Features:

  • Beautiful 7" IPS display and 1.3 GHz quad-core processor. Available in four colors.
  • Now with the Alexa cloud-based voice service - just press and ask
  • Enjoy millions of movies, TV shows, songs, Kindle e-books, apps and games
  • 8 or 16 GB of internal storage and a microSD slot for up to 200 GB of expandable storage
  • Prime members get unlimited access to a huge selection of songs, books, videos and more
  • Up to 7 hours of battery life
Blown away by this tablet

Wow. I'm really impressed with this tablet! I'm an Apple fan boy and have never touched an Android or Android-based device before, but I bought the Fire because I use a lot of Amazon services and just wanted a new gadget to play with. If you want a budget, cost-effective tablet, this is for you. If you want to compare this to an iPad, you'd probably be disappointed -- the screen quality is lower and the apps respond more slowly than on an iPad. PROS: -- Price -- I see a lot of generic, off-brand tablets advertised at this price that have specs that are inferior to this. -- Build quality -- nothing seems cheap or flimsy here. I haven't dropped it (yet), but I'd expect it to hold up well if I did. -- Amazon integration -- if you use Amazon services (Kindle books, music, Prime Video, etc.) then this is perfect for you because the links are built into the operating system -- Expandable storage -- one thing that Apple products are missing. 8GB will fill up fast, but you can cheaply and easily add more with a microSD -- Size -- if you want something for reading books or to use while traveling, this is nice. The form factor is easier to use with one hand versus an iPad mini -- Everything you'd expect in a tablet -- for the price, I thought that maybe corners would be cut or major features would be missing but that isn't the case. This has front and back cameras, decent speakers and Bluetooth. CONS: -- Honestly, when you consider that this costs just $50, I can't think of any reason NOT to buy this tablet. If you compare to an iPad, you'll probably see lots of places where the Fire is inferior. For example, the battery life isn't as good as my iPad mini, and the Fire display won't impress you if you're used to an iPad but it is perfectly good at this price point. The camera is usable but not great. Apps respond a bit slower than on my iPad, and the touch-screen isn't as precise. However, you'd really never notice any of those things if you don't regularly use a higher-priced tablet like an iPad. -- If you don't want to be locked into the Amazon ecosystem, this may not be for you. Although the OS is Andriod-based, you can't customize this as much as you can with a pure Android system. That isn't a problem for me because I do use Amazon services quite a bit. I was a little concerned that the "special offers" would be annoying, but they aren't a big deal at all. They only display on the lock screen and aren't intrusive. No big deal. Overall, I highly recommend this. If you need a budget tablet or if you're a first time tablet user, this would work very well for you. If you've already got an iPad and you want a second/backup tablet to use at work or for travel (which is how I'm using this) or as a dedicated Kindle device (which is how I thought I'd use this until I realized it can do much more), then you can't go wrong with this. The only reason not to buy it is if you're planning to use this as your main device and you want a high performance tablet like an iPad -- in that case, buy an iPad.

I had to switch to Mozilla Firefox browser for Android

I had to switch to Mozilla Firefox browser for Android because Silk browser was painfully slow. Might have been because of the wireless router settings, but I can't easily change those as I'm using Comcast router. Switching was easy. Pull down top of screen to access settings, security, and turn on Apps from unknown sources. Then go to this link to download and install Firefox: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mobile/releases/latest/android-api-11/en-US/ Without decent web browsing, I would have sent this back, but Firefox is a great browser and very fast. This device links to and lets you maximize your prime account features. It's a decent reader, I prefer my paper white, and prime video and music apps are wonderful

This is a steal for $50 as long as you aren;t expecting a "Premium" experience.

