Amazon introduces new Fire tablets with Alexa
Yesterday Amazon announced new versions of the Fire 7 and Fire 8HD tablets. The new versions sport a thinner and lighter design and come in a variety of colours.
The Fire 7 retails for £49.99 and the Fire 8HD for £79.99 making the tablets a great value option. Also with Alexa built into both tablets, users can enjoy the benefits of Amazon’s voice assistant.
In Amazon’s own words:
Introducing Alexa on Fire Tablets
It just got even easier to enjoy endless entertainment on your Fire Tablet with Alexa, the cloud-based voice service that is the brain behind Amazon Echo. When connected to Wi-Fi, simply long-press the home button and ask Alexa to play your favourite song, open a game or read you the latest audiobook—Alexa provides quick access to the entertainment you want. Plus, you can ask Alexa for the news, weather, jokes, questions, and more—Alexa provides natural-language responses, combined with on-screen information on the tablet’s display. Third parties can publish Alexa skills, so you can ask Alexa to play music from services like RadioPlayer, and turn off the lights or adjust the temperature on compatible smart home devices.
Alexa will be available on the all-new Fire 7, all-new Fire HD 8, Fire, Fire HD 10, and past generation Fire HD 8 tablets via a free over-the-air software update in the coming weeks. Because Alexa is cloud-based, it gets smarter over time, meaning more Alexa capabilities for Fire Tablets will be delivered in subsequent updates.
Also released were Kids editions of the tablets. These are slightly more expensive at £99.99 and £129.99 respectively, but they come in a thicker and more durable case and have a two year “worry free” warranty for no questions asked replacement of broken tablets. The Kids editions also have age appropriate content restrictions.
- Despite best intentions, kids break things—Fire Kids Edition tablets come with a kid-proof case available in blue, pink or a new yellow colour option, and a two-year worry-free guarantee—if they break it, send it back and we’ll replace it. No questions asked.
- Parents don’t want to worry about the bill—Including access to tens of thousands of age-appropriate websites and YouTube videos, plus a year of Amazon Fire for Kids Unlimited, which offers thousands of books, videos, educational apps, and games that have been curated for age-appropriateness—at no additional cost.
The new tablets can be purchased directly from Amazon and will be released on June 7th.