In September, Amazon held a press conference in New York to launch their 2011 line of Kindles, and they are beautiful. This full color version, known as the Fire (clever, I know) marks Amazon’s first entry into the tablet market. No small feat for a company that, up until a few years ago, had zero experience designing electronics. What started as a quick and dirty eReader has grown into an entire product line of sleek, web-enabled, and now Android powered devices, with a nice price range from $79 all the way up to the $199 tablet. While the top range Kinde isn’t going to kill the iPad anytime soon, it doesn’t really have to: still a couple months away from launch, the Kindle Fire is already the best Android tablet on the market.

While it’s technically an Android tablet, it won’t look or feel like one at all (probably a good thing). What Amazon has done is called ‘forking’ Android (an offshoot of Android, if you will), meaning, it’s been yanked from the Google family and is won’t receive any of the Android software updates or services. The upside, however, is that Amazon can take over software development, and curate their on Amazon Android App Store (what a mouthful) and create what they feel is a superior (read: Apple-like) experience, rather than the ‘free for all’ experience on Android (sorry, the Android Market has the ocassional IP violation and even malware. Scary stuff.).

On the marketing front, Amazon has done something quite clever here: you’ll notice they tout these superlow prices as including ‘Special Offers.’ What that actually means is you can get a discounted device, provided it’s loaded with Advertising. Anyone who’s used a Kindle knows that when it goes to sleep it displays images on the screen (usually classic figures in English literature). Amazon figured out that they could turn that space into adspace (thanks, Google), and subsidize the cost of the device. People who own these ‘ad’ funded versions claim it’s a minor nuissance. Whether it’s worth an extra few bucks is up to you, but the option is there.

The Kindle Fire has a 7-inch touch display, making it considerably smaller than an iPad, but includes a bevy of multimedia features (movies, music, etc all downloadable from the Amazon store), and is reported to have a nice 8 hour battery life.

Check out the $199 Kindle Fire here

Next up is the black and white Kindle Touch. Pretty self-explanatory, since many of the Kindle competitors already have touch. My concern with this device is with the touch keyboard. For my non-fiction reviews I write a ton of notes, and I’ve actually gotten pretty good at the Kindle’s hard-keyboard, so I’m gonna stick with mine for a while. Not to rag on the Kindle Fire, but you just can’t read a backlit display and expect the same pleasant reading experience–it’s hard on your eyes.

Check out the $99 Kindle Touch here

And here’s the Kindle Keyboard here for 139
And for the 3G model, click here to pick one up for $149.

If you don’t want to do the touch version or the keyboard, you can still get a new non-touch version, at an amazingly cheap $79. All of these devices have improved specs, and faster page turns, etc. So this is really an amazing deal, and it even has a nice streamlined interface. In just a few short years, Amazon really have learned a thing or two about Industrial Design.

Check out the (non-touch) Kindle Wifi for $79 here

At these prices, I can’t imagine how the Amazon Kindle (any of them) isn’t going to be a big hit this Christmas. Amazon has paid attention to the finest of details and the result is a very polished lineup. Competition is going to be fierce this Holiday Season, and frankly, if it makes reading more popular (and eReaders), then I’m all for it. Since picking up my first Kindle a few months ago, I haven’t looked back.