Amazon Announces 3 New Tablets with Low Prices and High-Quality Displays

Amazon Fire HD 7 and 6
Amazon Fire HD 7 and 6

The Fire HD 7 and 6, now available for preorder from Amazon. (Amazon)

Amazon’s phone sales might be flickering, but the company is looking to reignite its device sales elsewhere.

On Wednesday, in a private press conference, Amazon revealed three new tablets: two slightly larger versions of its Kindle Fire HD, which traditionally competes with Apple’s iPad mini, and a faster, higher-resolution Kindle Fire HDX, which goes head to head with the iPad Air. All will run Amazon’s latest operating system, Fire OS 4 “Sangria,” which adds improved features for parents who want to share their tablets with their kids.

The 6-inch Kindle Fire HD will cost $99, while the 7-inch Kindle Fire HD will start at $139. The Kindle Fire HDX, which has an 8.9-inch display, will start at $379.

The new tablets –– and their prices –– affirm Amazon’s aggressive goal to provide hardware alternatives at affordable prices, a method the company has employed to recruit new members to its subscription-only entertainment and shipping membership, Amazon Prime. Over the past year, the company has added new benefits to its Prime memberships, including unlimited access to its music catalog and an exclusive deal with HBO that allows you to stream entire seasons of popular series from its past.

The new Fire HD comes with either a 6- or 7-inch display and five playful colors: black, white, cobalt, magenta, and — wait for it — citron (lime green). The most notable improvements to its hardware include an improved high-definition display chock full o’ pixels — “over 1 million,” if you’re counting (cue the Dr. Evil impressions). For normal people, that means the new Fire HD screens will be extra pleasant to look at. Both sizes also come with front- and rear-facing cameras that can capture full high-definition photos and videos. And with the purchase of one of these devices, you can store an unlimited amount of images and movies free of charge in the Amazon Cloud.

Alongside its improved visual aspects are major tweaks to the device’s guts, as well. Both sizes of the new tablets come with a new quad-core processor to make navigation and graphics faster and smoother.

At $99 and $139, Amazon is offering prices that are far cheaper than Apple can offer for its similarly sized tablet, the iPad mini, which starts at $399.

Kindle Fire HDX 7
Kindle Fire HDX 7

The Kindle Fire HDX 7. (Alyssa Bereznak/Yahoo Tech)

In addition to the standard versions of these new tablets, Amazon will also offer both sizes with tumble-friendly kid cases — made of material similar to Crocs — and a two-year warranty. The 6-inch tablet with a case starts at $149, and the 7-inch version will cost $189. The Kids Edition also comes with a year of Amazon FreeTime Unlimited, which gives children access to age-appropriate (and easily regulated) books, movies, TV shows, games, and educational apps.

Boy using Kindle Fire in case
Boy using Kindle Fire in case

(Photo courtesy of Amazon)

It’s this area, in particular, where Amazon had a chance to show off the HD Fire’s intense durability in classic infomercial-like fashion. During Amazon’s presentation, product manager Peter Larsen displayed a large rotating bin “meant to simulate the inside of a purse” that showed the new HD Fire tumbling around with stray brushes and paper clips (“They come out unscathed”). Next to that was the same tablet, positioned between two claws that were bending the item. Though they’re not actually waterproof, Larsen said, Amazon’s product team has tested them for the beach.

“Over 20 percent of the returns we get of low-cost tablets on Amazon.com mention reliability,” he said at the press conference. “We wanted to avoid that, make sure we didn’t compromise on these things breaking. We run them through the wringer. We smear sunscreen on these, we spray saltwater on them, we spray freshwater on them, we drop them from a meter, we drop ’em again.”  

Amazon’s new operating system, despite its adult-drink nickname, is also similarly angled for family use. Just as a person can log in to Netflix and switch between the different “taste profiles” in her family, so can an owner of the HD Fire switch accounts via the Family Profile screen. Sangria allows for up to two Amazon accounts to share access to the content that housemates or spouses have already purchased. An additional four profiles can be created, so there’s plenty of room for the modern nuclear family. Because people use Fire HD tablets for more than just reading books or watching movies, each profile also seamlessly switches among social media accounts as well.

Amazon has also focused on bringing ASAP, a technology it debuted with the Fire TV set-top box, into your hands. It learns what you like and prepopulates your device with what it’d expect you to watch next. That way, when you click a movie or show, it’ll begin to play instantly — no evil loading circle in sight.

Kindle Fire HDX 8.9
Kindle Fire HDX 8.9

The Kindle Fire HDX 8.9. (Alyssa Bereznak/Yahoo Tech)

All these features are also present in the $379 Amazon Fire HDX 8.9, a super-responsive tablet with a speedy new quad-core processor. WiFi speeds are improved with a new part that’s supposed to deliver four times the bandwidth of its predecessor. Its screen size is no different. But it is much thinner, weighing 13.2 ounces. That, as Amazon is quick to note, is 20 percent lighter than the iPad Air. The screen’s pixel density has been ramped way up (more than most normal human eyes would be able to recognize).

Hardcore readers will be delighted to hear about the HDX’s most notable new feature: something called Dynamic Light Control. This technology uses a sensor to gauge the level of light in your reading space and then adjust the color of your page accordingly. It should very gradually change colors to mimic the way paper reflects light. So, depending on what level of brightness you’re exposed to, the pages of your ebook will shift between a cold light blue and a warm light brown.

Amazon has also partnered with Dolby Laboratories to offer a more immersive audio experience for new movies called Atmos. When a helicopter flies over a character’s head in, say, Transformers, it will sound like it’s actually moving over you. And, finally, a new feature that will also roll out to Fire Phones allows you to photograph something written in a different language and automatically translate it.

All of these products are available for preorder starting immediately on Amazon.com.

Related: Amazon’s Kindle Voyage Is Its Most Advanced e-Reader Yet

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