As expected, today Amazon unveiled a new line up of Kindle Fire tablets, one of which being the 7-inch Kindle Fire HD. This new Kindle Fire is meant to make Amazon an even bigger player in the tablet space than it was before, and with a price tag of $199, that probably isn’t going to be hard to do. The Nexus 7 – Google’s incredibly popular 7-incher – sports the same price tag, so the Kindle Fire HD may just end up giving the Nexus 7 a run for its money.
That’s because not only does it match the Nexus 7’s price, but it offers more storage than the Nexus 7. The Kindle Fire HD 7 comes equipped with 16GB of internal storage, while the $199 Nexus 7 only offers 8GB – if you want 16GB in your Nexus 7, you’ll have to jump up to the $249 model. With the Kindle Fire HD 7, we’ve got a 1.2 GHz dual-core OMAP 4460 processor, which doesn’t quite stack up to the 1.3 GHz quad-core CPU found in the Nexus 7, and 1 GB of RAM.
The laminated IPS LCD display is capable of 1200×800 resolution and includes Amazon’s anti-glare technology, and Imagination PowerVR 3D graphics make scrolling nice and fluid. Amazon is touting this as the first tablet with dual-band, dual-antenna Wi-Fi, which allows the Kindle Fire HD 7 to hit some pretty fast download speeds. Amazon made of big point of comparing the Kindle Fire HD 7’s Wi-Fi speeds to that of the iPad and Nexus 7, and with that dual setup, it’s no surprise that the Kindle Fire HD 7 came out on top.
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The screen looks very nice, and the dual-driver stereo speakers (complete with Dolby Digital Plus) promise that sound quality will be significantly better than we’re used to on most tablets. Amazon is claiming that the battery in the Kindle Fire HD 7 can provide over 11 hours of power, even while watching video or surfing, so if the tablet can hit that mark in reality, it’ll be a big plus. Of course, you also have all of Amazon’s offered content at your fingertips, turning the Kindle Fire HD 7 into quite the multimedia hub.
So there you have it – our first close-up look at the Kindle Fire HD 7. The tablet is available for pre-order now, and it’s releasing next week on September 14. With that $199 price point, it’s going to be hard to resist, and it seems safe to say that we can expect the Kindle Fire HD 7 to be a big hit this holiday season. Stay tuned.
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Nah… Why would I buy this when I can just buy the Nexus 7 that comes with the real Google GUI. It’s not worth 16G of extra memory. Besides, now Google will have to drop their price for the Nexus7 16G to compete. Why does Amazon spend extra cash to create and maintain a personal GUI when they would be better off just creating APPS to give all Tabs the same features. No SD Card?! No Buy!