Amazon Fire HD 7 Tablet (2014) Review
Performance Summary & Conclusion
Performance Summary: Amazon's Fire HD 7 performs well where it matters most, and that's in casual activities like surfing the web, listening to music, watching videos, and other common tasks that owners will ask of the device. In terms of benchmarks, the Fire HD 7 posted respectable scores in our run of browser-oriented tests like SunSpider and Browsermark, though it didn't fare very well when we turned our attention to gaming. That doesn't mean you can't play games on the Fire HD 7, though as we saw in 3DMark and GFXBench, there's a clear (and massive) performance gap between the Fire HD 7 and high-end slates like Apple's iPad Air 2 and NVIDIA's SHIELD tablet. There's also a pretty big price discrepancy.
What's a bit more difficult is where to draw the line when sacrificing features and performance for a lower price tag. The Fire HD 7 makes a number of compromises that go beyond the physical construction -- it only has 1GB of RAM, you're limited to downloading apps from Amazon's App Store for Android, the built-in cameras are underwhelming, there's no expandable storage or HDMI output, and the display resolution is only 1280x800.
At the same time, the Kindle Fire HD 7 excels at what it's meant to be, which is a content consumption device and a portal into Amazon's ecosystem. Tapping into the benefits of your Prime membership on the Fire HD 7 is really what it's all about, and it handles those tasks with aplomb. From watching movies to reading e-books, the Fire HD 7 is a handy device to have with you, whether it's around the home or traveling on vacation. And though it's not a barn burner in the benchmarks, the foundation is fast enough to handle a variety of tasks without any performance hiccups.
This brings us back to price. Starting at $139, the Fire HD 7 is one of the most affordable name-brand tablets out there. Just be sure you know what you're compromising before making the leap.

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