I pre-ordered this for my wife mostly to use as a Kindle E-reader as I figured the tablet would be slow and the display would be less than impressive. I was wrong. What a bargain this little beauty is! This model cost $49.00 but it comes with ad's displayed on the lock screen when your tablet is dormant. Once your screen times out, they disappear. You can pay $15.00 up front to get an ad free version so I assumed to unlock the tablet I'd have to spend 15 to 30 seconds looking at an ad for Amazon Prime, or a product from the daily specials section of Amazon.com I abstained from paying for Ad removal and was pleasantly surprised to find that the ads are only on the lock screen and that as soon as I unlock the tablet they disappear immediately. Here are my pros and cons thus far. PRO: Perfect size for Ebooks, and web surfing to alleviate strain on the eyes from my 5" phone display nice sturdy casing that gives it a nice heft but still weighs in as one of the lighter tablets on the market Child Accounts- Amazon allows you to set up this tablet with age restricted access for kids making this a low cost piece of tech that is perfect for school kids and allows mom and dad to ration the amount of time lil Johnny can play Clash of Clans and how much he can hit the ol' Visa card for. Battery life thus far; wife was on it for about 5 hours last night and battery was at about 46% Kindle Integration -this goes without saying but having my ebooks and audible books synced to the tablet is awesome and my Kindle books look great Price - it's a $50.00 tablet that looks and performs as well as ipad mini gen1 CON: Screen resolution - if you're looking for a premium screen res on par with your latest smart phone or HD tablet look elsewhere. I'd say the resolution is on par with an Iphone 3G or the original Kindle Fire gen 1 Web browser The built in "Silk" web browser isn't very nice and the interface is reminiscent of IE on mobile devices. I searched the APP store for Google Chrome or fire fox but apparently those aren't available. Camera This has a camera in the strictest sense but it's 2MP camera is slow to load and it's nowhere near on par with the 10MP most mobile devices are boasting these days The weak ass speaker OK. So I wasn't expecting a Bose sound out of this thing but the on board speaker is just not very good. Poor sound quality, and weak. My wife was attempting to listen to our Amazon Music library the other night and was underwhelmed with the quality. I haven't attempted this yet, but I'll be paring this to our SONOS bar or my Bluetooth headphones for music or ebooks. SO there you have it. Despite some of the flaws in the design this is just a fantastic deal for $50.00. SO much so that I ordered a second one for myself and plan on purchasing a 6 pack as Holiday Presents next month for my nieces and nephews. If you are new to tech and want to familiarize yourself without spending a heft sum to get into the game, or if you're looking for a durable yet inexpensive piece of tech for your kids, or if you LOVE e-books then this is the unit for you.

I didn't think I could go wrong with this $50 tablet, and I was right!

