Is Amazon's budget tablet still the brightest spark in the fire?
"This affordable tablet is a great content delivery system for Amazon
but is beaten in most other areas by rival devices at similar price
points. Average build quality belies decent internal specifications and
impressive stereo sound."
The Amazon Fire Phone
might not be worth your time, but when it comes to tablets Amazon has
become a real powerhouse. The retailer is back with its 2014 lineup and
the runt of the litter is the affordable Fire HD 7. The Kindle name is
gone, but there's still plenty that Amazon's bringing to the table. Affordability
is the key issue here and I'll be revisiting it during the course of
this review. It's well known that Android makes money from services and
so can deliver the hardware at extremely friendly prices. And yet, with
the likes of the Tesco Hudl 2 out there, is Amazon's offering still worth it? The
7-inch Amazon Fire HD 7 starts from £119 (US$139) for the 8GB version
with special offers (ads). Bar the size, it's more or less identical to
the Amazon Fire HD 6 which starts at £79 (US$99). The difference is the
6-inch model has a mono speaker, smaller pixel density and a lower
weight. The focus of this review is the 7-inch model but I'll mention these differences in more detail when it's relevant. When
it comes to the tablet essentials, the Fire HD 7 has everything in
place. There's a 1.5GHz quad-core processor, 1GB of RAM and choice of
8GB or 16GB internal storage. It's not a bad roster sheet when you keep
in mind the iPad mini 2 is over £100 more expensive and houses a dual-core 1.3GHz processor, 1GB of RAM and 16GB of storage space. Amazon has plenty of colours to choose fromLike the iPad mini 2, the Fire HD 7 also shuns a microSD slot which means there's no expandable storage to be had.Unfortunately,
unlike the iPad mini 2, the LCD IPS display on the Fire HD 7 tops out
at a 1,280 x 800 display. That means that while 720p HD is catered for,
it falls short of the full 1080p experience offered by the likes of
Google's Nexus 7. The
design language of the Amazon Fire HD 7 reaffirms its mid-level
credentials. The screen is surrounded by a thick, black bezel and the
plastic chassis is blocky and utilitarian. The bezel on this thing is massiveAmazon
has spruced it up with a few colours to choose from - my review unit
came in the bright "citron" (yellow) hue. You can also get "cobalt"
(blue) "magenta" (purple) and the more customary black or white.It's very...yellowThe
Fire HD 7 measures 191 x 128 x 19.6mm (7.5" X 5.0" X 0.4") and weighs
337g (11.9 oz). To give it its due, it weighs less than the blocky
design makes it appear and it comes in lighter than Tesco's new Hudl 2
tablet which weighs 410g.While you're going to need to
hold it in both hands to navigate the menus and play games, holding it
one-handed isn't a problem. I didn't feel my muscles pulling after a ten
minute reading session holding the HD 7 in landscape mode. On the carouselHowever,
the plastic backing is far from the nicest material for gripping the
tablet. The soft-touch rubberised coating used for the Fire HDX 8.9 or
Tesco Hudl 2 works much better.The back of the tablet is
also where you'll find the dual stereo speakers, situated along the top
edge. Amazon has used Dolby Audio inside the HD 7 and the tablet can
hit a decent amount of volume. The dual speakers are punchy and loudIf
you're holding it in two hands in a landscape position then you're
going to be fine, but in portrait mode it's easy to block one of the
speakers with your hand. The same goes for the rear-facing 2MP camera
that's located in the top right hand corner of the tablet when in
portrait. The power switch, 3.5mm headphone jack and
microUSB charging port are all on top of the tablet – again, if you're
holding it in portrait mode. The 3.5mm headphone jack, microUSB port and power switch are all togetherYou'll
find the volume rocker on the left hand side, which becomes either the
bottom or the top when you're holding it in landscape mode. The first
Fire HD models had micro-HDMI ports as well but unfortunately this
feature is no more.It's fair to say that the HD 7 can
take a few knocks, but the tablet as a whole is not what I'd call svelt.
