Amazon Fire HD 6 raises the bar on low-end tablets

Starting at only $99, Amazon's smallest tablet every is also it's cheapest. But is it any good? I'm Xiomara Blanco for CNet, here taking a look at the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 6. The petite six inch tablet sports a new design for the Kindle Fire line. It looks similar to the HDX series but more plasticky and less angular. The top edge houses a headphone jack, microphone pinhole, micro USB port and power button, with the volume marker on the left corner and the solitary monospeaker on the bottom edge. It's incredibly comfortable to hold in one hand yet at 0.63 pounds it's a bit heavy. The Kindle Fire HD 6 houses a 1.5 gigahertz quad core processor, one gigabyte of ram and eight gigabytes or 16 gigabytes of internal storage. It ships with the new Amazon Sangria operating system and it's very similar to last years Mojito. For casual use like checking email, reading and browsing the web the tablet performs smoothly. [MUSIC] Sometimes, it was slow to respond when loading new magazines or books. And it was occasionally buggy when trying to execute menial tasks. But the kinks were rare. Our review unit came with only eight gigabytes of internal storage. But Amazon also offers a 16 gigabyte model. Mean to be used with cloud content, the eight gigabytes were spent quickly. The Kindle Fires don't offer expandable memory options. So juggling content between the cloud and your device. Is necessary. HD video looks sharp on the 1280 by 800 pixel resolution IPS LCD screen. Plus it's also clear and easy to read, unfortunately there's no ambient light sensor, so you much manually adjust the screen brightener [MUSIC] The Kindle Fire HD 6 offers up a pair of underwhelming cameras. The front-facing VGA shooter is fuzzy, yet meets the basic requirements for video conferencing. And the two megapixel rear camera isn't much better. Though there's a manual focus option, photos don't come out very sharp and colors are washed out with a bluish tint to them. The Kindle Fire HD 6 starts at $99 for the eight gigabyte version. Or $119 for the 16GB model. Why would you choose the 6 incher over the Kindle Fire HD 7? Aside from saving $40 for an 8GB model or $30 on a 16GB model, the HD 6 is extremely compact and easy to use in one hand. So if your looking for something to primarily use on the go it's a small price to pay for a small device. For more in-depth look check out my full review on cnet. Once again I'm Ziamara Blanco, and this has been a first look at the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 6 tablet.