Amazon's new Kindle lineup: cheap tablets, tablets for kids, and its best e-reader yet

Amazon just removed one of the biggest roadblocks for sharing things you've bought with someone else in your family — at least for some of the things you buy off Amazon. Alongside its new line of Kindle announcements, it's introducing a new feature called Family Library that lets people in the same household share books, audiobooks, Prime Instant videos, and any apps or games that were bought off Amazon's Appstore. Not included on that list are things like purchased music, movies, or TV shows.

Yes, the Kindle Voyage is unquestionably the star of tonight's announcements from Amazon. But here's another thing that millions of people will likely be buying come October: a $79 Kindle with a touchscreen, faster performance, and more memory. (If you're wondering, that price is indeed "with offers.") Amazon's entry-level e-reader is seeing some nice upgrades this year, with an all-touch interface serving as the most obvious change. The company is officially bidding farewell to physical controls on Kindle. Sorry button fans; you can press those side bezels all you want, but nothing will happen. If you've ever picked up a Kindle Paperwhite, you already know how this works. Amazon's touch navigation hasn't led to many complaints for that product, and many consumers will probably be thrilled to see it move down the line. In terms of build, the base Kindle is starting to feel a bit blocky and uninspired, but it still carries out its core function — reading books — wonderfully.

It's also now 20 percent faster, Amazon says, and offers twice the built-in memory so you can carry more ebooks with you at any given time. Nearly all of the software features on the higher-up Kindles are available with the cheaper model, too. Those include Goodreads integration, X-Ray, Kindle FreeTime, and a vocabulary builder; the latter two are aimed at younger readers. And later this fall, Amazon will expand the feature set further when it adds support for family libraries and its $9.99-per-month Kindle Unlimited subscription service through a software update. All in all, it's exactly what you'd expect from a new Kindle: iterative but substantial improvements to a formula that Amazon has mastered. Pre-orders start right now, and it's shipping on October 2nd.

Amazon's cavalcade of tablet announcements this evening includes a surprisingly good offer to parents. It's the Fire HD Kids Edition. Essentially, the Kids Edition is a standard Kindle Fire HD tablet — at either the 6-inch or 7-inch size — with a pile of add-on features that are designed for kids and the havoc they tend to wreak. You pay a $50 premium over the standard version, which amounts to $149 for the 6-inch version and $189 for the 7-inch base model. But for that $50 you get a few special bonuses. The first is a one-year subscription to Amazon FreeTime Unlimited, the company's set of kid-friendly content that includes 5,000 games, videos, and books. You also get a gigantic case that protects the tablet and makes it easier for small children to hold. Last but certainly not-least is a 2-year, no-questions-asked warranty. Amazon representatives all but intimated that your child could put it in a blender — just send the busted bits back and Amazon will send you a new one.

There have been many attempts at making tablets for children, but the vast majority of them have been so poorly-specced or had so few apps that they have been more insulting than educational. Amazon, however, has been spending the last couple years building out both a massive content library and parental controls in its Fire OS software. The combination of those pieces with hardware that's cheap enough to entrust to your toddler makes this the first child-friendly option that could legitimately compare to just handing your iPad to your kid. The fact that your son or daughter won't have access to your work email is a nice bonus.

Amazon is laying out a huge number of updates today, including a spec-bumped Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 tablet and an all-new e-reader that's frankly amazing. But the most important update might be the one that technology enthusiasts are the most likely to dismiss: the lowly Kindle Fire HD. Amazon is releasing two versions (or more than a dozen, if you count the color, size, and kid-friendly variants), and they aim to redefine how consumers think of cheap Android tablets.

The Fire HD comes in two sizes, a 6-inch screen and a 7-inch screen, and in five colors. The 6-inch version, which basically feels like it's competing more with the iPod touch than with the iPad mini, starts at just $99 (with Kindle Special offers). The 7-inch version starts at $139 (also with offers), and both will begin shipping next month.

It's hard not to fall immediately in love with Amazon's new top-of-the-line e-reader. It's called the Kindle Voyage and it ticks off virtually every single hardware complaint I've had about the Kindle Paperwhite. Available for preorder now and shipping in October, it's selling for $199 and will sit alongside the Paperwhite and a new low-end Kindle — which gives Amazon a full lineup of three touchscreen e-readers (a GSM 3G version will be available for $60 more).

The Voyage is thinner, lighter, and ever-so-slightly smaller than the Paperwhite, but the big deal is the screen. Amazon has increased the resolution so that it reaches 300 pixels per inch, which makes text incredibly sharp and readable. I ratcheted the text size all the way down to the lowest setting and found it to still be crisp and sharp enough to read. At a more reasonable font setting, it's the best reading experience I've seen on an electronic device.