Amazon.com AMZN -0.23 % recently began shipping a tablet computer that's so cheap, you can buy it like bulk Snickers. The new 7-inch Fire tablet sells for $50, and if you get five, they'll throw in a sixth free. Imagine the trick-or-treating this year at Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' house. You get a tablet! And you get a tablet!
Since tablets arrived five years ago, we've been trying to figure out what they're good for. The first iPads were all about you being the first of your friends to own an iPad. But the magic wore off quickly. Tablets have been in a race to the bottom on price while sales overall are in a slump. In search of profits, Microsoft, Apple, even Google have been pushing higher-end tablets as replacements for work laptops.
Amazon's bargain mini-tablet strikes me as something different: a throwback to the paperback novel. A year ago, I was impressed when Amazon brought out a $100 6-inch tablet that didn't stink. Now we've got one for half that price with an additional inch of screen (albeit lower resolution).
Using the $50 Amazon Fire for the past week, I wasn't drafting presentations or burning through email. It doesn't have anywhere near the necessary speed or screen resolution for serious work. Performance is almost beside the point. Instead, the Fire seizes on the reality that, for many of us, tablets are entertainment—a means to read novels, binge on Netflix NFLX -3.28 % in bed and sling Angry Birds.
Half as powerful as an iPad but one-eighth the cost, Amazon's tablet is cheap yet good enough to have fun. And like a checkout-aisle thriller, it won't mind getting battered at the bottom of a gym bag or even dropped on the floor.
Amazon's $50 tablet doesn't single-handedly solve the existential crisis facing tablets. Especially as phones get larger, more of us use them for tablet-like tasks. Even Amazon's Kindle Paperwhite e-reader lives on to compete with tablets in its single niche, reading e-books indoors and out. But the price does change my perception of tablets: They're a low-commitment way to get a bigger screen without going full phablet (shudder). And they're a cost-effective way to keep children occupied.
To see Amazon's cheapie in better context, I checked out eight of the latest mini-tablets, including the Lenovo Yoga Tab 3 8, Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 and iPad Mini 4, all released with little fanfare in the last two months. Here's what you can expect in a cheap tablet that's just entertainment—and what you get by paying extra.
Necessities
In raw processing power and screen pixel count (1024x600), Amazon's $50 Fire is a step down even from modestly priced tablets like the $100 Amazon Fire HD 6. But it keeps one critical feature: visibility.
Older LCD screens require your eyes to be directly in front of the tablet or the image gets washed out. Bargain tablets, such as the $70 Trio 7.85, get in trouble when you rotate to a vertical orientation, a big problem for reading. Amazon's Fire keeps things visible at all angles with a technology called IPS that's worth looking for on any tablet.
An entertainment tablet also needs to play video and games without hiccups. The Fire played all the video sources I could throw at it, including local files and content streamed from Netflix, Hulu, YouTube and, of course, Amazon. Casual games, including Angry Birds and Monument Valley, worked fine.
Of course, a family-ready tablet needs a battery that keeps "Wild Kratts" playing the entire cross-country flight. The Fire ran for a little over seven hours in my local video-playback tests, though closer to five when I streamed via Wi-Fi.
The Fire is made of a sturdy plastic that withstood being repeatedly dropped out of a bed, but any technology that's priced to be disposable needs a good means of disposal. Amazon, like Apple and others, has a free system that takes back and recycles your tablet after your child inevitably drops it in the toilet.
There are a few acceptable compromises for a $50 tablet. It won't be slim—the Fire is 0.4 inches, though its rectangular shape still felt comfortable for one-handed reading. The camera isn't going to take print-worthy shots, but is sufficient for a video chat with the grandparents.
With an Amazon tablet, you're also buying into a relationship with Earth's largest online retailer, which makes money on bargain hardware by upselling us on digital media. You are stuck buying movies and games from Amazon, though you can still stream from services like Netflix that Amazon allows in its own app store. Amazon puts ads on its lock screen, which you can remove for $15. You can't remove the persistent home screen shopping links, however.
Still, the Amazon link may be what makes the $50 tablet idea work. It happens to have an incredible digital media store and parent-friendly features like time limits. And when Amazon puts its good name on the line with budget hardware, it's easier to trust.
Nice-To-Haves
Spending more for a mini tablet buys you two important things: A better screen and better battery life.
A screen with more pixels packed in helps your eyes with HD video and fine text alike. Just a slight bump in pixels per inch, or PPI, makes a big difference in viewing pleasure on something you hold close to your face.
But higher resolution can tax the batteries, so manufacturers have to bump that up, too. The mid-level Amazon tablet, called the Fire HD 8, actually got worse battery life performance, by about an hour, than the 7-inch Fire. That's all because of the higher-resolution screen.
My favorite step-up tablet is Lenovo's new 8-inch Yoga Tab 3, which for $170 has 189 PPI and a battery that lasted about 10 hours in my test but the company says can do up to 20 hours of just reading text. (By comparison, the 7-inch Fire has 171 PPI.) The Android tablet gets its stamina—and some very nice speakers and a rotating 8-megapixel camera—from an unusual tube shape on one side. I found the tube convenient to grip, but it weighs one pound, so I suggest handling one in a store before you buy.
If you've got $100 more to spare, one of the best deals is the two-year-old iPad Mini 2, which Apple now sells for $270. It has a 326 PPI screen and 10 hours of battery life (but no fingerprint reader).
Another nice-to-have: a memory card slot. There's one on the Yoga Tab 3, Amazon's $50 Fire and the high-end Samsung Tab S2. Apple's iPads don't offer them because of their super-slim form—and likely also their maker's interest in extracting another benjamin from us for more built-in storage.
Luxuries
If price is no object, what's the best you can get in a mini-tablet? Money buys you a super-luxury, super-thin screen and power to do more than just entertain yourself.
You can't buy a better handheld entertainment display today than Samsung's $400 8-inch Galaxy Tab S2. Its screen is beautiful, using a technology called Super AMOLED to provide truly black blacks and colors that look saturated even in brighter situations.
Because of the screen technology, the super-thin Tab S2 is also the Energizer Bunny of tablets, lasting about 15 hours in my video playback tests, nearly 50% longer than the iPad Mini 4. The Tab S2 also comes standard with 32 GB of storage. You don't have to pay any more to be vacation-ready.
So where does that leave the iPad? This year's update added more multi-tasking capabilities and a screen that looks slightly better in daylight. It matches the Samsung in slimness and features like a fingerprint reader. But with inferior screen and battery performance, you're really buying access to the Apple world. It comes with an elegant operating system, giant app store and admission to the alluring ecosystem of Macs and iPhones.
Both the Tab S2 and Mini 4 come with blazing-fast future-proof processors. At the smaller size, I've found the iPad Mini useful as a creative tool for drawing and taking photos. You could even hook up a keyboard for word processing.
But as high-end tablets verge into laptop capability—and prices rise accordingly—it's vital to consider your needs. Why pay the hardcover price when all you need is a paperback?
Write to Geoffrey Fowler at geoffrey.fowler@wsj.com or on Twitter at @GeoffreyFowler.
Corrections & Amplifications
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 has a MicroSD card slot. A previous version of this article incorrectly said that the Tab S2 did not have one.
Source: Amazon's $50 Fire Is the Paperback of Digital Entertainment
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