Why You Can Trust CNET Amazon Fire 7 Kids Edition (2017) review: A tablet kids will outgrow quickly
The 7-inch version of Amazon's kids tablet has the great software and warranty features of the 8-inch version, but falls behind in speed, screen and sound.
- Author of the award-winning, NY Times-reviewed nonfiction book The Tetris Effect; Longtime consumer technology expert for CBS Mornings
Spoiler alert: If you can afford it, skip the Amazon Fire 7 Kids Edition, and get the Amazon Fire HD 8 Kids Edition instead. It's bigger, faster and better all around, and well worth the extra $30 or £30. For what it's worth, the same advice applies to the "adult" versions of the Fire 7 and Fire HD 8, too -- the hardware and price differentials are identical.
Amazon Fire 7 Kids Edition (2017)
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
Need a more detailed appraisal? OK, let's back up a bit.
The Amazon Fire 7, in either its standard version or the Kids Edition reviewed here, is sure to be tempting based on price alone. For between $50 to $100 (and as low as $35 when on sale, which it frequently is) or £50 to £100 in the UK (you can't get it in Australia), you get a basic slate-style tablet that can play videos from multiple services (including Amazon Prime ), read Kindle ebooks, handle your websurfing and social media tasks and even play some games.
The Fire 7 does a decent job at most of these tasks. But once you add in the premium required for the Kids Edition, which includes a padded case, two-year warranty and a one-year subscription to FreeTime Unlimited (a Netflix-like subscription service with kid-appropriate ebooks, videos and games), the better 8-inch Fire HD 8 starts to look like a smarter choice. Comparing the two, the differences include screen size and resolution, audio quality, onboard storage and RAM, with the Fire 7 inferior in each case.
Navigation and menus on the Fire 7 feel sluggish compared to the Fire HD 8, and apps load less quickly. Some apps stutter, although video playback and even most games worked well after they had a chance to start up. But kids may get frustrated waiting even a few extra seconds (I know I did). With more RAM, a better screen and other improvements, spending about $30 more on the superior 8-inch version feels like a smart bet. Yes, the Fire 7 is good for a dirt-cheap tablet, but it's still a dirt-cheap tablet.
Much of our review of the very similar Fire HD 8 Kids Edition is applicable here, especially when it comes to the Fire Kids Edition software and parental control features. For a deeper dive into the non-kid versions, read the our earlier reviews of the Fire HD 8's hardware and performance, as well as the more limited Fire 7.
A numbers game
The current Amazon Fire line, last updated in 2017, comes in 7-inch, 8-inch and 10-inch versions, with on-sale prices dropping as low as $35 for the (very) basic Fire 7. It's the tablet as impulse purchase, subsidized by the hope that you'll buy content -- books, videos and apps -- from Amazon and create a recurring revenue stream for the e-commerce giant.
Besides the standard models, there are also special Kids Edition versions of the Fire 7 and Fire HD 8. These kid-friendly models are physically identical to the regular versions, and the difference comes from included accessories, software and support. At first glance, it seems crazy to pay an extra $50 for a tablet that usually costs $50/$80 (for the Fire 7/Fire HD 8), but the math actually makes more sense than you might think.
The Fire HD 8 behind the Fire 7.
With the Kids Edition ($100 for the 7-inch, $130 for the 8-inch), you get a rubberized bumper case (I've had a similar one on my son's hand-me-down iPad 2 for years), which Amazon sells separately for $30, a two-year "no questions asked" replacement warranty, double the storage of the base model (8GB to 16GB in the 7-inch, 16GB to 32GB in the 8-inch), and a one-year subscription to FreeTime Unlimited. After one year, the service costs $2.99 a month for Amazon Prime members ($4.99 for non-members), which is about $35 per year. That all adds up to well more than the $50 premium for the Kids version over the standard tablet.
Keep in mind also that Amazon regularly puts these devices on sale. The Fire 7/Fire 7 Kids Edition can at times be as low as $35/$75 and the Fire HD 8/Fire HD 8 Kids Edition can be found for $55/$95 during Amazon sales. This chart lays out the basic price differences between the models.
