It’s going to be a big Christmas for tablets here in the UK, with Apple’s iPads duking it out with Android tablets for the affections of parents. Now Amazon has brought its latest devices to Blighty too.

The company’s Kindle Fire HD and Kindle Fire HDX both went on sale in the UK yesterday. The former is the company’s cheaper model, costing £119, while the latter is whizzier but more expensive at £199.

In other words, the former may be more suitable for parents on a budget buying a tablet for a child to own, while the latter – available in seven and 8.9-inch models – is a bit more powerful, so may be more of a family device.

In both cases, the appeal to parents is partly Amazon’s app store, which has a number of good apps for kids on its virtual shelves. Later this year, though, there’ll also be a really interesting feature called Kindle FreeTime, designed to help parents manage their children’s use of the device.

You’ll be able to choose what content on the tablet your kids can and can’t see, set a password so they can’t change those options, and also limit screen time by content type: so you can let them read as much as they want, but place a time limit on how long they can play games, for example.

Rival Android tablets include Tesco’s Hudl and Argos’ MyTablet, which are both at the cheaper end of things. Meanwhile, Apple is showing off its next iPads at a press launch next Tuesday. After that, we’ll have a much better idea about which tablets are likely to be hits with parents and children this Christmas.