This isn't a very good $200 tablet. It's a better $100 tablet, but maybe not the best one out there. But it isn't a $200, nor even a $100, tablet. It's a $50 tablet!!! (Actually, when I pre-ordered this, if you had a need for 6 of these, they were only $41.66 each with their buy 5/get 1 free special, which seems to have discontinued due to the tablet's popularity). So how is this $50 tablet? In a word, awesome! I couldn't be happier with it. My wife got a Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10.5 for Christmas. She loves it. When I told her I was ordering this $50 Fire tablet, she thought I was nuts! But I figured how could I go wrong for $50? I had so many ideas for it, I figured there was almost no downside. And I was right, at least so far. For example, leave it by the TV/home theater for a dedicated device to check IMDB, email, weather, etc. while you're watching TV. Leave your smaller phone for phone calls (shudder!). Set it up in the kitchen for recipes, shopping list, etc. Use it for home security. At $50, you can afford to have several of these around the house for convenience or dedicated/semi-dedicated applications. As for spending $15 more to get the Fire without ads, DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY! Seriously. If someone asked me if the ads annoy me, my answer would be "what ads?" There is one ad on the screen when you push the power button. Then you swipe the unlock icon to use the tablet, and the ad goes away. That's it. You won't see another ad until the next time you turn on the tablet and swipe to unlock. There's going to be something on the screen when you power a device up; why not have a throwaway ad that saves you $15? Really, it isn't at all annoying. It's not like they're interrupting you every few minutes for a commercial like TV does. By all means, DO NOT spend $15 more to get the Fire without ads. If you find that these drive you nuts, or you have enough money to light cigars with $100 bills, then you can upgrade later to get rid of the ads, but I doubt seriously you'll find them at all annoying. You can't access the Google Play Store from this. That's a downside. But again, it's only $50. Many apps I like, such as IMDB, Wikipedia, and Netflix, are available on the Amazon App Store (for free, just like at Google). YouTube is not available, I guess because it's too much of a direct competitor to Amazon Instant Video? Dunno. But you can download any of several YouTube wannabe apps that seem to work just fine. Just go to App Store and search for YouTube. You'll see what I mean. They work, so no problem. I could whine about screen size, screen resolution, wide bezels, etc. But it's a $50 tablet! If you want a snazzier tablet, go buy one. But for the price of a really slick tablet, I can have several of these scattered about the house and not cry if I drop and break one. I don't plan to take this all over the place with me or I'd probably have spent more on a better tablet and would also buy a case. But at $50/pop, this is a throwaway if I break it. Save the $15 to get rid of the ads, $15-$25 for a case, $18 on the protection plan. You'll double the price doing all that. Buy a second one instead! Yeah, it took me several hours to download apps, configure my email, try all sorts of combinations on my wi-fi password until I finally remembered what it was LOL. But it was fun, well sort of. Now it's set up the way I like it and I'm not regretting the purchase one bit. I can watch Netflix videos on it. Do I want to do that a lot? No. But I don't get why people want to do that a lot anyway. I have a 60" plasma TV and a killer 7.2 sound system in my family room, along with a comfy reclining sofa. I get it if I'm sitting in the service department of the car dealer waiting for my oil change, but for any serious movie/TV viewing, I don't care if it's an $800 tablet, it's not going to hold a candle to my home theater. But it's functional. I've already searched for something to watch on Netflix and it was a satisfactory experience. Better than reading a 5-year-old National Geographic. Well.... maybe that's debatable! So my conclusion is that it's hard to see how you can go wrong buying this if you have ANY use for it. If you already have way better tablets, and several of them, maybe there's no reason to buy it, but then there'd be no reason for you to have read this far in my review. Thumbs up, Amazon. Good job!

Great tablet for Text-to-Speech Fans

Odd as it might sound, VoiceView is one of my favorite features for the newer Kindle Fires. Since VoiceView hasn't been mentioned much in the various reviews, I thought I'd focus on that: First of all, I like to write (Science Fiction), but if you write a lot, proof reading the material can be difficult. Text-to-speech (aka VoiceView) is a terrific proof-reading tool-- especially with the very natural sounding voices that it provides (via IVONA's award-winning natural language text-to-speech voices). I tend to like hearing my stories read with a woman's voice, e.g., Salli (USA), and sometimes with a British woman's voice, e.g., Amy (GBR). If you do a lot of writing and haven't tried proofing it that way, give it a try; it's amazing the mistakes you can find that you miss any other way. Second: Just some tips. Rather than having everything in one place, like you'd want, the controls are a little bit spread around. If you just want VoiceView to read books aloud, don't turn on TTS in accessibility-- That reads everything aloud-- menus, home screens, etc. Instead, go into settings->keyboard & language->text-to-speech. There you can set the default voice, and download additional ones that you might want to switch between (such as British, etc.). Within the book, it you tap on it to bring up the top and bottom toolbars, the bottom one allows you to control reading speed and play or pause. (Also within the top toolbar->menu control->additional settings, make sure "Text-to-speech" is turned on). Third, I wanted to point out one shortcoming I've noticed with the VoiceView feature: It doesn't provide much granularity in the options for reading speed. You can have it read at 0.7x, 1x, 1.5x, 2x, 3x, and 4x. Most other TTS systems allow much more granularity. When you're proofing your own material, sometimes 1.5x can be too slow and 2x, too fast. This seems like an odd limitation for an otherwise superior system. Walt Christmas