Amazon Fire prices
| Fire 7 (8GB) | Fire 7 Kids Edition (16GB) | Fire HD 8 (16GB) | Fire HD 8 Kids Edition (32GB) | Fire HD 10 (32GB) | |
| US | $50 | $100 | $80 | $130 | $150 |
| US sale price (offered periodically) | $35 | $75 | $55 | $95 | $110 |
| UK | £50 | £100 | £80 | £130 | £150 |
The hidden charms of FreeTime
Of the extras included in the Kids Edition of the Fire tablets , the subscription to FreeTime Unlimited may seem the least useful, especially when compared to the padded case, extra storage and no-hassle replacement plan. It's actually Amazon's secret weapon, and having used the service extensively over the past couple of weeks, it's almost criminally low-profile for the value and flexibility it offers.
I'd previous heard about the service, which combines the actually free FreeTime features, including detailed scheduling and usage tools for parents to limit how and when kids use their tablet, with the subscription Unlimited part, which acts as an all-you-can-eat buffet of ebooks, apps and videos.
A child (or children, as you can set up multiple profiles at an extra cost) gets a custom interface, much different from the standard Android-like Fire interface. FreeTime has a blue background and a handful of large category icons. It's also landscape-only, although some apps and ebooks work in portrait mode while they're being used.
As is often the case with content browsing, actual discovery can be hit or miss. There's no clear master list of what specific content is included, or a real understanding of what highlights the app chooses to surface. That said, the offers are so broad and much of it is of high quality, that kids will enjoy just trying random new things.
My 6-year-old son has been using FreeTime Unlimited on his recently purchased Fire HD 8 for a few weeks now, and is a big fan, especially of the idea that he can pick and download his own games without getting me or his mother to sign off on every individual one.
A junior product tester with the 8-inch Kindle Fire.
When setting up FreeTime, you select the age range of media you want displayed, and that changes the level of books, videos and apps. I set Dash's range at up to 8 years old, just to make sure he was challenged by new things.
The video appears to be from Amazon Prime, so you're not getting anything new there, but the ebooks and apps add great value. Books are fairly well-formatted for the screen. Some work on either landscape or portrait mode, but others are restricted to one view or the other. There's no pinch-to-zoom to read text, which can get small, but double-tapping on text pops it up in a larger bubble. Read one blurb, then swipe left with one finger to automatically advance the text. I can't say it will encourage self-directed reading for every kid, but it worked on the one I know, largely because he could pick what to download by himself.
The apps are mostly games. Many are of the free or freemium variety (and no, kids can't make additional purchases on their own), but a good number are actually surprisingly premium. I was pleasantly surprised to find a large library of apps from Toca Boca, publisher of Toca Life, Toca Lab and other kid-friendly apps. Dash is a big fan of these, and I've previously purchased a few for around $3 each. One download like this per month covers the cost of the entire FreeTime Unlimited service once the included one-year subscription expires.
Getting in character
One interesting way to search for content is through a top menu icon labeled "characters." There, kids can scroll through icons that run from generic, like Dinosaurs, to very specific brands, like Lego , Sesame Street, Marvel and Star Wars. Clicking on any of these brings up a list of all available ebooks, videos and apps from that category, and tapping on each individual item downloads or streams it.
It's a great way to discover content, although some brands have only apps and videos, but no books, or only books and videos, but no apps, and so on. Many, however, have all three, and Dash now has an instant Phineas and Ferb book collection.
The "character" menu of FreeTime Unlimited.
This does help highlight one of the UI's shortcomings, however. Figuring out what content you have actually downloaded is difficult, as you see icons for "available" and "downloaded" content mixed together and virtually indistinguishable from each other. The giveaway is a tiny checkmark on the bottom left corner of downloaded content, so keep an eye out for that.
Speaking of downloading, the 8-inch Kids Edition starts with 32GB of SSD storage, double that in the non-kids base model. The 7-inch has 16GB, up from 8GB. If that gets filled up, there's a microSD card slot that can take up to a 256GB card. A 256GB card can be more than $100, but a 64GB one, tripling your storage, can be found for around $20.
