Amazon’s Got Kindle Fire HDs For As Low As $139, Should You Get One?

Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD was the online retail giant’s second attempt at carving out a spot for itself in the growing tablet segment. Now nearly two years old, the Kindle Fire HDs are just about the cheapest mid-range tablets available, but are they worth a buy?

Popping over to Amazon’s page for the Kindle Fire HD, you’ll see the seven-inch version of the tablet on sale for as low as $139 for the 8GB version. That Kindle Fire unit comes “With Special Offers,” which means that Amazon will display special offers and sponsored screensavers when the tablet’s screen is locked. Basically, Amazon is giving you 15 bucks off the purchase price of the tablet in order to be able to show you some ads. If at some point later you want to do away with the ads, you’ll have to cough up the extra cash.

The low-end Kindle Fire HD isn’t the only model on sale; Amazon also offers a 16GB version of the smaller Kindle Fire HD and 16GB and 32GB units of the larger version, featuring an 8.9-inch display. Both models pack an HD display, meaning that they’ll show some pretty crisp video, games, and ebooks.

Sweetening the pot is the fact that Amazon is basically giving these devices away. The 8.9-inch 32GB Kindle Fire HD sells for $299, a full $200 less than a 16GB iPad Air. Amazon also allows you to pay for these devices in installments, dropping 20 percent up front and then paying the remaining 80 percent over the next four months.

So should you pick one up? Even with the Fire HD approaching impulse buy levels, we’d still have to advise against, except for a few use cases. As aforesaid, the tablet is coming up on two years since its release, and it wasn’t exactly roadrunner-fast when it first came out. Reviews at the time praised Amazon for its progress over the original, but the Fire HD still was a bit laggy at points.

There’s also a reason Amazon is able to get prices so low: the online retail giant is dead set on selling devices in order to pull people into its content ecosystem. Getting people to buy books, movies, music, games, and apps through Amazon is the ultimate goal behind the Kindle Fire HD and related devices, and Amazon is willing to take a loss up front to make that happen. Unfortunately for many users, Amazon’s Appstore isn’t as well fleshed out as Google’s or Apple’s, and what games and apps there are are likely to run a bit slower on the Kindle Fire HD hardware.

If you’re looking to jump into Amazon’s mobile ecosystem, though, we’d recommend picking up a Kindle Fire HDX. The extra letter on the name distinguishes the 2013 Amazon tablet from the 2012 model. The HDX is a lot faster than its predecessor, positively zipping through the Fire OS interface, as well as 3D games. It costs a bit more, but it’s worth the extra scratch.

So whom would we recommend the low-cost Amazon tablet for? Glad you asked. Starting at $139, the older Kindle Fire model is just about perfect to hand over to a child for entertainment. Amazon builds these devices to be tough, and the Amazon Appstore has a solid collection of child-oriented apps on offer, as well as a wealth of movies and television shows. Trust us: once you’ve handled a Kindle Fire HD, you’ll have no qualms about handing it over to the three-year-old with butterfingers.