Recently my review of an 8th Generation Kindle was published and it was something I had not seen for a number of versions. Here another such items a Fire Tablet which I see – over the years - I had tried three previous versions, now it comes with Alexa built in so it is possible to talk to your Tablet. So what exactly has been happening with the Fire Tablet recently?
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The Fire 7 tablet from Amazon measures 19x11.4x1cm and weighs 288 grams. The viewable screen is 9x15.2cm which gives the diagonal imperial measurement of 7inches.
A full charge via trickle charge is 3½ hours boot up is 20 seconds and shutdown is 3 seconds.
Going around the outside has the micro USB slot on the right side, the base is clear; the right side has the speaker near the base. The top has volume up and down buttons, 3.5mm headphone socket, microphone, micro USB for charging and finally the on/off button.
It has both front and back cameras.
Alexa works with screen locked if power lead is plugged in, Alexa works with screen unlocked if on battery, in both cases Wi-Fi needs to be working for Alexa to answer your questions.
I own an earlier Fire 7 and putting them side by side they look quite similar, first difference this latest version supports Micro SD cards up to 512GB. Second difference the new version is around 40 grams lighter. The speaker is on the side rather than the back and buttons on the top are the same colour as the colour of your Fire whereas the earlier version had contrast on the colours. The eyes of the camera both on front and back are a little smaller and the curved arrow logo is alone on the back whereas the older version also had Amazon written above it.
Now for something I had to delve for, some versions of the same Tablet are sold for £10 less these are labelled ‘with special offers’ which means adverts so if you do not want some adverts then you could pay £10 more. While I am extremely rare as I turn things on and off the new Fire boots 10 seconds faster than mine and as I migrated content it has exactly the same amount of books and things on it.
The Home screen looks identical although some of the icons are different.
Normally I criticise buttons that are the same colour as the background but as they are all on top of the unit and they feel very different when a finger runs over them I let it go.
There are two models one with 8GB and the one I was sent with 16GB.
The display is 1024x600 and it has a quad core processor. I see from reading the small print on the box that this is the 9th version and has personized special offers and sponsored screensavers – the adverts. In the box is the charging cable and the USB plug front. There is also a small twelve page Getting Started manual for those whom the Fire Tablet is new. My unit was Twilight Blue, but it also available in Sage Green, Plum or Black.
At the time of publication this 7" tablet is available directly from Amazon for £49.99 and for a 7inch Tablet that is not expensive