The Kindle Fire HDX is a big step forward compared to its previous models. It's got a great new redesign. Most of all, it's the best small tablet you can buy.
A £199 7-inch tablet that's wired directly to Amazon. The third iteration in the Kindle Fire line, complete with some seriously powerful guts, a wonderful new screen, and an all new build. It's very true to the original Kindle Fire please-use-this-to-buy-stuff-on-Amazon-k-thanks vision, but in the most awesome way yet.
This tablet is perfect for people who want to dine on movies and books, and who are looped into the Amazon world. Prime members. Your kids, your parents. People who want a fast tablet with a pretty screen and great speakers for a good price. In other words, anyone who wants a tablet in the first place.
The design
An angular beauty. Where the original Kindle Fire was basically a rectangle, and the Kindle Fire HD was a subtly curved slab, the HDX is the best of both. The HDX has a sturdy, moulded magnesium body, covered in soft-touch plastic that gives a good grip but will be instantly marred by your finger grease forever.
The back edges of the HDX are angled back in a sort or trapezoidal way, which is not only visually striking, but makes ergonomic sense; your fingers rest flush against the tapering as they reach further towards the back centre.
The HDX is a bit more trim than its predecessor. It's less bulky around the edges, thanks to a slightly reduced bezel, but you'll still be hard-pressed to actually put it in your pocket. At 10.9 ounces, the HDX is a lot lighter than the 13.9-ounce Kindle Fire HD, and just a hair less heavy than the 10.7-ounce iPad Mini. The Nexus 7 still wins the portability battle though, weighing in at 10.2 ounces and being slim enough to fit in a pocket. But the HDX is a close second.
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The buttons are better than on the HDX than they were on the Kindle Fire HD in that they don't require like 10 seconds of hunting to find, but they're still a little awkward. The concave dips are best for fingertips and the worst for finger-sides, so the buttons are only optimal if you hold the tablet by pinching it on the bezels. