Fire 7 price and availability MORE: Best Tablets Available Now Design The Fire 7 includes a headphone jack and microSD reader, the same ports you get with the Onn and the Fire 7 Kids. Display The Fire 7’s sub-HD, 1200 x 600-pixel resolution is the main culprit for why most images – from children walking slowly to a hero saving the day when a bank truck is under attack – look a little fuzzy, if not completely filled with artifacts. When we tested the Fire 7 with our colorimeter, we found that the tablet produces a mere 66% of the sRGB color spectrum, which is a point below the Fire 7 Kids’ score of 67% and a lower rating than the 73% we saw from the Walmart Onn. Both of those ratings fall far below the 107% tablet average MORE: Tablet Buying Guide Navigating the Fire OS interface with taps and swipes, I saw the Fire 7 offer excellent responsiveness for its price class. I did notice a minor amount of delay as I pinched and zoomed web pages, but it was an acceptable amount for a tablet this cheap. The latest optimization for the Fire tablet is an improved Alexa experience, as you can now activate the digital assistant just by saying its wake word (options for that word include Alexa, Echo and Computer). During my testing, I found that this feature works well, recognizing commands to provide information about the weather and the previous night’s Yankees game, even in our chatty office. Audio When listening to Twista’s “Overnight Celebrity” on the Fire 7, I noticed that the tablet produced only enough volume to fill one of our smaller conference rooms. Even then, the track’s violins sounded way too sharp, the song’s bass was practically nonexistent, and Twista’s voice came out hollow. If you want a better sound experience, you’ll want to invest in a good pair of noise-cancelling headphones. Performance The Fire 7’s expectedly underwhelming performance is due to the slate’s no-name 1.3-GHz quad-core processor and 1GB of memory. If you don’t know how little torque you get at this price, it’s easy to explain. I saw the tablet slow down and become sluggish with only six tabs open in the Silk web browser. However, the Fire 7 is a bit faster than the Walmart Onn (which sports a similar 1.3-GHz chip, but with 2GB of RAM), as I noticed when I rotated both tablets’ screens. I was most disappointed by the Onn when it took 2.5 seconds to switch from portrait orientation to landscape, a relatively unimpressive feat that the Fire 7 completes in 1.6 seconds, a 36% shorter time. The Fire 7’s score of 1,922 on the Geekbench 4 performance test might be low compared to the 4,887 tablet average, but it’s significantly higher than the Walmart Onn’s 1,415. The Fire 7 Kids (which has the same processor and memory as the Fire 7) scored a similar 1,881. MORE: Kids Tablets to Buy (or Avoid) Battery Life The slate lasted 6 hours and 16 minutes when touch-free Alexa was enabled. Both times are far shorter than the 9:13 category average, but the Walmart Onn (5:29) lasted even less time. The Fire 7 Kids posted a similar time of 6:57 with Alexa disabled, though its Alexa enabled time of 6:45 showed a much smaller drop-off. Cameras This isn’t disappointing or unexpected, though, as most webcams, even in laptops that cost 10 times as much, offer similar unimpressive quality. Bottom line Credit: Laptop Mag
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