Amazon is filling in the gaps in its Fire tablet lineup, small though they are. Starting today, you can order the Fire HD 8. As the name implies, this is an 8-inch Fire tablet with an HD screen; one inch larger than the regular Fire. However, it does offer something new for Amazon's tablets—the Alexa voice assistant.As usual, this is a budget tablet with special offers as the default. The specs aren't amazing, but they look solid. Of note: Amazon says the tablet takes around 6 hours to charge fully. Quick Charge this is not.

SPECS

Display

8-inch 1280x800

SoC

1.3GHz quad-core (model unclear)

RAM

1.5GB

Storage

16-32GB plus microSD card

Battery

 4,750 mAh

Speakers

Stereo with Dolby audio

Software

FireOS 5

This will be the first Amazon tablet with Alexa support. So, you'll be able to issue voice commands and search queries to your tablet just like it was an Echo speaker. Alexa is activated by long-pressing the home button. This feature will not be enabled at launch, but will be added via an OTA update "soon." The software will be otherwise the same as what ships on other Fire tablets—a heavily modified version of Android that's a little more recognizable as Android these days. Amazon's app store and digital content will be built-in as usual.

With special offers, the Fire HD 8 with 16GB is $89.99. Removing special offers adds $15 and doubling the storage adds $30. It comes in a variety of colors as well.

Source: Amazon