When Amazon launched their new Amazon Fire tablet models for 2015 – 2016 yesterday, they removed their other Fire and Kindle Fire tablets from the sight of customers, and for a short while the tablets were not even available for purchase, much to the alarm of a few people who were contemplating buying just these tablets.
Well, for a while still, most of the Fire, Fire HDX, and Kindle Fire HDX models that were launch between 2013 and 2014 will still be available, and some of them are now considerably cheaper than they were at launch. This applies to the US in particular, though in other markets where Amazon have online stores, some of the older Fire tablets will no longer be sold any longer.
After all we have to consider the division between the powerful and highly spec’d Amazon Fire tablets of 2013 and 2014 vs the budget tablets Amazon launched yesterday. Amazon’s top end HDX tablets had high specs all around, and were built with quality too. The new Fire line is probably very solid and have a well executed manufacturing too, but they no longer have the high resolution and some of the particularities of the older tablets.
So here are the old models that are still available new, and in some markets, outgoing models that will soon no longer be available.
2013 – 2014 Amazon Fire Tablets
Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 (2013-2014)
This was the first HDX model of the 8.9-inch Kindle Fire. With a 2560 x 1600 resolution display of good quality and very high 339 ppi, this became quite the hit. With a powerful 2.2 GHz Qualcomm Snapdraon 800 processor and 2GB of RAM, it was very powerful then. And with a 12 hour battery life and dual band 802.11 a/b/g/n it had some good Wi-Fi too. This tablet even has a 8MP rear camera with flash and Dolby Digital Plus.
With a weight of 384 grams and a thickness of 7.8 mm, it was even light and thin. It was also the first generation to get the Mayday Button. This model has gone down in price since, and is now sold for $329:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BHJRYYS/
Fire HDX 8.9 (2014-)
The Fire HDX 8.9 that launched in 2014 was built on the predecessor, but got an even more powerful 2.5 GHz Qualcomm processor, got Dolby Atmos sound, lost a little weight still to 375 grams, and got complete dual-band 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi cover.
Even if this tablet has been given a discount since launch, it still costs $399 though, but has been given some new services since launch, and now comes with the Amazon Underground too that was announced for Fire tablets on September 17: http://www.amazon.com/Fire-HDX-8-9-Display-Wi-Fi/dp/B00HCNH90W/
Kindle Fire HDX 7 (2013-)
This tablet was launched in 2013 as the Kindle Fire HDX. This is a 7-inch Full HD tablet who’s main rival is the Nexus 7 FHD. It has a 1920 x 1200 resolution, over 400 nits brightness, is powered by a 2.2 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor and has 2GB of RAM.
It has a good battery life of 11 hours, has dual-antenna and dual-band 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, Dolby Digital Plus stereo speakers, and is now upgraded with Amazon Underground too, and it has the Mayday Button from before if you need live help from Amazon with the settings on the fly:
http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Display-Wi-Fi-Previous-Generation/dp/B00CYQPMJC/
Fire HD 7 (2014-)
When Amazon announced the new generation of Fire tablets yesterday, they announced the continuation of the Fire HD 6, the 6-inch tablet they introduced in 2014, but they didn’t announce the continuation of the Fire HD 7. Well, the Fire HD 7 will stay with us alongside the Fire HD 6. The reason is that they are built on the “same batch” at the factory and share the same components apart from the Fire HD 7 being one inch larger and having stereo speakers.
But at $129 now, and that’s on sale, the price means that it “clashes” with the $49 Fire 7, so it’s also understandable that Amazon doesn’t want to market these two tablets alongside each other, since that would probably confuse people quite a bit.
Fire HD 7 is powered by a quad-core 1.5 GHz MediaTek MT8135 processor, has 1GB of RAM, and 8GB/16GB storage options, but no microSD card slot, since this was first introduced on the Fire tablets yesterday. The battery life is 8 1/2 hours, while it has single-band 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, a 0.3MP front camera, and a 2MP rear camera.
So resolution aside, there is very little between this tablet and the newly introduced $49 Fire tablet, since almost all the other specs are the same. But there it is nonetheless:
http://www.amazon.com/Fire-HD-Display-Wi-Fi-GB/dp/B00IKPZ5V6/
24 hours after the launch of the new 2015-2016 generation Amazon Fire tablets, the Fire 7, Fire Kids Edition, and the Fire HD 8 have all become top 10 tablet bestsellers already
Bestselling Tablets today
– Jim Miller
