Amazon Fire 7 Kids (2022) Review
Amazon's budget tablet gets a kid-friendly makeover
Verdict
Good value considering that you get a tablet, tough case, two-year worry free guarantee and a year’s subscription to Amazon Kids+, the Amazon Fire 7 Kids (2022) is a fun and engaging tablet for younger children. It’s extremely small, although that can be an advantage: this tablet is easier for a child to put in a bag and carry themselves. However, on balance, the slightly more expensive Amazon Fire 8 Kids tablet is probably a better compromise between screen size and price.
Pros
- Easy to carry
- Excellent warranty
- Brilliant parental controls
Cons
- 8-inch version better value
- Slow processor
Availability
- UKRRP: £119.99
- USARRP: $119.99
- EuropeRRP: €119.99
Key Features
- 7-inch screenIt’s about as small a screen as you can get on a tablet, but it does make this model easier for children to carry.
- 10-hours of battery lifeRunning videos and games, the tablet should last for around 10 hours.
- Front and rear camerasThere are 2-megapixel cameras on this tablet – enough for fun but that’s about it.
Introduction
The baby of Amazon’s tablet line up, the Fire 7 Kids (2022) is designed for younger children, shipping with a tough case and a brilliant worry-free guarantee.
It brings the best of Amazon’s ecosystem to a smaller, more manageable tablet at a relatively low price, but the slightly larger Fire 8 Kids is probably a better bet for most people.
Design
- Neat protective case with stand and carry handle
- Very small
- Light
Given the size of phones, the Amazon Fire 7 Kids (2022) looks very small. Holding it in my adult hands, it looks almost too small by modern standards. Yet, this isn’t a tablet aimed at adults and, for some kids, this is the right size.
I found that my daughter loved the Amazon Fire 10 Kids tablet, with its large screen, but only for around the house or when we went in the car. If she had to carry it on a train, then the larger screen size put her off and she struggled to put it in her bag.
This smaller tablet was immediately more appealing to her: it fits in her bag, leaving plenty of room for other things, and it only weighs 429g, so it’s easy for her to carry around.
The weight is almost double that of the actual plain Fire 7 tablet, and that’s because there’s the big bumper case here. With its funky colours (blue, purple and red versions are available), the tablet looks appealing, but it’s also incredibly well protected from drops and bangs.
Should the tablet get broken, it has an excellent 2-year worry-free guarantee: Amazon will swap the tablet out no questions asked, no matter how it was broken. A guarantee runs across Amazon’s kids’ products, including the Amazon Echo Dot Kids. If you’ve got slightly clumsy kids, this guarantee is worth the extra cash over the standard edition tablet alone.
It’s a nicely-designed case from a practical point of view, too: there’s a stand that folds down for easy table use, and the stand folds all the way out to act as a handle. As a parent who’s watched nervously as his kids have carried tech around before, a handle is comforting and reassuring.
Inside the case is a standard Fire 7 tablet. It’s a little plasticky, but its small size means no flex in the case, even when pressing hard on the back.
Correct and present are all of the standard controls: power button and volume keys. Pop the tablet out of its case, and there’s access to the MicroSD card slot for upgrading the onboard storage.
Turn the tablet on and it springs into life. Its stereo speakers are a little on the tinny sound but loud enough for kids to use, and I had no complaint from my children; the Fire 10 Kids sounds better as there’s more room inside the case for larger speakers.
Screen
- Bright enough for anything bar sunlight
- Low resolution, but the small screen looks sharp
- Decent colours
By today’s standards, the screen resolution of 1024 x 600 is a little low. Certainly, if you buy an iPad Mini, you’ll get a far higher resolution screen. It’s a matter of trade-offs, and what you get with the Amazon Fire 7 Kids (2022) is good enough for most kids.
With 171ppi, the screen is quite sharp for video and games, and even text is more than good enough. From a child’s perspective, they’re not going to look at this tablet and think it’s bad.