The design and materials used serve a purpose though, and that's
keeping the costs down. The volume rocker is slightly awkwardly placedAlthough
it doesn't feel like the cheap Android tablets from a few years ago,
the design suffers because our quality benchmark has been raised by the
likes of the Google Nexus 7 and the original Fire HD 7.Similarly, this is not a power tablet like the Microsoft Surface Pro 3, but a lean-back content consumption device tied completely to the Amazon ecosystem. There's no Firefly app installed but Amazon is putting a basic device in your hands in the hope you'll use its services.
Interface and performance
Amazon's ubiquitous carousel widget has become a
recognisable, if not mainstream, user interface and the Fire HD 7 is
based around it. This iteration is the Fire OS 4 UI, which is built on top of Android 4.4 KitKat and is pretty much unrecognisable from Google's native version. The Fire OS carousel UI remains strongThe
carousel lets you scroll through your recently-used apps and content in
reverse chronological order while below is the more traditional app
icon grid.Above
the carousel is a menu of links taking you to Amazon's depository of
physical goods and digital media. Scroll to the end and you'll find a
couple of non-buying options like Web, Photos and Docs. Below the carousel are the standard app iconsEverything
about the UI, unsurprisingly, is about pushing content. If you turn the
Fire HD 7 portrait then underneath a particular book, album or film
appears thumbnail recommendations for similar purchases.In
one sense, the Fire HD 7 is supremely easy to use, with big friendly
icons that can be quickly scrolled through and opened up. But key
features like email, documents and settings are squirreled away behind
the wall of content.Like most Android tablets you can
pull down the notifications panel from the top of the screen and quickly
adjust things like brightness, Wi-Fi and access the settings. There's
also a quick switch for something called Quiet Time that disables all
notifications so as not to interrupt your reading time. Select Quiet Time for some uninterrupted quality readingThere's
no way of customising the experience the same way you would with an
Android or iOS tablet. There are no backgrounds to choose from and no
widgets to install on the homescreen. If it's personalisation you're
looking for, you won't find it here. That actually goes for advanced
users as well – the Fire HD 7 is not a tablet to dig down into for those
wanting a creative and social experience.Amazon has
effectively walled off Android, so there's no access to the Google Play
store and no Google Apps to be had either. Instead, there's Amazon's own
appstore; home to over 240,000 apps. Pretty much all
the big-hitters are available and Amazon also throws in a free app of
the day as well as various seasonal giveaways to entice you. Endless Reach...for free!Once
you've accessed an app or piece of content, a small navigation bar can
be called up by tapping the screen. It appears at the bottom of the
screen in landscape mode and along the side in portrait mode, giving you
the option to return to the homescreen, type out a search or go back a
page. The Kindle Fire HD 7 is equipped with a quad-core
1.5GHz processor and 1GB of RAM. In practice, I found the performance to
be good, if not exemplary. Apps and content loaded quickly in under a second, and swapping between landscape and portrait roughly a second itself. Switching between portrait and landscape takes about a secondOn
paper though, the performance is lacking compared to similarly priced
tablets. The Geekbench 3 benchmarking app returned a multi-core score of
1476. By comparison, the Tesco Hudl 2 scored 2147 on the same. Even Google's aging Nexus 7 tablet managed a 1896 multi-core score.But
when running graphically intensive games like Real Racing 3, the Fire
HD 7 kept up the pace. I didn't experience any lag or stutter during
gameplay and, when holding the tablet the right way, the stereo sound
was really impressive. Turn the volume all the way up and you can
actually feel it through the tablet's plastic chassis.Real Racing 3 ran smoothly on the Fire HD 7
You're
never going to use the Fire HD 7 for anything more complex than 3D
gaming or streaming video and for these types of features, the
processor, RAM and Fire OS are more than capable.
