Amazon’s Fire HD 8 tablet gets spec bump, Alexa, and a $90 price tag

If it’s a cheap tablet you’re after, then Amazon has a deal it’d love to sell you with the latest iteration of the Fire HD 8.

The signature feature for the new tablet is Alexa, the star of the Amazon Echo line that serves as an always-listening digital assistant.  Instead of just answering questions, however, Alexa will serve as an integral part of how you use the tablet with commands for launching apps, playing music, games, audiobooks, or answering topical queries like the weather and news.

The initiative is similar to how Siri and Google perform such actions on iOS and Android. Amazon is also bringing the invisible genius to existing Fire tablets, so there’s no need to upgrade just to get it.

But if you’re after a new tablet, you can’t argue much with the price. The 16GB version starts at $90, with a price bump to $120 for 32GB. Both of those price points include Amazon’s infamous Special Offers, which are ads that live on your lock screen. If you want to permanently nix those, you’ll pay $105 and $135, respectively. If the storage options aren’t enough, you can add in an SD card for up to 200 additional GB of space.

On the spec front, The Fire HD 8 offers a quad-core 1.3 GHz processor with 1.5MB of RAM, a 4,750 mAh battery that promises up to 12 hours of battery life, and a 1280×800 resolution screen that’s 189 ppi. These internals are certainly on the modest end, but keep in mind the baseline option is less than $100. The tablet is powered by Fire OS 5, which is based off the Android Open Source Project. Amazon has built in some Fire-specific features like Second Screen, X-Ray, and ASAP to distinguish its own operating system. Apps are available through the Amazon Appstore.

It’s up for preorder on Amazon, with a launch date of September 21.

*Post written by Derek Walter*