Amazon on fire
The online retail giant’s new Fire 7 and Fire 8 range of tablets continue to offer consumers a relatively good balance between price and quality
In 2015, Amazon launched –obviously in its online store– a range of two tablets of different sizes at very competitive prices. Two years later, the latest models have been developed and offer remarkably improved characteristics: they are slimmer, have better screens and faster processors. However, what has not changed is the price, which remains very competitive and makes both the Fire 7 and Fire 8 HD a very good option for those looking for a consistent but economic device, both in physical appearance as well as in performance.
The Fire 7 is the top selling model and is now slimmer and lighter. The seven-inch screen has been improved to provide more contrast for reading texts, as well as more intense colours. The battery capacity has grown to eight hours of continuous use and the dual-band Wi-Fi ensures better connectivity. Meanwhile, the Fire 8 HD screen sports a million pixels per inch. Internally, it has the same improvements as its younger brother but the battery churns out up to 12 hours of continuous operation. Both tablets share the same quad-core processors and boast the new Blue Shade function for reading at night, which supposedly does not break the body’s circadian rhythms and so facilitates relaxation.
On the downside we could point out the poorer camera quality and low storage capacity (16GB in the Fire 7 and 32GB in the larger model), although the memory can be expanded to 256GB with a microSD card.
With these devices, Amazon is not aiming to conjure up sales but rather attract customers into its sphere of influence and, as such, is offering a substantial reduction for Premium Clients, so for anyone looking for a new tablet it could well be worth signing up for the service. The Fire range also ran special offers throughout the summer, at 54.99 euros for the Fire 7 (69.99 euros for other customers), and 89.99 euros (109 euros for regular customers) in the case of the larger tablet. It should also be noted that Amazon Premium customers have other advantages that may be useful to tablet users, such as unlimited cloud storage space for photos or access to the wide variety of contents on the company’s on-demand video service, Amazon Prime Video. Fire uses Amazon’s own software (based on Android, but without access to the Play Store). Needless to say, they do not have the versatility and resources of the iPad, but that is not their intention, especially considering that the for price of an Apple tablet any purchaser could buy seven basic Fire tablets and still have money left over.