Fire 7 Kids Edition Tablet Review

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7-inch IPS Display, 16 GB (expandable by up to 256 GB)

DESIGN

The tablet is a nice size and weight for smaller hands and with the included lightweight Kid-Proof case, seems to magically reduce the weight of the tablet – it feels much lighter and nicely balanced. The tablet is black and looks and feels very robust with a scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass display, which has a wider black edge on the horizontal so your child can hold it without accidentally touching the touchscreen.

PERFORMANCE & USABILITY

With a quad-core processor and 1GB RAM (memory) the screen is clear and very responsive without any lag. The 7″ IPS display is a pleasure to read books, watch movies, and play games. And the use of a very clean font that is easy on the eye offers good usability to navigate around the tablet’s many great features. The addition of a swipe input keyboard ensures fast and efficient input on the Silk browser, email, or Amazon store. The battery capacity is also really good, it lasted over 28 hours on its first full charge, 2.4 hours to charge from flat via mains charger. The tablet connects to WiFi and Bluetooth devices in seconds and works flawlessly with various Bluetooth speakers and earphones I have.

Supported Profiles; AZDP, AVRCP, HID, SPP. The Dolby sound is pretty good.

KID-PROOF CASE

The included bump-proof blue case (also available in pink) is a lovely sky blue color and the extra padded design ensures the tablet bounces when dropped which protects it from bangs, bumps, and bruises. Superb design, not too bulky and has all of the necessary cut-outs for the Power Button, Volume Controls, Rear Camera, Speaker, Mic, 3.5mm Headphone Jack, and Charge Port. And for peace of mind, the Fire HD comes with a 2-year worry-free guarantee. It’s a seriously good device at a good price and the kids are absolutely loving it.

OUT OF THE BOX

The first thing you notice is the lovely presentation, the device is beautifully packaged. In the box is the Kindle Fire HD, USB Charge/Transfer Lead, Mains Socket, and User Guide. Just opening the box and the kids were more than excited, the whole experience was fun and the product just looks top notch. I have various tablets and kindles and yes I am now officially jealous of the kids’ Fire HD.

PROFILES

The default adult profile is setup out of the box and linked to your main Amazon account – this is a full Fire HD account with no limitations. In total, you can have 2 Adult profiles and 4 Child profiles. Child accounts are set-up and controlled by this main account. Child profiles have 2 options; Under 8 or Age 9 and over and the content is automatically matched for the age group selected. For kids, you select a name, password, age group and add a photo.

MENUS

• Adults Media Menu: Shop, Games, Apps, Books, Music, Videos, Newsstand, Audiobooks, Web, Photos, Docs
• Adults Main: Silk Browser, E-Mail, Help, Fire for Kids, Camera, Shop Amazon, Calendar, Firefly, Instant Video, Clock, Contacts
• Child (8 Under): Books, Videos, Apps, Camera, Characters (*no music)
• Kids (9 Over): Books, Videos, Apps, Camera (*no music)

*Amazon says they have received feedback on not having a Music menu within the Child Profiles and will respond accordingly. So we may see ‘Music’ added in a subsequent firmware update.

ADULT CONTROL

The tablet offers the ability to control what your child can view and it’s easy to set up educational goals and time limits, so they don’t overuse technology, yet get the benefits. For example, if your child will read a book for 15 minutes, they can watch a movie as a reward. With an option for Weekdays or Weekends with different options for each. You can also put a block on browser usage, payments, and social media so they don’t hit your Amazon account with unnecessary purchases. This is set up as default and simple to turn on and off in Settings > Parental Controls. There is also an activity monitor allowing you to keep on top of what, when, and where your child goes and gets up to on the tablet. Notifications are key to this activity and can be accessed by swiping down from the top of the screen and are displayed on the Quick Actions Menu.

FIRE FOR KIDS UNLIMITED & PRIME

Included with the Fire 7 Kids Edition is a year of Fire for Kids Unlimited, which gives us unlimited access to tons of books, video, games, and apps. Lots of the kids’ favorite characters (mine too) are available including Angelina Ballerina, Dora the Explorer, Fireman Sam, Lego, Mr. Men, Harry Potter, Noddy, Pingu, Smurfs, The Penguins of Madagascar, Shaun the Sheep, Thomas & Friends, plus tons more. The titles are age-appropriate and match the Kid’s profiles so you don’t have to worry about approving every title. If you are a Prime member you have access to the full Amazon Instant Video catalog.

