The Amazon Fire 7 tablet retails for $ 40

As common Cheapskate readers know, Amazon gear is on sale always. For example, the Fire 7 tablet has been discounted no less than seven times in the past 12 months. So this deal isn’t super special.

Except, in a sense, it is. The Fire 7 was one of the first inductees in the new Cheapskate Hall of Fame, and that was based on the regular $ 50 price tag. Now that it is for sale again, I wanted to expand on what makes it such an incredible deal.

Simply put, it’s a full featured tablet for $ 40. Think about that for a moment. The cost of the original Kindle e-reader $ 400. The first iPad: $ 500. These were large, clunky, limited devices; the Fire 7 is thin, light and powerful. Not powerful in terms of processing, although the 1.3 GHz quad-core CPU can handle most tasks well enough; no, i mean powerful in its broad capacity.

It’s an e-reader, of course, but also a video player, music player, game console, education tool, virtual assistant (Alexa’s on board, natch), digital camera, video camera, web browser, Zoomstation and more.

At $ 40, you only buy 16 GB of onboard storage, but that’s easily (and cheaply) expandable to 512 GB (!) With microSD cards. Remind me again which iPads support memory expansion? Right: none of them.

Granted, the Fire 7 is best paired with one Amazon Prime subscription, which would mean a significant additional outlay if you were to buy it just for the tablet. But most of us buy it for shipping and streaming; the Fire 7 is just another van for the latter.

Some might argue with the screen, which at 1024×600 pixels is not razor-sharp. Some might argue that a 6-inch phone in your pocket eliminates the need for a 7-inch tablet everywhere.

Fair points, both. And I’ll throw in the existence of the Fire HD 8, which for $ 25 more (based on the current retail price of $ 65) gives you a larger screen with a higher resolution, a faster processor, two speakers, a USB-C port and twice the storage space. It’s the smarter buy, no doubt about it.

But viewed in a vacuum, the Fire 7 for $ 40 is an absolutely amazing deal. It fully deserves its entry into the Hall of Fame.

Your thoughts?

Read more: CNET’s Amazon Fire 7 tablet review

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