Amazon Fire 7 tablet (newest model) 7” display, read and watch, under $60 with 10-hour battery life, 16 GB, Denim

Bought this for a reason most people probably would not, but I purchased this to make it into a streamdeck for my Twitch account. Honestly, it works amazing. As the way it stands there are so many android apps (Free) that turn tablets into such great tools you cannot pass it up. It has multiple pages with multiple buttons that can do everything say an Elgato stream deck could do. It may not have the "physical" button feel, but this is much cheaper! It has worked through many streams and recordings. The buttons always work and you can even get into the "coding" side of making custom buttons for different things while streaming. All of this was just for streaming! Imagine the other uses it could be for the price! The screen size is big enough where the buttons are large enough to see and read. The screen is clear enough for me to see the buttons from even far away (other side of the room). The touch screen has not lost any responsiveness and the battery life is fantastic. If I do not crank the brightness to 100 this has lasted me multiple full-length streams. P.S I got a tablet stand for it. It's amazin.

Excellent product and price

I snagged this latest 12 th gen 7” fire tablet at one of amazons sales $39 in late 2023. The latest chip and 2 gigs RAM makes a real difference compared to a 7” fire I had a couple or so years ago. Last one was basically useless, slow, crashed, and the book reader could not even smoothly do page curl turns. BUT THIS ONE IS DIFFERENT. IF YOU ARE A BOOK READER I ASSURE YOU THERE’S A LOT TO LOVE HERE. (and see one more surprising positive below in my update). The kindle app is flawless and almost snappy on this device. Page turning page curls are smooth and totally free of stutter or lock up like the earlier generation. It has a LOT of nits of brightness - surprisingly VERY bright even for my somewhat older eyes. Making text a bit larger is great (if your vision can use that help) and the screen resolution is totally fine for reading text, no issues at all even though it seemed like it’s a bit lower resolution in its specs. I leave it full brightness and still the battery lasts forever. Given a choice of the e-ink kindle costing much more, and this tablet (I have both) this little 7” fire tablet is FAR SUPERIOR FOR BOOK READING THAN THE e-ink tablet: it is more responsive, agile in changing text size, and lots of nits of brightness for easy reading. If you buy it ONLY as a dedicated book reader, and especially if you get the $39 price - it’s a steal and an incredibly under recognized useful budget reading tablet. Scale of 1-10 as a book reader I give it a 10. No question. More pros: surprisingly solid feel, no bending or creaking- really feels solid in the hand. Not too heavy but it’s not like so paper light that it feels flimsy. I recommend you get a case however cheap, because it is a little slippery to hold. Current OS on it is reasonably responsive and has not once ever crashed. Ok now some practical comparisons. As a tablet it is maybe a 4 on that same scale of 1 to 10: it is not super fast opening apps, the selection of fire available apps is poor, and you should accept that this is not a high end android or apple tablet. Yet, several streaming apps work flawlessly and you can watch media on it but the screen is a little washed out on color and lower resolution when your eyes compare to a high end tablet, or iPhone or 4k TV. The silk browser does work, just not super fast. The USB C charging port (!) was a splendid surprise, and the files app built into the OS let’s you surf a USB flash drive you can plus into that USB port which is surprising and kind of really cool FOR A THIRTY NINE DOLLAR TABLET! I did find that USB 3.0 maybe 3.1 works plugged into the USB C port but not USB 3.2. Last note: it has a standard headphone jack. Streaming audio including Spotify through headphones gives very very good sound. Shockingly the OS is sophisticated enough that you can plug a USB C to 3.5 mm female headphone adapter and plug headphones into that and it DOES stream the sound that way to headphones too. Sound quality seems identical either way. Portable, fun, great book reader, quite competent on card game apps and streaming apps including Netflix, Amazon prime, HULU, Disney, other free streamers like Crackle and Pluto and more; long lasting battery life, quite solid, lots of fun and so budget priced that if these capabilities sound appealing just buy the thing you will love it. Great toy to add to the small electronics fun gadgets in our lives. Update 11 22 23: one more positive to note: surprising but absolutely true: just discovered that Facebook's Messenger app will handle video calling and the result is extremely good - even shockingly good; sharp image, no dropped frames, perfect clean sound quality. Years ago it would have been impossible to imagine an inexpensive tablet gadget that could do video calls like that; yet, here we are. Outstanding!

