Last year, Amazon entered the HD tablet market with the Kindle Fire HD. It was a 7-inch tablet with a 1280×800 resolution, and some decent specs. Now that very same tablet is getting a refresh to become the cheap entry level tablet in Amazon’s Kindle Fire fleet.

Amazon announced today that the newly refreshed Kindle Fire HD is now available for pre-order and will be launching on October 2. The new Kindle Fire HD is nearly identical to last year’s model. It’s a little slimmer, sports better audio, but doesn’t really do anything new beyond that.

Well, there is one thing – the new Kindle Fire HD will retail for only $139. The original Kindle Fire went on sale for $199 two years ago, and now Amazon has managed to bring the price down of last year’s flagship tablet to an incredibly affordable $139. That price will get you a decent tablet outfitted with Amazon’s latest Android-based OS – Fire OS 3.0, or Mojito.

“Two years ago, we revolutionized the tablet industry with the breakthrough $199 price point for tablets—now we’re doing it again with the $139 price point,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Founder and CEO. “$139 now gets you a 1280×800 216 ppi HD display, a dual-core 1.5 GHz processor, Fire OS 3.0, dual speakers with Dolby audio, vast selection and Amazon-exclusive features like Prime Instant Video downloads, Second Screen, Kindle FreeTime, X-Ray and more.”

The Kindle Fire HD isn’t the most powerful tablet anymore, but it’s more than decent enough to serve a casual user’s everyday needs. At that price point, it’s almost hard to ignore too. That’s obviously what Amazon wants though as it uses the allure of low pricing to hook users into its ecosystem of digital sales.

Now then, you may be scoffing at the Kindle Fire HD and want something with a little more kick. Well, that’s where the newly announced Kindle Fire HDX tablets come in. They pack the latest hardware, and will be shipping later this year.

[Image: Amazon]