Amazon has announced four new Fire tablets yesterday, including two Fire HD and two Fire tablets.

The top of the line are two new Amazon Fire HD tablets that will be available in 8-inch and 10.1-inch versions. Both the Fire HD 8 and the Fire HD 10 feature a 1280x800 resolution screen, which means that we are looking at 189ppi and 149ppi pixel density.

The biggest update for the new Fire HD tablets is the new Mediatek MT8135 SoC which was launched back in 2013. The Mediatek MT8135 is based on big.LITTLE architecture and features two Cortex-A15 and two Cortex-A7 CPU cores clocked at up to 1.5GHz as well as a PowerVR G6200 GPU.

The precise dimensions of the Fire HD 10 are set at 262x159x7.7mm with 432g of weight while the Fire HD 8 has 214x128x7.7mm dimensions and weighs 311g. Amazon was quite keen to note that both new Fire HD tablets have a new thin and light body that is up to two times more durable than Apple iPad Air 2, which is a bit thinner than Amazon tablets at 6.1mm.

The rest of the specifications include 8 or 16GB of internal storage with microSD card support, 5-megapixel rear camera and 720p front camera, dual-band 802.11ac WiFi, stereo speakers with Dolby ATMOS and enough battery life to keep it alive for about 8 hours of normal usage. The new Fire HD tablets are based on Fire OS 5 Bellini, which is based on Android 5.0 Lollipop OS.






In addition to the new Fire HD tablets, Amazon.com has also unveiled the new budget-friendly Fire tablet. Based on a 7-inch 1024x600 IPS display and yet to be details quad-core 1.3GHz clocked SoC, the Amazon Fire tablet does not share many similarities with the Fire HD lineup. In order to make a US $49.99 tablet, Amazon had to stick with just 8GB of internal storage, which is thankfully expandable via microSD card, 2-megapixel rear and VGA front camera, single-band 802.11bgn WiFi and a mono speaker.

The new Amazon Fire tablet has 191x115x10.6mm dimensions and 313g weight which makes it both thick and heavy for a 7-inch tablet. According to Amazon, the battery in the Fire tablet should be enough for about 7 hours of normal usage.

Amazon also unveiled the Fire Kids Edition version of the Fire tablet which shares the same specifications but comes with a special protective case and two-year "no questions asked" replacement guarantee and Amazon's FreeTime Unlimited one-year access.

The new Amazon Fire HD 8 and Fire HD 10 tablet are starting at US 149.99 and US $229.99 respectively, while the Fire tablet will sell for US $49.99. The Fire Kids Edition is a bit more expensive at US $99.99.





Source: Amazon.com.