The Amazon Fire 7 tablet has good and bad points, but for the price, it’s hard to complain too much. The biggest downside is definitely the sluggish performance; apps take a while to open, and navigating the tablet can feel slow, especially if you’re used to faster devices. On top of that, I’ve noticed the user interface actually gets a little worse with each update, becoming less intuitive and more cluttered over time. That said, there are a lot of positives. It’s lightweight, easy to toss in a bag, and the battery life is impressive. I mainly use it for reading ebooks, listening to audiobooks, and watching downloaded videos, and it handles those basic tasks just fine. For more demanding apps or web browsing, it wouldn’t be my first choice, but if you’re looking for something affordable for reading and light media use, the Fire 7 is a solid option.

So I only just got this and thought I'd share my initial review and hopefully answer questions that others might have that has been difficult to find answers for. Size differences As most have already seen, this version is different from the previous in shape and size, yes it is slightly smaller. For most users who had the previous version, the kicker is that your covers and cases etc. are no longer compatible. Also the Charger uses USB-C plug also which is different from the previous versions. In terms of performance This is night and day in comparison to the older versions. The older version was slick when it first came out but like most people know, the FireOS is basically Android and as more and more updates have been applied, the older version is now running really slow. So basically this new version hardware was tailored for the today's version of android thus it runs very fast and very slick, this is a very crucial issue. NO YOUTUBE KIDS APP The biggest issue anyone will encounter and is well known about is that this does not have the Google Play Store or accompanying services. That means that IT DOES NOT HAVE THE NATIVE YOUTUBE KIDS APP. There are many people on here that simply either don't understand what a native app is or simply confuse it with the main Youtube. I myself had multiple answers that failed to answer this basic question with multiple contradictory answers or reviews that failed to understand the question. Amazon FIRE tablets DO NOT HAVE YOUTUBE KIDS Apps. Amazon has their own Youtube.com app which it seems they created as the developer email address for that app is an amazon.com email address. When you click YOUTUBE KIDS link in that app it jumps to the browser and opens in the browser which is a terrible experience. It is strange given that on the fire TV, the YouTube app allows you to switch to kids profiles, if only Amazon would do that for their tablet youtube app. But until then What you have are 3rd party apps built by you know who on the AppStore that plays youtube. They are not native apps, nor do they support most of the functionality as is. They are not written by Youtube, Google or Amazon either, so if you want to give those apps your google login which is used for Youtube Kids then you do so at your own risk. YES YOU CAN INSTALL YOUTUBE KIDS NATIVE APP, BUT YOU HAVE TO DO IT YOURSELF. I don't know why nor will I try to even get into this very very old topic of not having youtube kids, but the GOOD news is that it is very simple and easy to get Youtube kids native apps on this 12th gen version. You don't need to be a modder or anything intense. But a simple web search will tell you how to do this. Just know that you will have to install 4 different google apps/services first to get the Play Store. This is even easier as you simply open the browser, download each of them from the website and Click to install. DONE AND DUSTED. Once you have the Play Store you can easily install any of the native youtube Kids apps or even the original Youtube app from google and even login to your tablet with your gmail account. I was able to do this in 30 minutes. With YouTube Kids installed. I am now able to give this 10 Stars. This is basically very decent hardware and latest OS for $60. You cannot go wrong with this as a kids tablet especially with the ability from Amazon to quickly lock this down. Touch Screen is extremely responsive I have struggled to find a decent priced kids tablet that is responsive enough to use the ANTON app without lag. This is the fastest tablet I have seen at this price point. For those that haven't used ANTON, it is by far the best app for teaching your kids. It has school derived lessons, I would recommend every parent should download ANTON. But it's writing lessons, needs a screen that is responsive and a fairly decent tablet. This tablet passes the ANTON test with a gold star. Sound is clear with some bass. It doesn't sound like a tin can. Sound quality is very loud and clear. Trust me, if you've been through the dozen kids tablets I have, you will be surprised how much of a let down it would be when you have poor sound. Kids need to hear clearly and this does it without issues. The Amazon AppStore itself is actually pretty good. All the apps we had on our old android tablet were available except for Youtube Kids. I'd imagine there are many more that are not available but most of the decent kids ones are on there including ANTON, ABC Kids etc I would think that since the FireTV Youtube app allows kids profiles, that Amazon would at some point do the same with their own tablet Youtube app. As it is right now this table is almost perfect especially once I was able to manually install play store and youtube kids easily. I'm ordering a second one.