Timing is everything
The part of FreeTime that you can access without a subscription is a deep set of parental controls. Key among them is the ability to set time limits for tablet usage. (That's also a common feature on gadgets from the Nintendo Switch to the Apple iPad.)
For example, you can set the system to go to sleep at 8 p.m. and not activate again until 8 a.m. Different schedules can also be set for weekdays versus weekends. But that's just the beginning.
I can limit the total amount of screen time to 1 hour, 4 hours, or leave it unlimited. Or, I can set time limits on specific categories of content, from books to apps to videos to the basic included web browser (which goes to an approved whitelist of websites). Or, I can set what Amazon calls "educational goals," and require 30 minutes of ebook reading before allowing access to apps and videos. A parent can mix and match these controls to fine-tune the experience, and it provides a great deal of granularity, if that's what you're looking for.
Some of the highly customizable parental controls.
One parental pro tip I'll share here: Using the built-in timer, and explaining to your child that the Fire tablet will shut down at precisely 8 p.m. (or whatever time you choose), may be a lot easier than doing it yourself. I've found that with both FreeTime and Amazon's Alexa personal assistant, kids are more responsive to alarms and timers, and usually (but not always) acquiesce without throwing a fit. My theory: Even the most trusting child may think you're shorting them on time if you declare, "Five minutes until bedtime!" and time it on your watch. But if Alexa or their Kindle Fire is doing the countdown, they're more likely to trust they're getting the full time they've been promised if it comes from (what they see as) an infallible AI-powered machine. I haven't done a scientific study on this, but it's been my anecdotal observation over several years with several children.
The Amazon Fire's parental time and content settings aren't necessarily unique -- you can find similar tools for most devices -- but I appreciated how they were laid out in one simple page (which requires a special parental PIN to access), and that they offer such a high degree of detail.
Size matters
Both the 7- and 8-inch models have a 1.3Ghz ARM processor, but the HD 8 adds 50 percent more RAM, 1.5GB versus 1GB. The Fire HD 10 beats both, with 2GB of RAM and a 1.8GB quad-core ARM processor.
The end result is that, even with the same CPU, the HD 8 feels significantly faster then the Fire 7, thanks to that extra RAM. Apps load slower, swiping between pages is slower, and the Fire 7 adds just enough lag and stuttering that it can annoying, especially if you're used to the fast performance of an iPhone or iPad.
In a test using the 3DMark benchmark (available in the Amazon app store), the Fire 7 scores 4,654, while the Fire HD 8 scored 5,700 (higher scores are better). The Fire HD 10 shows off its better hardware with a much higher score of 13,217.
That said, testing several kids games, including Subway Surfer and Riptide 2, once the games were fully loaded and running, the Fire 7 played them just as well as the larger version. A newer mobile game, Star Wars: Puzzle Droids, caused the Fire 7 to struggle more with the graphics.
One other big difference between the two sizes is the audio. The Fire HD 8 has two speakers on the bottom of the tablet, which fire through two cutouts in the rubber case. The Fire 7 has only a single speaker, located on the rear top right corner, next to an awkward single cutout in the rubber case that doesn't quite line up with the speaker itself. The sound from the smaller tablet is far inferior. Good enough for a casual video streaming session, but not exactly satisfying.
Where the rubber hits the road
A thick, padded foam rubber case and no-questions-asked replacement policy will ease a lot of parental minds when it comes to a Fire tablet. But as long as your investment is so well-protected anyway, keep in mind that the 8-inch version is better in so many categories.
It has a higher-resolution screen, faster performance, more storage and even better sound. I think it's worth it to upgrade. You'll tolerate the Fire 7, you'll like the Fire HD 8. For an even higher-end experience, the 10-inch Fire HD 10 has a better processor and display for under $200, but does not come in a Kids Edition variant.
I was a serious skeptic of the value of Amazon's FreeTime Unlimited service, but as a parent, I'm now a convert, and can definitely see myself paying for it in future years after the included 12-month subscription expires.
While the price jump for the Kids Edition in both the 7-inch and 8-inch Fires may seem steep just to add a padded case, extra warranty, more internal storage and a one-year content service subscription, it'll feel like an absolute bargain the first time junior slams the screen against the corner of a coffee table.
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