Amazon said on Thursday that its 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD is now shipping, just in time to be wrapped and adorned with a bow this holiday season. The Wi-Fi-only version can now be purchased directly from Amazon starting at $299 by heading here. Alternatively, customers can purchase the tablet at Best Buy starting Friday, and then Staples and Radio Shack in the coming weeks.
The Kindle Fire HD 8.9-inch 4G model will ship next week, Amazon said.
"Kindle Fire HD has been Amazon’s best-selling product worldwide since launch, and that was before we even started shipping the best tablet we’ve ever built," said Dave Limp, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. "With the holiday season upon us, we’re excited to make our $299 Kindle Fire HD 8.9-inch available early."
This is the highest spec Amazon tablet yet, sporting an 8.9-inch 1920x1200 resolution display at 254 ppi, and dual-band Wi-Fi connectivity, allowing users to access the less-used 5 GHz band when connecting to a dual-band network. Powering this device is a dual-core TI OMAP 4470 SoC with an Imagination SGX544 graphics engine that's capable of over 12 billion floating point operations per second.
The new tablet also packs dual stereo speakers with Dolby Digital Plus, a front-facing HD camera, and a battery promising up to 10 hours. There's also plenty of Amazon exclusives like X-Ray for Movies, X-Ray for Textbooks, Immersion Reading, Whispersync for Voice and Whispersync for Games.
As previously stated, Amazon will begin shipping the 4G LTE model next week, November 20, priced at a heftier $499 or more. For connectivity on the go, the tablet's 12-session AT&T 4G data package will mean a one-time payment of $49.99, and include 250 MB per session of data, a $10 Amazon Appstore for Android credit and 20 GB of Amazon CloudDrive. This package will only be available for the first year of service.
"Customers can also choose to upgrade to 3 GB or 5 GB data plans from AT&T directly from the device," Amazon said. "Kindle Fire HD 8.9-inch features the latest 4G LTE technology for ultra-fast mobile broadband, letting customers connect to the internet, stream, and download at speeds even faster than Wi-Fi. Unlike some 4G devices, Kindle Fire HD includes support for 10 bands, so even when a customer is in a place with no 4G LTE network they’ll fall back to the fastest available network and won't lose coverage."
For more information about the Kindle Fire HD 8.9-inch, head here. Pricing information is located below:
Kindle Fire HD 8.9 16 GB – $299 (with ads) or $314 (without ads)
Kindle Fire HD 8.9 32 GB – $369 (with ads) or $384 (without ads)
Kindle Fire HD 8.9 4G LTE 32 GB – $499 (with ads) or $514 (without ads)
Kindle Fire HD 8.9 4G LTE 64 GB – $599 (with ads) or $614 (without ads)