Amazon Refreshes Budget Fire 7 Tablet And Discounts Fire HD 8

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Amazon has done a good job of staying in the news for the past week (Echo Show, Element Fire TV Edition Smart TVs), and it is continuing its streak with the announcement of new Fire tablets. Although that tablet market as a whole is in decline, Amazon sees plenty of demand in the low-end of the segment, hence the arrival of the all-new Fire 7.

The Fire 7 comes to the market with an improved 7-inch IPS display (1024x600) that features a higher contrast and crisper text reproduction. Battery life has been boosted to 8 hours (in mixed use scenarios), which is a 1-hour increase from its predecessor. As before, there is 8GB of internal storage along with a microSD slot that can expand your media library to 256GB.

Despite the improvement made to the Fire 7, pricing remains at $49.99 ($69.99 for the 16GB model). The Fire 7 will be available in Black, Punch Red, Marine Blue and Canary Yellow.

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Moving on, Amazon has dropped the price of the Fire HD 8 to $79.99, which represents a $10 reduction. Specs remain the same (which is unsurprising given that the tablet was last refreshed late last year), which means that you’ll find an 8-inch HD IPS display (1280x800), quad-core processor, 16GB of internal storage, microSD slot (256GB supported), up to 12 hours of battery life and Alexa AI assistant integration. Customers also have the option to upgrade to 32GB of internal storage, but the price premium is a rather pricy $30, which means that you would likely be better served by purchasing a cheaper microSD card.

“We think customers should expect more from their tablet—better hardware, more features, access to tons of great content—but shouldn’t have to pay a premium for it,” said Kevin Keith, General Manager, Fire Tablets.

Both the Fire 7 and Fire HD 8 are available for pre-order today, and will begin shipping on June 7th.