Amazon refreshes its 7-inch and 8-inch Fire tablets, shipments begin June 7

Amazon is finally selling updated models of its budget-friendly Fire tablets. The new versions of its Fire 7 and Fire HD 8 devices, which use the company’s Android-based Fire OS and its Alexa digital assistant, are now available for pre-order for the starting prices of $49.99 and $79.99, respectively. Shipments will begin on June 7.

We have been waiting a while for Amazon to launch a new model of the ultra-cheap Fire 7 tablet; it was first released way back in the fall of 2015. This new version is supposed to be thinner and lighter than the original model, along with an improved 7-inch 1,024 x 600 IPS display. The battery life for the new Fire 7 has been upgraded to 8 hours on a single charge. It also has dual-band Wi-Fi hardware for the first time.

The Fire 7 has an unnamed quad-core 1.3 GHz processor, 1 GB of RAM, a VGA front-facing camera and a 2 MP rear camera. It will come in four colors (Black, Marine Blue, Punch Red, Canary Yellow). The $49.99 price tag is for the version with 8 GB of onboard storage and “special offers” (ads that run on the tablet’s launch screen), and there’s a microSD card slot for adding up to 256 GB of additional storage. You can also get the tablet with 16 GB of onboard storage for $69.99 and “special offers”. Both models can also be purchased with those “offers” disabled for $15 extra.

This is just the latest new hardware launch from Amazon, following the recent announcement of its Echo Look connected camera and the Echo Show touchscreen speaker. So far, Amazon has not released a refreshed version of its more expensive Fire HD 10 tablet, which launched in the fall of 2015 alongside the first Fire 7 tablet.