One thing that Amazon is really good at is marketing. The new $49 Fire tablet is a great example of this.
Just about everyone is impressed with the price of the $49 Fire tablet, so much so that it’s the #1 bestseller in electronics on Amazon’s website.
It’s so popular that Amazon can’t even keep up with demand. The regular version is out of stock until October 26th, and the $65 non-ad version is on backorder for 7-9 weeks.
The thing about it is the $49 Fire isn’t anything new. There have been $50 Android tablets on the market with nearly identical specs for awhile now.
In fact you could make the argument that you could purchase a better tablet for the price.
Amazon carries a number of similar Android tablets on their website in the same price range, and they have some advantages over Fire tablets, like having support or Google Play, running open Android 5.0, coming with 1 year warranties instead of 90-days, and having HDMI ports.
So I thought I’d post a roundup of Android tablets that are good alternatives to the $49 Fire. Since it includes advertisements at that price, it’s only fair to include tablets up to $65 since they aren’t subsidized.
Note: All these tablets have a 1024 x 600 resolution display like the $49 Fire.
5 Fire Tablet Alternatives
Price: $64.99
Rating: 4.5 stars with 56 reviews
The NeuTab Air 7 runs Android 5.0 and comes with Google Play. It has an IPS screen, 8GB of storage space, 1GB of RAM, Bluetooth, GPS, front and rear cameras, a microSD card slot, 8 hour battery life, and a 1.3GHz quad core processor.
Price: $44.95
Rating: 4.4 stars with 31 reviews
The 7-inch Lenotab tablet runs Android 5.0 and has Google Play. It has a quad-core processor and GPU, with 8GB of storage space and 1GB of RAM, front and rear cameras, a microSD card slot, and 3-6 hour battery life.
Price: $59.99
Rating: 4.2 stars with 457 reviews
The Dragon Touch M7 comes with Android 4.4 KitKat but it can be upgraded to Android 5.0 upon request. It has an IPS screen, a 1.3GHz quad core processor, 8GB of storage space, 1GB of RAM, Bluetooth, GPS, dual cameras, a microSD card slot, 4.5 hour battery life, and mini HDMI port.
Price: $57.99
Rating: 3.9 stars with 11 reviews
Banggood has the 7-inch Chuwi VI7 SoFIA tablet. It runs Android 5.1 with Google Play. It has a 1.2GHz AtomX3 quad-core processor. It has 8GB of storage space and 1GB of RAM, front and rear cameras, Bluetooth, GPS, a microSD card slot, and it has support for 2G/3G wireless.
Price: $55.99
Rating: 4.3 stars with 91 reviews
The iDeaUSA 7inch tablet comes with Android 4.4 KitKat. It has an IPS screen, a 1.3GHz quad core processor, 8GB of storage space, 1GB of RAM, Bluetooth, GPS, front and rear cameras, a microSD card slot, 4.5 hour battery life for videos, and HDMI port.
So would you recommend one of these over the Amazon model?
The problem with lists like this is it only makes the job of buying harder 😉
I haven’t reviewed any of these (maybe I should) so I can’t personally recommend them. But for anyone that doesn’t care about having the tight integration of Amazon’s services on the Fire, and would rather have Google Play, these provide a good alternative. If I were in the market for a cheap tablet, it would be pretty hard not to choose something like the NeuTab Air 7 over the $49 Fire for the open Android 5.0 OS alone.
At $50 you probably can’t go wrong with any of these, however I like sticking with a known entity — Amazon would be my choice.
Where would you rate the Next book tablets with the Fire tablets from Amazon?
I’ve reviewed some Nextbooks in the past. They’re basically like any other cheap Android tablet. Nothing special, not horrible.
Yes. I would stick with Amazon too. Their tablets have been very good do far. Amazon App Store is very good in my opinion and the Fire OS is smooth and easy to navigate. Plus I love the Amazon integration. Having Google Play is way overrated. Besides that, you can always install one of the alternative Android markets if you need an App that you can’t find in the Amazon App store.
I just got the neutab air. I was looking at the new fire as a second tablet to go alongside the ipad air2 which my 3 year old loves. So far I am very impressed with such a cheap tablet. It is not as slick as the iPad but it is 1\10th the price. I love the fact that it has an expansion card slot and is not locked down like the fire. We mainly use the iPad for YouTube so the fact you can’t get the YouTube app to work 100% on the fire was a big deal. Having got this tablet I am really starting to wonder how apple can justify such a massive price difference?
If I was to buy one as a gift for someone I would surely go with the Amazon one.
hi Nathan. thanks for the review. I need a tablet with good wireless capacity. so I can use a wireless which is approximately 30 metres far from me. I m doing it with fire hdx 7 but I need a cheap tablet which I just need this wireless capacity. which one do you recommend? or what properties should I look when I’m buying?
Sorry but I don’t have the slightest idea which tablet has the strongest WiFi signal. That’s not a quantifiable spec.
I bought a dragon touch x10. I bought mine in place of a dedicated e-reader, and I’m well pleased with it so far in that role. It handily runs the board game apps that I prefer, gives me a great portable platform for audio books and video, and will give me a good alternative for browsing the inter-webs when I don’t care to lug my laptop around. In all, excellent value for the money.
Seems like spam but I’m not sure so I’ll just remove the link and website reference.