Key features and battery
Unlike the Amazon Fire Phone,
the Fire HD 7 doesn't have well-known Amazon features like Mayday,
Firefly or Dynamic Perspective. What it does have though, is an
extremely straightforward method of getting content delivered directly
to your device. That content all comes from Amazon and
it's handily broken down for you into key areas: Games, Apps, Books,
Music, Video, Newstand and Audiobooks. I'll delve into these in greater
detail later, but it's the ease at which you can populate your device
that's appealing. Hit audiobooks in the navigation menu,
for example, and you're taken to Amazon's Audible store complete with
carousels for both bestsellers and new content. With each audiobook, you
can buy it in a matter of taps through your Amazon account. for audiobook fans, Amazon's Audible store takes some beatingMoving
away from content towards browsing and email and the Fire HD gives you
the nuts and bolts experience. Email from the Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo
can be added to Amazon's own email app and the tablet will also sync
with calendar entries and contact details. The
interface is easy enough to use for anyone familiar with Android or iOS
tablets. Emails run across the screen and you swipe right to archive or
delete messages. You can edit messages in bulk and refresh the inbox at
any time by pulling down. Email isn't a big feature of the HD 7 - but it's thereComposing
messages isn't a problem because Amazon's given the Kindle Fire HD a
decent keyboard with solid word prediction. And like other Android
tablets, you can use the swipe feature to type a word without lifting
your finger from the screen.Swipe away on the Fire HD 7's keyboardWeb
browsing is handled by Amazon's Silk browser which offers a very
similar experience to Chrome or the Android native browser. Tabbed
browsing, bookmarks and the ability to share pages via social network
are all incorporated and you can access your history, bookmarks or
downloads by clicking the menu button at the top right-hand corner. The Silk browser has all the features you'd expectDiving
into the advanced settings, you'll find the option to configure the
browser to accept cookies, save passwords and enable location access.A
particularly useful feature of the Silk browser is Amazon's Reading
View, which strips out formatting, adverts and other distractions
leaving you with just the text. The icon appears as a green box next to
the web address. Once hit this immediately expands to
full screen. I used it frequently when skimming through the web and
catching up with news articles or browsing Wikipedia entries. Hit the green button to engage Reading ViewThese
things aside, the real reason people will look at the Amazon Fire HD is
because of its pricing. At £119 for the lowest configuration, the HD 7
offers a serious incentive in terms of a power-to-price ratio. It also
means the Fire HD 7 is well placed as a secondary device that you can
share with the kids.Amazon is obviously aware of this
possibility as, along with the brightly coloured cases, there's a
feature called Kindle FreeTime. It's (another) subscription service
tailored to children that brings together educational apps and games as
well as TV shows and movies curated for the kiddies. There's
the option to set up individual profiles for each child as well as
limit the amount of time they can use the tablet for. And, since your
kid can't exit the Amazon FreeTime mode without a password, they can't
access the rest of your apps or content. Little Jeff Jr. loves using his Amazon Fire HD 7Declining
to give the size of the battery, Amazon instead insists the Fire HD 7
will see you through eight hours of mixed use and nine hours of reading.
I found this to be pretty much on the money - the HD 7 did last me
through a day at the office without a charge.Heavy duty
tasks like 3D gaming will take the battery out in about four hours,
whereas with less-intensive use, you'll be able to hit Amazon's
eight-hour estimation. There's also a SmartSuspend feature that ekes out
more battery life by disabling the Wi-Fi when you're not using the
tablet. Battery life is sacred - so save itMy
testing consisted of using the tablet for an average day at the office
during which I'd jump into it periodically to browse the web, play music
while writing and watch some video and play games during lunch. Throw
in a bit of social networking and you have a pretty standard use-case
scenario. Starting from 100% at 9am, the tablet was down to 27% by 5pm.Running
a HD video for 90 minutes took the battery down from 100% to 67% which
is a pretty large chunk. Admittedly, it's a heavy-use scenario but it
goes to show that the battery life, while good for the price, isn't
outstanding.
