Today Amazon announced the upcoming release of new Fire 7 and Fire HD 8 tablets, along with Kids Editions for each.
The new Fire tablets are up for pre-order right now and they officially get released on June 7th.
The Fire 7 remains $49 and the Fire HD 8 starts at $79.
The Kids Editions are $99 and $129 respectively.
The new 7-inch model features an upgraded IPS screen and it’s thinner, lighter, and has longer battery life and improved Wi-Fi, but not much at all has changed with the Fire HD 8.
Both models have microSD card slots and support cards up to 256 GB, up from 200 GB on the previous models.
According to Amazon, the Fire HD 8’s battery can last up to 12 hours per charge and the Fire 7 can last up to 8 hours.
Both tablets come with Alexa support, they have quad-core 1.3 GHz processors, front and rear cameras, dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and they are available in four color options: Black, Punch Red, Marine Blue, and Canary Yellow.
The Kids Edition models are the exact same tablets but they come with a year of Amazon FreeTime Unlimited, a kid-proof case, and a 2-year worry-free guarantee. Plus they don’t come with ads and they are the upgraded versions with more storage space, 16GB for the 7-inch and 32GB for the 8-inch.
New Fire 7
New Fire HD 8
Fire 7 Kids Edition
Fire HD 8 Kids Edition
Why call it the Fire HD with such low resolution? Makes no sense, yet people eat it up.
It’s HD by the standard it’s 720p. I do prefer higher resolution too for reading but the screen on the first Fire HD 8 looked really good anyway.
I think only the Fire 7’s screen is upgraded (Amazon explicitly state the increased the contrast and colour). The Fire HD 8 is the same screen and the only difference being larger capacity via an SD Card. I don’t understand why the Fire HD 8 has been ‘refreshed’ now. I thought Amazon would update the Fire 7 and HD 10.
You’re indeed right. I’m not sure why I wrote it that way. 😀
I have the updated HD 8 they did last year and from the looks of the specs, nothing much has changed. Its a nice little tablet and I do all my regular reading on it but the display is too small and definition to low to do magazines and comics well. I have my iPad for that.
Yeah, the changes with the Fire HD 8 seem very minor compared to last year’s model. The new one supports 256 GB memory cards, but realistically how many people are going to spend like twice as much on a memory card than the tablet costs itself?
I bought a Fire HD 8 last year in the hope that the bigger screen would improve reading PDFs. Didn’t turn out that way- there were very large margins on PDFs I read on the HD 8.
I wish that the Fire HD 8 had Ember Bold font capabilities.
If the “old” HD8’s go on sale, I might buy one, as the ability to use a larger memory card in the “new” one won’t be useful to me. I do like the 2016 HD8 I have.
Is the liquavista team ever going to produce a product? I cant wait for the mas production of a color ereader that is eye friendly.
I’ll be watching for a sale on the “just a little bit” new HD8. I enjoy the current one, but the screen is starting to flicker.
Make sure adaptive brightness is turned off. The brightness kept fluctuating on mine and it was driving me crazy until I found the setting to turn it off.
Thank you for the tip, Nathan. It seems to have cleared it up, though I will watch it at least the next couple times I use it. And, if the “barely” new ones go on sale for sixty dollars or so, I might buy one for a backup. 🙂
It looks much better, thank you Nathan!
You’re welcome. 😀