September 28, 2014 — Amazon may soon be delivering one of the coolest values in tablets this year — an all-new Fire HD tablet that boasts a 1.5 GHz quad-core processor with a crisp HD display that’s brighter than the previous generation Kindle Fire HD. In case you were wondering, Amazon’s new “Fire” tablets are no longer using the “Kindle” moniker.
The Fire HD will ship in two sizes, the 6-inch Fire HD 6 for $99 and the 7-inch Fire HD 7 for $139, both of which will ship in five color choices: black, white, cobalt, magenta, and citron. The entry-level pricing is for 8GB of storage, with Amazon’s Special Offers advertising system. For $15 more, you can get the Fire HD units without Special Offers. For another $20, you can double the storage up to 16GB.
“Fire HD is the most powerful tablet under $100,” notes Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Founder and CEO. “The new Fire HD features a stunning HD display, quad-core processor, Dolby Digital Audio, front and rear-facing cameras, incredible reliability, and Amazon’s unmatched content ecosystem—all supported by Amazon customer service.”
One of the things that Amazon seems to understand fairly well — that Apple just doesn’t seem to care about at all — is that families tend to share tablet devices: With the Fire HD, Amazon’s Profiles lets each family member have their own profile that includes email, social networking accounts, pages in books, spots in movies, and game levels. Of course, for households with kids, Amazon’s FreeTime service offers kid-friendly content and parent-friendly controls.
Also available for the Fire HD are new accessories, including a new protective cover that is available in six colors and can stand in both portrait and landscape orientations, as well as a series of adapters that allow you to connect Fire HD to an HDTV, monitor, or mass storage device via HDMI, VGA or USB.
Amazon will begin shipping its new Fire HD tablets in October.
