One of the cheaper tablets of the year has now arguably become the cheapest. The brand new Amazon Fire HD 8 will now cost a measly $90. Of course, it rivals the iPad Mini, which comes no less than $400.
Amazon is now selling its Fire HD 8 tablet for $90
The previous Fire HD 8 came with 8GB of storage and was $150. This new gadget comes with a built-in memory capacity of 16GB with expandable memory of up to 200GB. Not sure why it isn’t called Fire HD 16. There’s an increase in RAM now too, with 1.5GB RAM instead of last year’s 1GB. Even the CPU inside is new, packing a quad-core processor. Using the tablet for longer hours is now possible as the tablet now comes in with bigger battery that can last up to 12 hours.
A special new feature that will come in the form of an update later this year is Alexa. She is making her debut on the Fire 10. The Fire 8 unfortunately won’t be graced with her presence. And she’s going to bring the heat down on Siri and Cortana; at least that’s what we are hoping for. Just like its counterparts, Alexa is a personal digital assistant that will let you set reminders give orders to play music, read audio books, give information of weather and maybe have some smart conversations too, if Amazon felt a little playful enough to let Alexa have a little fun.
The only way to interact with Alexa is to tap a virtual button and she’ll open up. Although the Fire 8 won’t be receiving Alexa, it’ll be getting a host of other new features such as a customized magazine-styled interface. It’s also got stereo speakers which are tuned with Dolby with an Amazon exclusive Underground membership that would let you download lots of paid apps for free. The interface will also support Comixology and Twitch for a better user experience.
Another interesting deal-maker is that the Fire 8 is extremely resilient. Amazon claims that it has gone through numerous tumble tests, and has concluded that it is much more durable than the iPad Mini. There’s free cloud storage with Amazon’s camera app for saving all the photos taken with its front and rear-facing cameras. It’s also got a crisp 8-inch HD screen that should be decent enough to work with. For $90, there really isn’t anything more they could have possibly added, right?