Why is EVERYONE Buying this Tablet?? - Amazon Fire 7
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
1,311 words · ~6 min read
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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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just a couple of clicks and get paid up to four days faster you can see when a
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client has seen your invoice to put an end to the guessing games once and for
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all and they've got fully featured apps for iOS and Android so you can take
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expense tracking and hour management with you on the go everywhere you go so
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go check it out they offer a 30 day free trial over at freshbooks.com
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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