Amazon is launching its first tablets with 8 and 10 inch displays. The new Fire HD 8 and Fire HD 10 feature 1280 x 800 pixel displays and quad-core MediaTek processors.
The Fire HD 8 has a starting price of $150, while the Fire HD 10 starts at $230. They join last year’s Fire HD 6, which is still available for $100 and the brand new 7 inch Fire HD which is priced at just $50.
It’s interesting to note that none of the new tablets has a full HD display: Amazon seems to be focused on keeping the price of its new tablets low rather than offering industry-best features.
That said, the Fire HD 8 and Fire HD 10 do have a few features that their smaller siblings lack, including Dolby Atmos stereo speakers, 802.11ac WIFI, and higher-resolution cameras (with a 5MP rear rear camera and 720P front-facing camera.
The Fire HD 8 is available with 8GB to 16GB of built-in storage, while the 10 inch morel comes with 16GB to 32GB of storage. Both support microSD cards for up to 128GB of removable storage.
Amazon’s new Fire HD tablets feature 1GB of RAM, IPS displays with wide viewing angles, and Fire OS 5 software, based on Android 5.1.
The older Fire HD 6 will get a software update that brings many of the features of the new tablets, but it’s now the only tablet Amazon is continuing to sell which lacks a microSD card slot.
Amazon is taking pre-orders for the new tablets, with orders expected to start shipping on September 30th.
1GB Ram kills it for me.
I’m not big on the high resolution displays offered by many smartphones, but I do wonder what a picture or text would look like on that 10″ model.
It’ll be okay but it’s arguable that 10.1″ is the threshold that you should start raising the resolution… With a pixel density of just 149 ppi, it’s a bit low for something you’ll do a lot of reading on but fine for watching movies… While the $50 model with the 6.7″ screen and 1024×600 resolution actually has a higher pixel density at around 177 ppi… This would be equivalent to a 1520×950 resolution on the 10.1″ screen to get about the same pixel density, but that’s a odd size so they would have to jump to 1920×1200 (for the same 16:10 ratio) and that’ll raise the pixel density to a more acceptable 224 ppi, which would be better for reading…
But, of course, it depends on how they intend to market it and with them still selling Kindle e-readers and their other new products it looks like the Fire Kindles are just filling a small niche that doesn’t need to push the spec limits to cover too wide a usage range…
Like a more square screen ratio would probably be preferable for reading comics and magazines but a 10.1″ with 16:10 ratio should be okay for most uses… and is the more accepted compromise between reading and media watching consumption optimization…