Amazon lights a Fire with its Kindle tablet (photos)

Company unveils three new e-readers and the Kindle Fire, its first foray into tablets and suddenly Apple's biggest competitor.

Natalie Weinstein

Sept. 28, 2011 11:36 a.m. PT

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Sarah Tew

Jeff Bezos unveils new Kindles

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos unveiled four new Kindle devices in New York this morning. Three of them are e-readers and one is the company's first foray into the tablet market.

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Sarah Tew/CNET

X-Ray search

The new Kindle Touch, which comes in Wi-Fi-only and Wi-Fi/3G versions, features X-Ray search that allows readers to research terms in books.

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Sarah Tew/CNET

Bezos' biggest announcement was the $199 Kindle Fire, a 7-inch Android-based tablet designed to undercut Apple's iPad.

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Sarah Tew/CNET

Game play

Bezos showed off his mediocre Fruit Ninja skills on the Kindle Fire.

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Sarah Tew/CNET

Fire's display

Bezos described the Kindle Fire's display as "beautiful." The LCD touch screen offers 16 million colors and 169 pixels per inch.

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Sarah Tew/CNET

Music streaming

The Kindle Fire will stream music, of course, and offer songs and albums through Amazon MP3.

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Sarah Tew/CNET

Silk browser

The Kindle Fire incorporates Amazon's new Silk browser, which offers split browsing through the Amazon Web Services Cloud. This means the software will learn your reading/surfing habits and cache pages you return to frequently. Amazon describes it as "cloud-accelerated" browsing.

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Sarah Tew/CNET

Fire features

The Fire's combination of features and a rock-bottom price is designed to attract "many millions" of buyers, Bezos said.

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Amazon.com

$79 Kindle

The new $79 Kindle is a 6-inch E Ink e-reader with Wi-Fi. It weighs 5.98 ounces and is designed to fit in a pocket. The device was released today.

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Amazon.com

Kindle Touch

The 6-inch Kindle Touch is an E Ink e-reader with no buttons on the front, a multi-touch screen, and a speaker for audio books. The Wi-Fi-only version costs $99. The Wi-Fi/3G version costs $149 and offers a free 3G connection. Both e-readers will be released November 21.

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Amazon.com

$199 Kindle Fire

The 7-inch Kindle Fire, set for release on November 15, will offer access to books, games, movies, TV shows, music, and Amazon's App Store. It will offer Wi-Fi, free Amazon Cloud storage, and Amazon's new Silk browser. Amazon Prime members can access unlimited, instant streaming of over 10,000 movies and TV shows.