Amazon is doing away with micro-USB on its updated Fire 7 tablets and finally bringing the charging standard of choice, USB-C, to its highly affordable option starting June 29 for $59.99.
Boosted —
Along with giving micro-USB the boot (seriously, don’t come back), Amazon says the new 7-inch Fire tablet has a new “quad-core processor,” and double the RAM to offer 30 percent faster performance overall. The tablet is also supposed to have 40 percent longer battery life, which Amazon equates to up to 10 hours of typical Fire Tablet activities like web browsing and watching video.
And that’s really the whole thing with this Fire Tablet. The performance improvements are welcome, but most Fire Tablets — at least the ones used in my home — act as cheap, color Kindles more so than powerful productivity devices. The performance just might not be used.
For those improvements, Amazon is bumping up the price of the Fire 7 from $49.99 to $59.99 and offering the device in black, denim, and rose colorways.
Kids Edition —
The new internals will also be available in the Fire 7 Kids, which is basically the same tablet, but wrapped in a chunky, rubber child-proof case with a built-in kickstand. The Kids Edition comes with one year of Amazon Kids+, the company’s child-focused content subscription service, and the new option to upgrade storage to 32GB.
Amazon’s increasing the price of the Fire 7 Kids from $99.99 to $109.99 and offering the child-friendly device in red, blue, and purple.
Amazon’s new Fire 7 tablets are available to pre-order today and should ship on June 29.