Just received and so far quite happy with the speed and performance, time will tell on the supposed longer battery life than our original Fire 7 it replaced. We were surprised to find the battery was totally discharged when we received it and would not even turn on without charging. Charging DOES still take 4 hours just like the old unit, a little inconvenient in this age of fast charging but even with a higher wattage charger it only shortens that time slightly (from what we've read). Our original was from 2012 and was setup more as an e-reader that could go online. This one is a tiny tablet that happens to have the Kindle e-reader app installed. We'll see how much we can customize our library to make it feel more familiar. Given the price was 1/2 that of a new Kindle paperwhite I think we'd choose this one again in a heartbeat if it works as well as our original Fire 7 that lasted 13 years!

I am a longtime Kindle user, (maybe 8 different varieties of kindle) since the kindle keyboard (2010). I use my Kindle every day and many all nighters when I cannot sleep (I let it read to me). In this time this has been my very favorite. Compact and light enough to hold in bed but as useful as the bigger kindle fires. I cannot say enough good things about it. I have dyslexia so each of the aforementioned Kindle devices all have had to have the ability to read out loud to me. This is my favorite. I think it would be good for a child in that it is easy to hold. It’s compact and it carries well when I’m out and about and I’ve used it many times for pleasure and for Bible study it is a very good device.

First, I want to give a shout out to Dyle, the Amazon customer service representative, who patiently and valiantly tried to help me with the issues I'm having with my new Kindle Fire 7. He is phenomenal, and I'd give him 100 stars if I could. Unfortunately, the overall rating is 1 (and I wish I could give it something lower) due to Amazon's product, and the very weak warranty period surrounding it. I bought my first Kindle Fire 7 in 2013, and have absolutely loved it. I used it everyday, primarily borrowing books from my local library. The interface between the library and Amazon worked perfectly, and I downloaded over 1000 books during that time, all downloaded to my Kindle Fire successfully. I decided this past August that I should get a new Kindle Fire 7, as the charging of my old one was getting slower and slower. Big mistake on my part - I should have on to the old one. Everything started out fine with the new Kindle Fire 7. I continued my usual routine of getting books from my library, and they successfully downloaded to the new Kindle. After about 6 weeks (halfway through the meager 90-day warranty period), the downloading function stopped working. I got an error message saying that Amazon was working on the issue, and to try again later. After about a week of continuing error messages, I thought I should contact customer support. Well over an hour later with the representative, all I was told was that it must be an error at my library. The error message indicating that Amazon was working on the problem certainly seemed bogus. With the customer service rep, I was able to successfully download library books from my PC and my iPhone to the new Kindle. So the rep also added that I should just use my PC or iPhone to download books. Not a good answer, Amazon. I bought the Kindle Fire 7 specifically for the functionality which allows me to, with only the Kindle, take out books from the library and download them. And, obviously, the Kindle had proven that this technology should work, until 6 weeks into my ownership of the new Kindle. I wound up speaking with an Amazon supervisor, who acknowledged that the issue was on the Amazon side. She indicated she would open a case with Amazon's Software Engineering Department in order to resolve the issue. She also indicated that I would be contacted by Amazon in about a week with a resolution. I asked if I could call in, concerned that I may not get a call back. I was told that I could not call Software Engineering. This was not unexpected, I just wanted to talk with someone in Customer Service who would be able to tell me the status of my issue. The supervisor said she would document this situation in detail in my account record, so if I did call in, I should be able to get a quick response. Fast forward 10 days, I still haven't heard from Amazon, and my warranty period is quickly ticking away. I called in, and got the wonderful Dyle to help me. (I did not put him on the spot, but it seemed apparent to me that the supervisor I had spoken to previously did not document the issue, or at least not sufficiently for someone else to be able to follow). Dyle tried a number of troubleshooting ideas that neither of the first two representatives tried. Unfortunately, none were successful, and through consultation with someone else at Amazon (I assume his supervisor), they said I needed to send my Kindle back and they would attempt to repair, or else send me a new one. I asked if the warranty period starts fresh with the repaired/new Kindle, and was told that it did not. So, in the time I waited, seeing if Amazon's error message was accurate (indicating they were working to resolve the issue), calling into Customer Service and waiting 10 days with no response from them, then sending my Kindle in for repair/replacement, I estimate I have lost about 30% of the already skimpy 90 day warranty period. This is just not right. The issue with the Kindle did not occur until owning it for 6 weeks. If the same pattern repeats itself, I will be well beyond the warranty period when the issue occurs, and then I will just have thrown my money away on this Kindle. Dyle (and his supervisor?), understanding my concern, offered a partial refund if I just wanted to return the Kindle. Why partial though, Amazon? It's been acknowledged that the issue is with the Kindle. Why should I have to pay anything if you send me a defective Kindle? Very bad business model. Not a good way at all to treat your customers. I cannot recommend this product.