Amazon catapulted us into the age of budget Android tablets years ago with the original Fire, and its slates (surprisingly) still make up a large segment of the Android tablet market. That's not because of any particularly innovative designs or features. Amazon releases cheap new Fire tablets all the time that look almost exactly like the previous version. That's the case today with the new Fire HD 8. It's like the old HD 8 but with hands-free Alexa support.Amazon keeps the focus of the Fire tablets very, very mainstream. Thus, we get specs like "HD display with over 1 million pixels." You can get a little more detail if you dig in. That display is 1280x800, and there's a 1.3 GHz quad-core processor with just 1.5 GB of RAM. You don't need a ton of RAM with Amazon's simplified Fire OS, which is still based on Android Lollipop.You'd be hard-pressed to spot any difference between the new tablet and the last refresh. As far as we can tell, the only improvement is hands-free Alexa. So, you can shout at the tablet from across the room and have it do things with Amazon Alexa. The Fire HD 8 comes in black, yellow, blue, and red colors for $79.99 with 16GB of storage—32GB will cost you $109.99. Both versions ship on October 4th. The same device will also come in a Kids variant with a rugged case and no-questions-asked warranty.

PRESS RELEASE

UPDATE: 2018/09/06 12:01pm PDT BY

New Fire OS

Amazon says the new Fire HD 8 will ship with an updated version of Fire OS that is based on Android Nougat. Neat.

Source: Amazon