Amazon Finally Gives its Budget Fire Tablet a Refresh

It’s been a hot minute since Amazon’s budget-friendly Fire line of tablets received a refresh, but the wait is officially over. 

The company has opened up preorders for the next generation of Fire 7 tablets, according to an official press release. The new Fire 7 is chockful of welcome advancements while still coming in at the price point that made previous iterations so successful. 

The new Fire 7 has twice the RAM of the previous generation, which is great for multitasking, and features a quad-core processor that the company says is 30 percent faster than the previous CPU. 

The battery life also received an upgrade, as Amazon says you’ll now get 10 hours of use per charge. Another welcome improvement? The company has ditched micro-USB in favor of USB-C.

The 2MP front and rear cameras won’t set the world on fire, but the 720p HD recording capabilities are solid enough for video calls. Of course, the new Fire 7 tablets come fully integrated with Alexa, which is always nice. 

The company is also releasing a refresh for their popular Fire 7 Kids edition, with similar specs to the parent tablet. The kid-friendly iteration ships with a kid-proof case available in multiple colors and a one-year Amazon Kids+ subscription, which is a streaming platform for educational content. 

You can preorder both tablets starting today, with the new Fire 7 starting at $60 and the Fire 7 Kids starting at $110. Both iterations begin shipping on June 29.