Camera
Early incarnations of Amazon's Fire tablet dispensed with
the rear-facing camera but times are a changin' and the company has
added one here. It's not going to displace the likes of the iPad Air 2 or Samsung Tab S when it comes to photography as the results are sub-par. The camera lens is tucked into the cornerThe rear-facing 2MP camera has the bare bones when it comes to features; namely an HDR mode and a Panorama mode. You
can alter the exposure settings by tapping on different parts of your
subject but the results are negligible. There's no flash and the HD 7
doesn't cope well with low-light situations. You won't be using this as your main cameraMost
of the time, the photos are grainy and lack detail. There's also a
strong chance your finger will obscure the lens if you're holding the
device in landscape mode. As Amazon points out, you can shoot 1080p
video with the rear-facing camera but it's hardly going to replace the
shooter on your smartphone.Switch to the VGA
front-facing camera and the results are pretty similar. It's acceptable
for video chatting and does offer face recognition but the overall
detail level is still way below what I'm used to seeing. The front facing VGA cameraIt's
a plus point that Amazon has even decided to add cameras to the tablet,
but it certainly isn't the Fire HD 7 strongest feature.Scroll down for some examples of the Amazon Fire HD 7's photographical prowess. Taken outside in bright light on auto returns a grainy, slightly washed out imageClick here for the full res imageThe same image, now with HDR mode enabled, is now darker with a slightly better contrastClick here for the full res imageClose-up shots are possible and although in focus, the detail and colours aren't impressiveClick here for the full res imageOne of the Fire HD 7's few modes is a Panorama modeClick here for the full res imageSelfies or video calling on the HD 7's front-facing camera aren't strikingClick here for the full res image
Competition
Seating itself in the bracket of "affordable Android tablet"
opens the Amazon Fire HD 7 up to plenty of competition from no-name
brands peddling cheap, easy tabs running Google's free OS. But there are
a few genuinely awesome tablets available at this price point, giving
the Fire HD 7 a bit of a run for its money.
Google Nexus 7 (2013)
Google's Nexus tablets redefined what a budget tablet could be and even though the Nexus 7 has been superseded by the HTC-made Nexus 9,
it's still worth considering. You're going to pay £50 more (£170 /
US$199 / AU$308 for 16GB) for a tablet that's a year older but take a
glance at the specification and you'll see why. Google's 2013 tablet can still cut itThe
Nexus 7's 1920 x 1200 screen resolution outperforms the 1280 x 800 on
the HD 7 and Google's tablet also boasts twice as much RAM as Amazon's.
Both use a quad-core 1.5GHz processor but Google's tablet trumps the
Fire HD 7 with a 5MP rear-facing camera and a 2MP front-facing option.Furthermore,
the Nexus 7 is a much more customisable experience and doesn't exist
simply to push content at you. You've still got the wealth of Google
Play to exploit but it doesn't feel like you're forced into doing things
a particular way. It's been updated with Android 4.4 as well, just to
keep things running smoothly. Google's tablet also wins
on the design front. The soft-touch back is more comfortable to hold
than the HD 7's plastic exterior and the Nexus 7 is thinner to boot.
Apple iPad mini (2012)
With the arrival of the Apple iPad mini 3,
the original iPad mini has been pushed further down the pricing tier to
become Apple's budget option. At £199 (US$249 / AU$299), it's still
more expensive than any of the other tablets here, but thanks to iOS 8,
there's supreme usability and plenty of features to be had. Apple's first iPad mini is now the company's budget choiceIf
keeping to a budget is really your prime concern, then stick with the
Fire HD 7, especially considering the non-Retina 1024 x 768 display.
