WEBVTT

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welcome my friends to the first installment of a new series called why

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the advertiser friendly content are you buying this

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where we look at the number one best-selling tech product in a given

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category and try to figure out what the heck and fuss is about let's start with

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the top selling tablet on amazon.com the

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fire 7 is priced at a wait

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really only 40 dollars good god

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okay well that's probably at least part of the answer but cheap does not equal

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good value so let's see just why those

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at least 32 000 people are so freaking pleased with

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this thing

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that's quite big looking for an affordable and reliable

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vpn service private internet access encrypts your internet traffic and uses

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a safe protected ip subscribe today at

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the link below so let's take a moment to

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appreciate how ludicrous it is that amazon sells these for a mere forty

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dollars regardless of the exact spec this is a

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complex device that no one person could

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hope to make in the one to four hours

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that it would take to earn one it is a truly amazing time to be alive there is

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a reason that it's cheap though spec wise the seventh generation fire seven

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from 2017 is pretty comparable to a

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nexus 7 tablet from 2012

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but that doesn't mean that it lacks modern features outright for starters

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it's got amazon's alexa assistant built

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in which makes it a portable touch and voice remote for your smart home and

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that's actually about it so why the best seller spot

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well the main appeal of any tablet is the size and while this one screen is

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only a little over an inch bigger than

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some flagship phones these days it still makes a big difference

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based on the reviews most people are buying one of these for casual web

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browsing ebook reading and movie watching

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and if you view the bargain price tag as

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a key feature frankly it is what i would describe as

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suitably adequate for those use cases

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now if you're a seasoned technophile like me with strong opinions about

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electronic specs you'll probably hate it

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at least on first glance i mean you'll be watching videos in

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standard definition rather than even 720p hd

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the speaker is probably worse than your phone and it is singular speaker not

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stereo and even reading on the thing gets fatiguing after a while because it has

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the same number of pixels as an iphone 4s

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but those pixels are spread over twice the area which makes for some blurry

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letters however let's say that you want an interneting

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machine on your next trip but you don't want to bring along one of your more

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premium devices or let's say that you want a you know cheap

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but surprisingly rugged tablet for the kids

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or the cat the fire seven is great for that and you

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can even order a kid proof case to go with it it's even cheap enough to give

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as a gift to relatives who still have cabinets full of vhs tapes or i mean

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heck you could even buy several of them for some much-needed peace and quiet on

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a long car ride

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shut up both of this is unbearable dude

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hey okay no we do still have some gripes

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first you need to be prepared to shell out some extra cashola for a decent

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microsd card because eight gigs or even

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the 16 gig version will fill up pretty darn quickly from apps alone never mind

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movies second speed

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isn't exactly the fire 7 strong point it performs

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exactly like you'd expect from something with one quarter of the RAM of most

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modern phones and a processor that was designed primarily for wearables

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third while it does have both rear and front

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mounted cameras um they probably should have included a

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peeler in the box for them because quality wise

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it's a total potato show i mean 0.3 megapixels

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what is 0.3 megapixels should we even be measuring that in megapixels or

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kilopixels now available with 300 kilopixels

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even this bottom of the barrel hardware though doesn't fully explain why this

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thing is so cheap for that we need to look at the software

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unlike apple amazon isn't a hardware

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company at its core so everything about this device including the

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non-googlified version of Android that it's running is about driving customers

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back to other amazon services that's why

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your fire 7 is loaded with apps like prime video prime photos and prime music

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that's why you get notifications related to your amazon orders and that's why by

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default anyway you are forced to download any additional apps from the

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amazon app store instead of the google

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play store giving amazon the 30

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commission on app sales instead of google

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that is how they can afford to sell this thing for so cheap

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not only are they using objectively cheap internals i mean there are a lot

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of reviews complaining about fire sevens that stopped charging or

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broke altogether shortly after the warranty expired but this ecosystem

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control is such a powerful motivator that amazon actually subsidizes every

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tablet they sell then pushes the price down another 15

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dollars with the with special offers version that puts

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ads on your lock screen so

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should you become one of the tens maybe

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even hundreds of thousands of people who own one or several fire seven tablets

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it's not amazing our first unit was actually inexplicably

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missing the a assistant for

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some reason with amazon's response being well i don't know i guess trade it in

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for another one but if you want a basic no frills or like

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you know utility tablet for the coffee table

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and you don't have an extra 20 spot burning a hole in your pocket for the

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larger higher capacity fire hd8

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it really is a good value freshbooks is the small business

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go check it out they offer a 30 day free trial over at freshbooks.com

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tech tips just enter Linus tech tips in the how you've heard about us section

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we're going to have all that linked below so thanks for watching guys if you

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disliked this video you can hit that button but if you liked it hit like get

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subscribed or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description

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also down there is our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our

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community forum which you should totally join

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i wonder how they named this thing do you think the product group just got

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together and they were like yeah you know we're gonna make like a

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tablet like yeah it's gonna be fire then we're like oh wow

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fire tablet