Today Amazon started advertising a new 16GB version of their entry-level Fire tablet for purchase on their website.
The 16GB model sells for $20 more than the 8GB model, making the price $69 for the one with ads and $85 for the one without ads (special offers).
So does this mean we can’t call it the $49 Fire tablet anymore?
Just calling it Fire gets kind of confusing after about the twentieth different model named Fire…
Either way, it’s good to see Amazon boosting the amount of internal storage space because 8GB isn’t very much at all when the operating system alone takes up about half of it.
The external microSD card helps some but not everything can be stored on it so they should just start phasing out 8GB tablets altogether and start making 16GB the new minimum.
There’s a 16GB option for the 7-inch Fire Kids Edition bundle as well, which sells for $119. It’s the same exact tablet; the difference is it comes with a kid-proof case, 1 year of FreeTime Unlimited, and a 2-year worry-free guarantee.
Check out my Fire tablet review for the full rundown of features and specs for Amazon’s entry-level tablet.
Update: It appears that the folks at Amazon keep changing their mind on the price. Initially it was $69.99 with ads and $84.99 without. Then a few days later they changed it to $59.99 and $74.99 respectively. Now it’s back up to $69, so who knows what it will be next week. This article was updated to reflect the change in price (twice).
I just helped my mom order this for my dad last night. His FIRST tablet ever. He’s been playing games on one of my old Palm Pilots and I think it is finally dying. He also has a Paperwhite <- which he was one of those "I like to turn paper pages" people. Until he got his first Kindle and realized how light it was regardless of how many books he had on it. Then he got the Paperwhite because he wouldn't need a light on to read. He just turned 75 in March. 🙂
A person could repurpose some of these not quite old cheap tablets into a video security system, maybe even a server of some sort. I am sure someone already has done these.
Picture frames of course was their first use way back when…
Thanks for the news! Just ordered two.
Always nice to read your posts to stay on top of e-book news.
Now I am waiting to see that latest Kindle coming out next week that you blogged about.
Cheers,
Anne
The extra storage will help some but the screen is still awful, the lack of native Google Services is horrible and the UI is worse than horrible. Add in all the things their other tablets have but they don’t mention are lacking with this in their sales pitch — lack of speech recognition, lack of smart sleep support, some crippled Android services — and this is tragically bad.
Having bricked my 8GB version trying to root & change the UI, I found a *much* better 8″ Dell alternative for around $100 on Amazon. Couldn’t be happier with it nor more disappointed with this Amazon rubbish.
All that’s true, but for the neophytes, it’s more than enough for email, web surfing and e-reading (with a larger font). My problem was the limited storage space, which is much improved on the 16gb version. And for the adventuress, Google Play can be added.