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It wasn't all that long ago that, if you wanted a decent tablet, Android or otherwise, you'd have to spend at least £150 (or $199) on something that didn't want to make you tear your own face off in frustration. See the likes of
the $99 Maylong M-150
for evidence of just how bad it can get.
But times have changed. These days there are a slew of cheaper tablets out there that do an admirable job for the cash. Asus' ZenPad range, which starts at around £79.99 ($99) isn't bad at all, while Tesco's £99 Hudl 2 often ranks at the top of budget tablet lists thanks to its full HD screen, and child-friendly design.
Specs at a glance: Amazon Fire Tablet
Screen
7-inch, 1024×600
OS
Fire OS 5
CPU
MediaTek MT8127, quad-core 1.3GHz
RAM
1GB
GPU
Mali 450
Storage
8GB plus micro SD expansion
Networking
Single-band Wi-Fi
Ports
micro USB, headphone jack
Camera
2MP rear camera, VGA selfie camera
Size
191mm length, 115mm width, 10.6mm depth
Weight
313g
Battery
2980mAh
Price
£50
/
€60
/
$50
But Amazon's new Fire tablet is, remarkably, even cheaper than the competition, and sacrifices little despite its low price. At £50 ($50) it's one of the cheapest tablets you can buy from a big-brand manufacturer, and it's perfectly capable and pleasant to use. Oh sure, it's not exactly what you'd call a looker, the low resolution display is merely adequate, and you won't be able to run all of your favourite Android apps without a little work thanks to Fire OS, Amazon's forked version of Android that lacks the Play Store.
But if you end up with one of these in your Christmas stocking—and I expect that's where a lot of these will end up—you should thank Santa, rather than curse him for not bringing you a PS4.
Design
The Fire is also a decent tablet for kids, thanks in part to its basic design. There are no chamfered edges or unibody enclosures here. Instead, there's a simple sheet of glass on the front with a big black bezel, which is backed up by textured black plastic. There's very little in the way of visual flair; everything that's on the device—aside from the simple stamped Amazon logo on the back—is there because it absolutely has to be. There's a cutout on the top left for the rear-facing 2-megapixel camera, while there's a small grille for the unfortunately thin-sounding speaker on the bottom left.
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The right side of the tablet houses a micro SD card slot that can handle up to 128GB cards, while everything else—the headphone jack, power button, micro USB socket, and volume rocker—live on top. It's not the most intuitive arrangement, particularly for the volume rocker, but the buttons are big and chunky and work absolutely fine.
At 191mm in length, 115mm in width, and 10.6mm in depth, the Fire is not exactly the slimmest tablet around, nor is it the lightest, weighing in at a surprisingly hefty 313 grams. But with it housing just a 7-inch screen, it never feels unwieldy, and you certainly won't have any trouble holding it with one hand or lugging it around in a bag. The curved sides make it comfortable to hold, too, even if the plastic does creak a little if you're too tight with your grip.
The micro USB port, power button, volume buttons, and headphone jack are all on the top of the tablet.
On the right hand side of the tablet is a fiddly flap covering a micro SD card slot.
There's a speaker grille on the on the back for the tinny speaker.
The Fire tablet only sports a 2-megapixel camera.
As for that 7-inch screen, it only sports a 1024×600-pixel resolution, which is very low by today's standards—lower, even, than 720p. With a pixel density of just 171 PPI, it's easy to see individual pixels when you look at the display, even at distance, and text and artwork just aren't that crisp and nice to look at. That said, it is an IPS display, so colours are good, and viewing angles—while not as wide as you'd expect for IPS—are acceptable. Checking e-mails, reading the Web, and watching the odd Prime Instant Video works great, despite the low-resolution—just don't try using the thing outside in the sunshine. There's a substantial gap between the glass and the display, which means you'll be in a world of unreadable pain if you do.
But does it fast?
The Fire is powered by a quad-core 1.3GHz MediaTek processor (MT8127), backed up by 1GB of RAM, and a Mali 450 GPU, which isn't bad at all for money. There's 8GB of storage—5GB of which is available to the user—which means that micro SD card slot is going to come in handy if you're into hauling lots of media around with you. The MediaTek chip isn't going to win any performance benchmarks, but in day-to-day use, it performs admirably. Flicking through apps, scrolling through websites, and general responsiveness is good. Even watching films and playing 3D games like Real Racing 3 worked well, with nary a dropped frame.
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What are more noticeable are the loading times. Apps don't open near instantaneously like they do on more powerful devices, while there's a wee delay in bringing up the keyboard in certain apps. But it's never so bad as to be annoying, and, perhaps more importantly, the delay is consistent, making the experience smooth and frustration-free. Basically, you can use this thing as a daily driver to do all your media consumption and general tablet tomfoolery without issue.
Even better, you can do it with some stellar battery life. The upshot of a less-powerful SoC and a lower-resolution screen is that they're kinder on the battery. Amazon says the Fire's 2980mAh battery is rated for up to seven hours of usage, but it blew past that in Ars' standard 200-nit Wi-Fi browsing test reaching an impressive eight hours and fifty minutes with all the power-saving options turned off. Even better, the Fire's standby time is ridiculously good. After fully charging it and sticking it in a backpack for three days, I was surprised to find it was still on 100 percent battery when I retrieved it. Given that the Nvidia Shield tablet I often carry around with me randomly drains its battery throughout the day, this is impressive.
What isn't impressive is the rear-facing camera—or the front-facing VGA camera for that matter, too. At just two megapixels, the rear camera is only really suitable for snapping quick pics for tweets, or for those moments when you just really need to give someone a video tour of your house on Skype. For everything else it’s terrible. The low resolution means you can forget seeing any fine detail, while there’s a distinct lack of colour depth as well. The tablet also over exposes photos, so you’re often left with a blurry, blown-out mess. At the very least the camera interface is pleasant to use and super-fast thanks to the lack of pixels being pushed around, but realistically the cameras are merely adequate for video calls and that’s all.
