I purchased two of the Amazon Fire Tablets this year, one for me and one for my almost 4 year old daughter. My expectations were low due to the low price point, but I decided to give it a try and see what happens. We have had our tablets for about a month now and I can happily say they are amazing, especially for the price point. While they are not top speed, top dollar tablets, they are perfect for all of our needs.
Amazon Fire Price Point
The Fire Tablet regularly retails for $49.99 on Amazon, but I purchased it on sale for $33.00. I took advantage of the Cyber Monday sale, but even at full retail price this tablet is rather inexpensive.
Amazon Fire Features
For an inexpensive tablet, this little guy is pretty packed with features. One of the things that initially caught my eye is the fact that you can choose from a few different colors. I got both of mine in magenta, but you can get black, orange or blue if you prefer for no extra cost.
It is a 7 inch tablet, a pretty standard size. The Fire isn’t going to be your giant Ipad or Surface, but I rather like the size as it easily fits into my purse or diaper bag when I want to take it with me.
It connects WiFi but it only has 8 GB of memory. While the internal memory of the device is low and will not be able to store very much at all, one of my favorite features of this tablet is that it has expandable memory. I was able to put a memory card into mine and my daughter’s and we haven’t had a storage issue since! Many of the other inexpensive tablet options I looked at did not offer expandable memory, and for me that is a deal breaker.
It has a 1.3 GHz quad-core processor. I am not totally sure exactly what that means, it might make sense to you but not to me. My techie husband tried to explain it, but it went over my head. What I do know is that the tablet is responsive, even if it does take a second or two to respond. It is not the fastest tablet on the market, but it isn’t running at a turtle’s pace either.
This little guy has a pretty good battery life too. Amazon advertises it as having a 7 hour battery life, and that seems about right give or take. My daughter played with it all day one day and it did not die until about 6:00 pm. Granted she has a habit of letting it keep playing when she walks away from it. I don’t tend to watch videos much on mine, as I primarily use it as an E-reader but my battery has lasted days between charges so far.
The only strange part about this tablet is that the lock screen runs advertisements. There is a way to get rid of them, but it involves paying and I am not about that life. They really aren’t that annoying, you just swipe them away to unlock the device, I hardly even notice them anymore.
As I mentioned earlier, I primarily use mine for reading. The Kindle store is will let you download a sample of a book to read prior to purchasing it. I ended up with a bunch of samples to see what book I wanted to delve into next. Everything is connected to your Amazon account, so any purchases will go directly through the card you have set up . You can download almost all of the Apps that you can on Android based tablets. I put Hulu and Netflix on mine as well.
Amazon Fire For the Kids
While Amazon does offer a Fire Tablet Kids, I found it a little less expensive to purchase this one and get a kids safe case separately. I purchased this case with handle 
Amazon Free Time
One of my favorite features for kids is the Amazon Free Time App. It is $2.99 a month but it is completely worth it! I really like that it gives me the option to create a kid profile that I can fully control. I set it up based on the age of my child, and I can customize it any way I want. Under my profile I am able to set time limits and turn internet browsing on and off. I have Willow’s set up with content that is age appropriate, and educational. There are kids games, videos, and books to keep any kid occupied for hours. Not that I would recommend letting them play for hours, except maybe during a road trip.
All in all I am very pleased with this little Amazon Fire. It is definitely one of the best I have seen at this low of a price point. It is great for someone who doesn’t really do too much on their tablet (like me). Great for reading and browsing Amazon and playing around on Facebook. It is also wonderful for kids too with the Free Time App. I would recommend this to anyone in the market for a kids tablet or a simple tablet for self use.
[…] probably just get him his own. If you want to see a review of the tablet, you can check out my Amazon Fire Review. Seriously though, this is an awesome little tablet for the […]