This 7-inch slate will set you back just £49.99 – yes, really – and while your wallet will breathe a sigh of relief, your tech-loving mind won’t be getting wound up by the tablet’s shortcomings. On first use, there really aren’t that many.
Yes, there’s no escaping that this is a no-frills affair, but for £50 what do you expect, really? Slightly portly at 10.6mm thick and 313g in weight, the new Amazon Fire tablet is nonetheless a comfortable device to hold.
Affordable tablets that pair a wallet-friendly price tag with anything but an abysmal array of specs and a disappointing user experience are still something of a novelty. Enter though, the new Amazon Fire tablet.
Its weight is well balanced across its 7-inch form, and its matt finish gives a reassuring amount of grip. It would be nice if the screen wasn’t swallowed up by some oversized bezels, but that bare-bones price tag makes it hard to grumble at this too much.
Aside from the chunky frame giving the screen a slightly recessed look, the Fire’s 7-inch, 1024 x 600 pixel IPS panel provides pleasingly detailed results. Given that image quality is usually the first thing on the chopping block when the prices come tumbling, this makes for a nice surprise.
Offering image quality equal to devices two or three times its price, the Fire’s modest 171PPI resolution offers decent visuals by any standard, and outstanding results for the cost. There is some notable pixellation to text, making reading a little tricky, but image-viewing and movie-watching is perfectly acceptable for casual use.
