18 months after launching the original £49 Fire tablet, Amazon has release an updated version. It still costs the same, but has a few improvements that mean it’s still good value.
Read our full Fire 7 review.
When is the 2017 Fire 7 release date?
The new tablet went on sale 7 June, and you can buy one from Amazon for £49.99. There’s now a new 10in Fire HD which has hands-free Alexa.
They’re also be on sale in Argos, Currys PC World, John Lewis, Tesco and Shop Direct along with protective covers that cost £19.99.
There are four colours to choose: Canary Yellow, Marine Blue, Punch Red and Black.
As before you can also go for 8GB (4.5GB usable) or 16GB (11.6GB usable) of internal storage: all models will accept up to 256GB of extra storage via microSD card.
And if you don’t want the adverts on the lock screen, that perk costs an extra £10 when ordering.
A Kids Edition will also be available (and a brand new 8in version as well) for £99.99. You can pre-order one from Amazon, and this will also ship on 7 June.
The Kids version – as with previous ones – has 16GB of storage and comes with a protective case, a year’s subscription to Fire for Kids Unlimited and a two-year warranty that covers accidental damage.
It’s available in yellow now, as well as pink and blue:
What’s new?
Not a lot. The new tablet is 1mm thinner and 18g lighter and has a 7in display with higher contrast than before thanks to a new polarising filter.
Battery life is now up to eight hours rather than seven, and there’s dual-band instead of single-band 802.11n Wi-Fi which could mean faster browsing, smoother streaming or quicker downloads if your router supports 5GHz 802.11n.
The new tablet measures 192 x 115 x 9.6 mm and weighs 295g.
Alexa is also built in, so you can use your voice instead of your fingers to make things happen. You can ask Alexa to launch apps, play music (or an audiobook) and videos.
Amazon says that text is sharper on the improved screen, but resolution remains the same at 1024×600, which equates to 171ppi (also the same as before).
Processing power remains the same from the quad-core 1.3GHz processor and 1GB of RAM.
There’s no upgrade to the cameras, which means a VGA front-facing camera and a 2Mp rear-facing camera that can record video at 720p.
As before, you get a power supply and a USB cable in the box.
In terms of software, the Fire runs Amazon’s custom OS which doesn’t include Google apps. However, it’s based on Android and is easy to use. You can read more about it in our Fire tablet review.
We’ll bring you a full review of the new Fire 7 as soon as we can.
Author: Jim Martin, Executive Editor
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.