Tablet – A new tablet from Apple draws the crowds (we may witness that soon – a special Apple event is scheduled for October 16), but others not so much. Whichever manufacturer you think of, tablets are mostly part of a larger product release. However, the latest tablet model from Amazon may be a little different. The Fire HD 6 is the latest tablet Amazon offers in its Fire tablet line.
For some time Amazon was the number two player in the tablet market, before Samsung took this spot away from Amazon. The company still has a solid following for its tablets as it offers a complete infrastructure that allows the user access to streaming audio and video from Amazon Prime.
The Fire HD 6 comes, as the name suggests, with a 6″ HD display (1280 x 800) and sells for $99. Of course, at that price we would expect a pretty low powered, low cost tablet but that is not entirely true. For example, the display comes as an IPS LCD and the device sports a quadcore processor. It may not be the latest and fastest processor available, but nevertheless it comes with two high power cores running at 1.5 GHz and two low power cores running at 1.2 GHz. The included cameras are a little on the weak side with a 2 MP rear camera and a VGA front facing one. There is also no radio connectivity, which is normal at this price point.
The reports from several testers are actually pretty positive. The Wall Street Journal states that this is “Finally, a $100 Tablet Worth Buying“. Others are not as enthusiastic, but are still positive in their reviews.
Of course, $99 price is the lowest priced version, which in this case is an 8 GB device with ‘Special Offers”. This means that if you don’t want advertising, you have to pay a little more and if you want the 16 GB version, it is also a little more. The 16 GB version without ‘Special Offers’ is selling for $134. There is also a children’s version for $149 that comes with a heavy duty case and 2 year warranty. As usual, there is no SD card slot but the device comes with unlimited cloud storage for Amazon content. – Norbert Hildebrand
