Amazon announced its latest Fire HD tablet, called Fire HD 8, which brings the Alexa voice service to the tablets for the first time.

In a statement, the online retail giant said that the new device offers “12 hours of battery life, 50 per cent more RAM for faster performance, and 2x the on-device storage, plus support for up to 200 GB of additional storage via a microSD card—all for only $89.99”.

Kevin Keith, general manager of Amazon’s Fire tablet business, said: ““We believe in a different approach to tablets—providing premium products at non-premium prices—and customers love it. In fact, we’ve seen Fire tablet sales more than double year-over-year as a result.”

Alexa, Amazon’s cloud-based voice service, has previously been available via the company’s Echo in-home device. It offers voice-driven navigation of entertainment and internet content, and supports third-party extensions from companies such as Pandora and Spotify.

With voice-controlled services a hot topic, and with Google, Apple (Siri) and Microsoft (Cortana) all on the case, Amazon is clearly looking to make sure it is early to the party. And by extending from Echo to Fire tablets, it is also progressively increasing its user base.

Alexa will also be available on some other Fire tablets, with an over-the-air software update in the coming months. The cloud-based service is also said to “get smarter over time”, meaning more capabilities will be supported in future.

Fire HD 8 has an 8-inch (1280×800 pixel) screen, and is powered by a 1.3GHz quadcore processor and 1.5GB of RAM. 16GB and 32GB storage options are available (with microSD expansion).

There are four colour options: black, magenta, blue and orange.