At a media event Thursday, Amazon has now announced their new Kindle Fire HD. The new Kindle has an 8.9 inch, 1920 x 1200 display. The kindle is 8.8 mm think and has a high resolution screen with a polarizing filter that is supposed to cut down on glare.
The Kindle also has a front-facing HD camera and dual speakers. It also is the first tablet with dual band MIMO technology which Amazon has said makes it 41 percent faster than the latest iPad.
Preordering is available now and shipments will start on November 20. The price tag is $299 for the 16 GB version. The Kindle Fire HD with 4G LTE will run for $499 and comes with 32 GB of storage.
Amazon also announced a smaller 7-inch Kindle Fire HD for $199 with 16 GB. The screen resolution is at 1280 x 800 and has 11 hours of battery life.
A press release from Amazon said, "Less than one year ago, Amazon introduced Kindle Fire-combining 15 years of innovation into a fully-integrated, end-to-end service for customers. Kindle Fire quickly became the most successful product launch in the history of Amazon.com, earning over 10,000 5-star customer reviews, remaining the #1 best-selling product across the millions of items available on Amazon since its introduction, and capturing 22% of U.S. tablet sales in just nine months. Today, Amazon is excited to announce that it's taking on the high-end with Kindle Fire HD-the next generation of Kindle Fire."
Though Amazon has a lot of positives to say about their new device, reviewers don't necesarilly feel the same. Here are some media reviews for the new Kindle Fire HD:
Gizmodo: It's just not nearly as smooth as the Nexus 7 on Jelly Bean. ... It's bad enough that when you tap an icon, you wonder if you did it wrong, if maybe you didn't tap firmly enough."
NBC News: "Perhaps our expectations were too high or perhaps we'd been spoiled by the Nexus 7 and iPad, but the Kindle Fire HD seemed downright sluggish at times, lagging at odd moments."
Preorder yours here on Amazon.com.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
