offering a 7-inch HD display and a 1.2GHz dual-core CPU, the Amazon Kindle Fire HD appears to offer great value for money.
But it also needs to offer a stand-alone tablet experience that's capable of matching - or even surpassing - its illustrious rivals.
The Amazon Kindle Fire HD may be cheap, but ultimately it will still need to embrace all three of these key elements if it's to succeed.
If you still think of Amazon Kindles as those little monochrome holiday companions, then you should know that the Amazon Kindle Fire HD is a completely different beast.
Rather than focusing on the very specific job of downloading and reading electronic books, this is an all-purpose tablet that acts as a window onto Amazon's wider multimedia world - films, music, apps and games are all included in the Kindle Fire HD's remit.
The lack of a fixed home key adds to that minimalistic vibe (we'll discuss the effect that has on usability later). The only detail on the front of the device is a 1.3-megapixel camera for video calls - there's no rear-mounted camera here.
Despite that impossibly cheap price point, the Amazon Kindle Fire HD doesn't feel like a cheap device. It's solid in the hand, with none of the creak you find in many budget Android tablets.
There's a nice contrast between the Amazon Kindle Fire HD's smooth, glass front and its grippy matte back. It's quietly pleasing from a tactile perspective, even though it lacks the sheer machined precision and premium feel of Apple's tablets.
This isn't particularly apparent within the main Kindle Fire interface, but it certainly bears fruit when reading a book or browsing the internet, where small text remains clear and eminently readable.
This display is powered by a capable 1.2GHz dual-core TI OMAP 4460 CPU. While this is far from the most powerful processor on the market, it is very well balanced and certainly doesn't come up short when faced with demanding tasks like high-definition video and 3D games.
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