WATCHING VIDEOS OFFLINE

You can download select Prime videos & TV Shows for Adults and kids to watch offline (without WiFi). But only from the adult account. You have parental controls accessible from the Settings menu found in both the adult account and child accounts (secured with a password), look for “Add Content to Your Child’s Library” and here you can determine the content available on each Kids Profile. Unfortunately, videos downloaded from Prime or added yourself onto the device are not accessible in the Kids profiles.

CAMERA & PHOTOS

The Fire 7 tablet has a 2MP Rear Camera, VGA Front-Facing Camera & Child-Safe Camera App. The ‘Photos’ menu offers easy to use the camera and video controls and quite a few options including; take pictures, record video, switch between front and back cameras, view all images and sort by date taken or uploaded, slideshow, HDR (High Dynamic Range), Image Review, Panorama, Lenticular. Plus options to share, edit, print, image info, and upload to Cloud Drive (from where you can download to PC or Mac). When editing images you have a myriad of options to do all kinds of fun and creative things. Videos are recorded as MP4.

APPS

There are a few hundred thousand apps available at the time of writing and you can filter by category such as Free, Games, Kids, Magazines, Productivity, Sports, etc. To download the apps which is done from within the main adult account; From main screen > Shop > Apps … And to allow access to the app within each specific child profile you; Swipe Down from Top of Screen > Settings > Parental Controls > Manage ‘Your Child’s Profile > Manage Child’s Content > Check the Box on the App.

*At the time of writing (28/06/15), the iPlayer app is not compatible with this device.

I rip DVDs with Magic DVD Ripper (works for me) and I’ve played .avi, .mp4, and .wmv formats. When you copy them to the device add them to the ‘Movies’ folder and they will appear under the ‘Photos’ menu on the Fire 7, not the ‘Videos’ menu which is reserved for Amazon Instant Video. If you download the VLC app (or another video app) from the Amazon Appstore this is the best way to watch videos. Other ways may fail to play the videos.

FIREFLY

Helps you identify physical products and use barcodes, QR codes, and make purchases. Also, music and videos, think Shazam. Adult Account > FireFly > Select Music or Video which is currently playing to identify. Alternatively, point the camera at the product or barcode/QR code and it will find your product for sale. You can of course buy it on Amazon or add it to your Amazon Wish List. Bar codes are accurate, products not always if the product is not in the Amazon catalog.

ADD YOUR OWN CONTENT

Books, Docs, Music, and Videos, can be transferred from PC or Mac to your Fire 7 and will be stored on the device and will also be added to Amazon Cloud Drive. Music can also be imported to your Amazon Music library. Connect the Fire to your (PC) and the tablet will appear as “Fire” under ‘Computer’ or ‘This PC’ (Windows 8) and copy and paste your supported files into the appropriate folders as seen below. For (Mac) you’ll need to download the Android File Transfer App. Go to Kindle.com/support/downloads for the Mac app. Save the app to your desktop, open it and transfer files onto your Fire. Android File Transfer also shows as a Device under Finder.

STORAGE

16GB or higher If you plan on adding lots of videos and music to the tablet, I’d consider the larger hard drive option as 16GB of space ran out very fast for me.

VIDEOS

I rip DVDs with Magic DVD Ripper (works for me) and I’ve transferred and played .avi, .mp4, and .wmv formats on the Fire 7. When you copy them to the device add them to the ‘Movies’ folder and they will appear under the ‘Photos’ menu on the Fire 7, not the ‘Videos’ menu which is reserved for Amazon Instant Video. If you download the VLC app (or another video app) from the Amazon Appstore this is the best way to watch videos, accessible from the main adult screen. Other ways may fail to play the videos.

FIRE FOLDERS & SUPPORTED FORMATS

Audiobooks: AA, AAX
Books: AZW, (.azw3), Mobi (non-DRM), KF8
Documents: TXT, PDF, PRC DOC, DOCX, HTML5, CSS3
Music: MP3, Non-DRM AAC (.m4a), MIDI, PCM/WAVE, OGG, WAV, AC-3, E-AC-3,
AMR-NB, AMRWB
Pictures: JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP
Movies: MP4, 3GP, VP8 (.webm), M4V, MKV

Note: Remember to switch from ‘Cloud’ to ‘Device’ on the top menu to see the content you have transferred from your PC or Mac to the Kindle.

We gave the Kindle Fire 7 Kids Edition Tablet.

Do you use a Fire tablet? What do you like/not like about them?  Please add the comments below!

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