Amazon's New Fire HD 8 Tablets Are Thinner, Lighter, and Faster
Amazon's Fire devices are often among the best values in the Android tablet space, offering decent power and quality screens for media consumption at a very low cost.
The company's latest Fire HD 8 tablets are no exception. The base model retails for a reasonable $99.99 ($10 more than the previous iteration), has a 30% faster processor than the last model, and runs for up to 13 hours on a single charge. Amazon has also updated the more powerful Fire HD 8 Plus model ($119.99), which offers even more improvements.
You get the same 8-inch HD screen on both tablets. Amazon hasn't revealed the resolution of either, but we expect it to be the same as the previous models (1,280 by 800 pixels). Amazon says the devices are thinner and lighter than before, but we haven't yet been able to confirm how much smaller they are than the older iterations.
Both the Fire HD 8 and HD 8 Plus now feature an improved hexa-core processor, though the company doesn't specify which one. For reference, the older models ran a quad-core chip. Amazon didn't bump up the base model's 2GB of RAM, but the higher-end variant benefits from an upgrade to 3GB of RAM. That extra memory should help it switch between apps and multitask more smoothly.
The Fire HD 8 Plus also has some charging advantages over the base model. It supports both 9W wired charging (Amazon includes a power adapter in the box) as well as (slower) wireless charging. For comparison, the more affordable model comes with a 5W wired charger and doesn't support wireless charging at all.
Both tablets are available in 32GB and 64GB configurations, with support for up to 1TB of additional storage via microSD cards. The Fire HD 8 is available in Black, Denim, or Rose, while the Fire HD 8 Plus comes
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