera is present, but don't expect to get amazing pictures from the tablet's shooter. Sound quality is also so-so and even muffled sometimes, since the speaker is found at the back and would be covered if you put your tablet on the table. This tablet has Wifi and Bluetooth capabilities, but doesn't have any cellular connectivity.
There are some good things about this Tablet, well at least for me, since I bought this for reading. It has "Blue Shade" which changes the backlight to a softer hue, perfect for reading your PDF at night. The Tab also has built in Kindle App, which you can use to purchase your books online. Other Amazon Apps that you can use with Fire 7 is Audible which is for audio books, Goodreads, which is an online library, Amazon Store , and many more. You might find it challenging though, if you try to navigate and see your files on your memory card.
Do I recommend this tab? I say yes. If you want a tablet to use for your book and or manga reading and would also allow you to surf, watch videos and socialize on your social media, then this tablet is okay. However, you might also want to give this tablet as gifts to your kids. It has Kid Friendly profiles that you can set-up and based on the videos I watched online about it's durability, it's best suited for kids.
Amazon Fire 7 comes in black, yellow, red and the one I got- Blue. Here are some pictures of the device.
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