Amazon has lowered the price of its entry level Kindle and unveiled a new version of its Kindle Fire tablet.
The company describes the new 6” E-ink Kindle, which goes on sale on September 12th, as the “lightest and smallest Kindle” to date and has cut the price to £69. Pre-order today.
Jorrit Van der Meulen, VP Kindle, Amazon EU, said: “we are excited to introduce the new latest-generation Kindle—still incredibly small and light with all the features customers love about Kindle, including a high-contrast e-ink display that reads like real paper, with no glare, even in bright sunlight—now even faster and with new, improved fonts.”
Amazon also announced that the Kindle Fire tablet would go on sale in the UK on October 25th, more than a year after the original model launched in the US. The device will display adverts via “Sponsored Screensavers”. A previous model of the Kindle allowed such adverts to be switched off in return for an additional one-off fee.
The standard 8GB Kindle Fire will retail for £129 (ore-order today). A HD version will be available win 16GB and 32GB versions with pricing starting from £159 (pre-order).
“Kindle Fire HD is the world’s most-advanced 7” tablet, with a stunning customised HD display, the fastest Wi-Fi, exclusive Dolby audio, powerful processor and graphics engine, 11 hours of battery life, and 16 GB of storage for all your HD content,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Founder and CEO.
“Not only does Kindle Fire HD feature the most advanced hardware, it’s also a service. When combined with our enormous content ecosystem, unmatched cross-platform interoperability, and standard-setting customer service, we hope people will agree that Kindle Fire HD is the best 7” tablet available anywhere, at any price.”
Earlier this week Amazon rival Kobo announced its own line-up of new eReaders and US retailer Barnes & Noble recently announced plans to bring its nook reader to the UK.