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Amazon’s entry-level Fire tablet is getting a spec bump for the first time since 2019. The new Amazon Fire 7 (2022) is still a budget tablet with a 7 inch IPS LCD display, but it has twice as much RAM as the previous-gen model, a processor that Amazon says is 30% faster, and up to 40% more battery life.
The Amazon Fire 7 (2022) also has a USB Type-C port, making it the last member of the Amazon Fire lineup to get that feature. But the upgrades come at a slight cost – Amazon has raised the starting price of the Fire 7. It’s up for pre-order now for $60 and up, which is $10 more than the previous-gen model.
The new Fire 7 tablet has a quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 processor, 2GB of RAM, and either 16GB or 32GB of built-in storage. This year’s model supports microSD cards up to 1TB for additional storage, which is twice as much removable storage as the previous-gen model supported. The new tablet should also provide up to 10 hours of battery life.
But this is still very much a budget tablet. The display resolution is still just 1024 x 600 pixels. It takes 4 hours to charge the tablet using a 5W USB-C charger, and the tablet has just a single mono speaker.
Here’s how the 2022 model stacks up against the 2019 version:
| Fire Tablet 7 (2022) | Fire Tablet 7 (2019) | |
| Display | 7 inch, 1024 x 600 | 7 inch, 1024 x 600 |
| Storage | 16GB or 32GB + microSD (up to 1TB) | 16GB or 32GB + microSD (up to 512GB) |
| RAM | 2GB | 1GB |
| CPU | MediaTek MT8168V 4 x ARM Cortex-A53 @ 2 GHz | MediaTek MT8163V/B 4 x ARM Cortex-A53 @ 1.3 GHz |
| GPU | Mali-G52 3EE MC1 | Mali-T720 MP2 |
| Battery | Up to 10 hours | Up to 7 hours |
| Ports | USB 2.0 Type-C 3.5mm audio | micro USB 2.0 3.5mm audio |
| Charging time | 4 hours | 4 hours |
| Speakers | mono | mono |
| WiFi | WiFi 5 | WiFi 4 |
| Bluetooth | 5.0 | 4.1 |
| Cameras | 2MP front & rear | 2MP front & rear |
| Latest OS version | Fire OS 8 | Fire OS 7 |
| Dimensions | 180.7 x 117.6 x 9.7mm | 192 115 x 9.6mm |
| Weight | 282 grams | 286 grams |
| Starting price (MSRP) | $60 | $50 |
Like all Amazon tablets, the Fire 7 ships with Fire OS, which is a fork of Google’s Android operating system that comes with Amazon’s launcher, user interface, and app store pre-installed, among other things. But since the specs for the new model are quite similar to other recent Fire tablets, I highly suspect that the tablet will be at least somewhat hackable – it’s typically pretty easy to install the Google Play Store, among other things.
The new Fire 7 will be the first Amazon tablet to ship with the Android 11-based Fire OS 8 though, so it’s possible that there could be some changes that may make it a little less hackable than usual. Most older models are currently running the Android 9-based Fire OS 7.
Amazon is also launching an updated Fire 7 Kids tablet that’s based on the new Fire 7 (2022). The specs are the same, but the Kids edition model comes with a rubber bumper case, a 2-year worry-free guarantee (Amazon will replace a damaged unit, no questions-asked), and a 1 year subscription to Amazon Kids+.
Amazon Fire Tablet, the greatest electronic babysitter of all time.