Amazon is one of the few tablet makers that are actually selling tablets. However, like most others, they are not making any money really off of them. Primarily because they are being sold at cost. This is to get you to use more of their services, instead of taking your money from the hardware they are selling you. Their tablets act as a window into their store, or Amazon.com. The company has always said that these Fire HD tablets were for content consumption and today they cemented that with these two new Fire HD tablets. They are introducing a 8-inch and a 10-inch Fire HD tablet. Which are thinner and lighter than previous models. While still being pretty fast. With Amazon Prime Instant Video, there’s lots of content there to soak up on the new Fire HD tablets.
The company announced that the 8-inch variant will start at $149 (£130) for 8GB of storage. With the larger 10.1-inch model coming in at $229.99 (£170) for 16GB of storage. Both models do include microSD card slots which provide an additional 128GB of storage. Amazon has also adjusted their DRM so you can now watch movies and TV shows from Amazon Prime Instant videos offline, and also save them to the microSD card. We’re also looking at a 5MP camera on the back, with an unknown megapixel count on the front-facing camera, but it is capable of 720p video. Decent enough for doing video calls through Skype and such. Amazon also announced a new version of their Fire OS today, bringing it up to Fire OS 5. As you can tell, it allows for custom backgrounds. Something previous versions of Fire OS did not allow.
Both tablets are up for sale now on Amazon (Fire HD 8, Fire HD 10), and are slated to start shipping at the end of the month on September 30th. These tablets may not be as high-end as the tablets offered by Samsung and ASUS, but remember, the price is also much lower. For $149, this is a pretty great stocking stuffer come this holiday season. Along with the $50 Fire Tablet that Amazon also announced today in their slew of announcements.