However, if you don't fancy being constrained to Amazon's ecosystem (and
would rather be constrained to Apple's instead) then the iPad makes
sense.When it comes to apps, the 500,000-strong Apple
App Store takes some beating and there are plenty designed specifically
for the iPad mini. Aside from the apps, the design and build quality of
the iPad mini leaves Amazon's HD 7 in the dust. It's not
really worth the extra £80 if you're only after a basic tablet, but if
you're set on getting into Apple's tablet world then this is your
cheapest option.
Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 (2014)
Pick
a tablet size and there's a pretty good chance that Samsung has a
product for it. If not one or two. The Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 was released
earlier this year in 7-inch, 8-inch and 10.1-inch flavours with the
7-inch, at £159 (US$169 / AU$288), a rival for Amazon's slate. One of the hundreds of Samsung tablets availableLook
at the specifications on paper and its clear this is a mid-range tablet
with few of Samsung's key features. There's no S Pen support and no
AMOLED screen. But it does have two key features missing from the Fire
HD 7; Google Play support and a microSD slot for expanding on the paltry
8GB of storage.Performance is also on a level with the
Fire HD 7. Although the quad-core processor inside the Galaxy Tab 4 is
only clocked at 1.2GHz, it's got 1.5GB of RAM as opposed to the 1GB
inside the HD 7. The screen resolution on both tablets is exactly the
same at 1,280 x 800. It's more expensive than the Amazon
Fire HD 7 and arguably less well equipped when it comes to performance.
But there's no denying that Google Play support and expandable storage
are huge bonuses. If you don't want to do things Amazon's way then the
Samsung Galaxy tab 4 offers a great alternative.
Hands on gallery The Fire HD is a good option for the kidsThere are plenty of colours to choose from, but we're not sure about the yellowDual stereo speakers are a nice touchIt's not the thinnest tablet we've ever seenThe plastic build quality keeps the cost downAll too often you'll find yourself obscuring the camera lens
Verdict
Coming to a verdict on the Amazon Fire HD 7 is a remarkably
simple task. There's no denying it's a piece of hardware that offers
great value for money in terms of specs, if not overall design. However,
unless you're prepared to attach yourself to Amazon's ecosystem,
there's a limited amount of appeal. If you want a more
open experience, then (in the UK) you can buy the Tesco Hudl 2 for £10
more with better specs, features and design.
We liked
In
terms of a content delivery system, the HD 7 is absolutely perfect.
Getting to your favourite TV shows, films or books couldn't be easier
and, if you're prepared to pay for a subscription, you can get even more
from it. Likewise, the ability to have different profiles - some for
the kids - through Amazon FreeTime is really helpful. What's
more, Amazon is fairly generous when it comes to giving you a taste of
the content. It regularly gives away bundles of apps, free songs and
there's even a free month of Amazon Prime subscription waiting for you
if you want. Other nice touches come in the form of
Amazon-exclusive features like reading mode, quiet time and the X-Ray
video feature. All of these accentuate the content rather than act as
standalone features, but they're nice touches nonetheless.
We disliked
The
Amazon Fire HD 7's internal specifications are good for its price. The
outer design, less so. It's chunky, plasticy and there are some truly
massive black bezels running along the outside of the display. Dual
speakers are punchy and impressive, but the cameras aren't as good as
the competition. Also, there's no microSD card slot for
upgrading the storage and Amazon has removed the Micro-HDMI port that
used to exist on Fire HD devices. The budget nature of
this tablet is also slightly undone by the existence of the 6-inch model
which is cheaper and has much of the same specs.
Final verdict
Perhaps
the least useful of all Amazon's tablets, this is neither the budget
Amazon Fire HD 6 nor the impressive new Fire HDX 8.9. Instead it's a
conduit for Amazon's video and book stores on an admittedly impressive
7-inch screen. The retail giant has done wonderful things
for making good budget tablets, but it looks to me that they've been
surpassed by the competition on this occasion. If you're a
heavy Amazon user then there's definitely something here for you, but
otherwise the Amazon Fire HD 7 doesn't offer much you can't get
elsewhere. ByJeff Parsons