We Deserve This

I am a graphic designer. I hate taglines. I hate writing them. Because more often than not they're misleading, corny and outright lies. Amazon's $50 tablet tagline "A whole new standard"....is actually true. I bought this tablet as a device on the cheap for a cousin, the thought was a quad core processor (which processor we still don't know) 1gb of RAM and a much lighter Fire OS skin over android couldn't be too bad, especially for the price. Plus after the Fire Phone lessons have been learned and another well advertised flop by a big name like Amazon...they wouldn't let it happen right? They didn't. No lag under regular use, mobile games run swimmingly, its my first time using the Amazon app store and you can actually find most of what you want in 2015. Plus as tech person who prefers everything I ave with me and not the cloud it as expandable storage. In a year where phones are still coming out with 16gb non expandable storage and most don't go beyond 32gb all together,the $50 tablet goes to 128gb. The screen is decent, but has a certain clarity, and the OS feels like a better experience than Samsung's Touchwiz, so its a skin that gets a pass from a stock user. For the tablet needs it does everything you didn't know you deserved for $50. And I'll be buying one for myself. Having a 10" tablet for reading graphic novels and comics as well as media and heavy use, and a 5" smartphone for the day to day everything else its difficult to justify a 7" tablet for better book and manga reading and a slightly lighter daily load by leaving the larger tablet at home. Don't. at $50 you don't have to justify a thing. Enjoy it. Embrace it. Its that little bit that take life from a 9.8 to a 10.

It's not amazon's fault

If the tablet is smarter than you are. People are giving this tablet 1-2 star reviews, everything from comparing it to an iPad to not being able to connect to their home wireless or they can't print or change their background. It's not Amazon's job to educate you. Bottom line, do your homework, read the product description/ tech specs. If you didn't do that or didn't understand how to do that you shouldn't be writing a review. For the price it's a great entry-level tablet. No, it's not a substitute for an iPad or a gaming laptop. It's great for light gaming , E reading, and media streaming. And stop complaining about missing the black Friday special. I had this device on my wishlist for a month purposely waiting for the black Friday sales before I bought it. Don't give the PRODUCT a one star review because you missed the boat. Again not Amazon 's problem.

The tablet is very nice, it's beautiful

First of all, I've had problems with same-day delivery in Maryland. So if you live around and you're going to buy it, choose either amazon prime now or two-day delivery. The tablet is very nice, it's beautiful. Some pictures might make you think its too thick: it's not. I was expecting for a tablet that would freeze a lot, but it's not like that. It's slow for some stuff, yes (for downloading apps, updating and changing the settings), but it works perfectly and smoothly once you're in the app (browser, facebook, twitter, pinterest). The offers do not bother as much as I expected. It also has a micro sd slot, which is good (the HD6 does not). Battery didn't disappoint me up to now (it's not a very good one, but i was expecting something worse). I like the OS design, the packaging isn't too big or too small, comes with wall charger and USB cable. Don't count on the cameras, you better not use them unless you are really desperate. Screen quality isn't amazing, but it's not bad (unless you want to take a picture of a picture on your tablet you shouldn't notice much), however amazon wallpapers might bother you at first, their resolution is too high for the screen. Touch is very responsive, it's not a burden to type on this tablet (i've had some that i'd rather go to the computer) or to change screens. If you buy it on amazon prime, you can get it for $29 like I did (10 off on amazon site + 10 off first order on amazon prime now), so yes, I actually bought it for $30 bucks and even if I had paid more I feel like it'd still be worth it.

Owning this is so practical I almost feel hipster

If you actually want an iPad mini, you should get that instead. This however, is all you need if you want a backup to your laptop and phone to use for Netflix, light internet searches, casual games to kill time, Amazon Prime videos, and Kindle books. It's no powerhouse, but it's charmingly functional in the same way that your iPhone 4S kept going strong for years until you broke down and got a 6S, or maybe are still using it while waiting for the 7. The first day I got it, I dropped it by accident and the plastic case split a centimeter, when I finally noticed it I snapped it back together with no signs of lasting damage. The back of the case has some soft spots where the plastic flexes. But I still won't get a case because I don't need one. The front facing camera is hilariously bad by modern standards, but works for Skype and looks as if you're in space teleconferencing with your family on earth. The back facing camera is better but still grainy. It's not really for taking pictures, probably only video chats too. Overall, if you're looking to maximize your dollar value, this is an insane value for a small tablet. On the other hand if you need a tablet as your main device, look elsewhere.

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