Colours are vibrant, although contrast could be better: blacks tend to verge on the grey. Although the screen coating is reflective, it’s not too bad: I could use this tablet in various locations without being confronted with a mirror of my face.
I measured the screen at 396 nits, which is quite bright. Certainly, the display is bright enough to use inside during the day or in the shade; this tablet isn’t bright enough to use in full sunlight, but few tablets or mobile devices are.
If there’s one complaint about the screen, particularly with children around, it’s that there’s no oleophobic coating. Make sure you’ve got plenty of screen cleaner to keep the Amazon Fire 7 Kids (2022) in its best condition.
Software and performance
- Excellent parental controls
- Different interfaces for different ages
- Basic processor
The best thing about Fire tablets from a parents’ point of view is the parental controls. It’s very easy to create kids’ profiles, and share them across multiple devices. In fact, if you’ve had an Amazon tablet before, you can just use the same profiles on the new one.
Via the parental dashboard, available online, you can control when kids can and can’t use a tablet, set time limits and even set goals, such as having to complete a set period of educational apps before games can be played.
There’s a year’s subscription to Kids+ included with the tablet, which normally costs £79 a year (£49 a year for Prime subscribers). This subscription gets you lots of apps, games, books and videos (available for download). Everything is categorised and given an age rating. I can leave my kids to browse and download apps and videos at will without worrying that they’ll find something dodgy.
Everything is powered by the Amazon App Store, which is limited compared to the Google Play Store. Top games, in particular, are often unavailable.
Apps downloaded on an adult profile can be added to a child’s one. I download Disney+ and Netflix and give my kids access, so they can download the shows they want to watch.
If you allow web browsing, you can properly lock it down and filter the internet, so kids can’t go onto harmful sites. In terms of giving kids freedom safely, there’s nothing better than Amazon’s ecosystem.
Fire tablets are known to fill up with content quickly, particularly if you have kids like mine: they tap loads of videos and apps to download all in one go. I’d say that the 32GB version is worth buying over the 16GB version, but install a MicroSD card if you have particularly demanding children.
Internally there’s a 2GHz quad-core ARM MT8168A processor and 2GB of RAM. It’s quite a basic combination, although for the types of content and games that kids will play, the tablet certainly felt fast enough. I’ve got older versions of this tablet, and they used to really struggle.
The Geekbench results of 158 in the single-core test and 498 in the multi-core test, shows how slow this tablet is. Last year’s Fire 10 does better.
There are 2MP cameras at the front and rear. Hardly cutting edge when it comes to photography, but the types of kids this tablet is aimed at will find these cameras fun at least.
I watched video for one hour and battery life dropped by 9%, after two hours it was 19% and after three it was 29%. That suggests that Amazon’s estimate of 10-hour battery is about right, give or take.
Using the tablet in earnest and letting my youngest go wild on it, a charge every two to three days was enough.
This model charges via USB-C, although Amazon only provides a standard 5Wcharger in the box. I recommend upgrading this to top up the battery faster.
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Should you buy it?
If you want a very small tablet that your kids will find easy to carry around, then this one is good value and has excellent parental controls.
It really is very small, and the Kids 8 edition is a little bigger for not much more money. That’s probably the better tablet for most families.
Final Thoughts
It may look incredibly tiny, but the Fire 7 Kids tablet is a great choice for some kids. My youngest, in particular, found this model much easier to move around and would often pick it up in preference to the Fire 10 that I also have.
While the standard Fire 7 Tablet can be bought for just £79.99 (32GB and without ads), the Kids edition costs £50 more. It’s money well spent: you get the tough case, the better guarantee and the year’s subscription to Amazon Kids+.
The real competition comes from the Fire HD 8 Kids, which is £20 more for the 32GB version. As well as a larger screen it has more resolution, too, at 1280 x 800. Overall, the Fire 8 Kids is a good compromise between the very small Fire 7 and the much more expensive Fire 10.
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FAQs
Both have the same physical tablet, but the Kids edition adds a year of Kids+, a bumper case and two-year worry-free guarantee.
No, it uses the Amazon app store.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
