As you probably know, Amazon recently unveils their new Kindle products including the Amazon Kindle Fire HD in two sizes, a 7-inch and an 8.9-inch version, with the 8.9-inch model being the high end version but still priced reasonably lower than rival slates with the same kind of specifications, and starting at 299-bucks a pop. So with this in mind, does the differences between the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9 and new iPad basic models warrant that 200-buck price difference?

Well the guys over at Android Authority have decided to find out and as such have done a comparison between the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9-inch and the Apple iPad 3, or new iPad if you prefer, to see if that 200-buck price difference is justified.

As such the guys have gone into depths on several areas such as the display, operating system, ecosystem, internal hardware, release date and price on both the new iPad and Kindle Fire HD 8.9, and if you wish to check out all they say you can do so by hitting up their website, but here we’ll just give our readers the highlights of the comparison.

Kicking off with the display, the iPad 3 sports the Retina Display at 9.7-inches diagonal with a 2048 x 1536 pixel resolution, and a PPI of 264. The Amazon Kindle Fire HD sports a 8.9-inch diagonal display with a 1920 x 1200 pixel resolution and a smaller PPI of 254, and they say the Kindle Fire HD display is almost as sharp as the iPad 3, but also has anti-glare tech, and as such when it comes to the display the quality difference is virtually indistinguishable, so it is a draw.

What about processor, RAM and GPU, well the Kindle Fire HD has a TI OMAP 4470 chip, which is said to be faster than the Tegra 3 SoC, and although the 1.5GHz dual core processor is said to be faster than the Tegra 3 1.4GHz quad core, experts believe the GPU in NVIDIA’s SoC is better than the TI OMAP 4470. The new iPad has the A5X chip, which is said to be the fastest on the market, and the guys conclude this round is won by the new iPad due to sporting a better GPU.

The operating system and ecosystem, the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9 has a heavily modified version of Android Ice Cream Sandwich, whilst the new iPad has iOS 5, with both operating systems being ‘walled gardens’ and as such if the user wants loads of apps then opt for the iPad 3 or if the user wants loads of movies and books opt for the Kindle Fire HD.

When if comes to that all important price, all but entry level models of the new iPad are priced 230-bucks above the corresponding Kindle Fire HD versions (when available) probably due to Amazon offering their slate at cost, and making little profit if any, and makes their profit from content whilst Apple makes most of their profit on the iOS tablet due to its high price.

In conclusion the guys say that the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 is almost as powerful as the new iPad, features a similar sharp display albeit smaller, along with that same ‘walled garden’ OS, and as such the guys say they cannot see any viable reason why customers should pay 230-bucks more for the new iPad just because the tablet sports that Apple logo.

So what are our readers views on this matter, do you think the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9 is just as good as the new iPad?