Amazon’s new Fire tablet is so cheap, it’s selling it as a six-pack.
Customers will be able to buy a single 7-inch Fire tablet for $50, or a bundle of six for $250. Put another way: You could give tablets to an entire family for less than the cost of one iPad mini. (Apple currently sells the iPad mini 2, which launched in 2013, starting at $269.)
The tablet, which is available for preorder today (Sept. 17) and ships Sept. 30, isn’t objectively great. But it’s solid for the price. A comparable tablet from Samsung, the Galaxy Tab 3 Lite, costs $140. And in side-by-side demos, the graphics for the Samsung device were noticeably slower compared with Amazon’s tablet.
Amazon has always positioned its tablet line as comparable to Apple’s iPads in performance but at friendlier price points. But with Fire, it’s hoping to lure in the most price-sensitive of buyers. Though overall tablet sales have been slowing, cheap slates have been growing at a faster clip than other connected devices.
This sort of bundle makes one vision of the future of tablets—cheap, ubiquitous Internet devices scattered around your home—financially accessible. Amazon believes the low price point will be so irresistible that customers will want multiple: to use as an alarm clock on the bedside table, to browse on while cooking in the kitchen, or to give as gifts this holiday season.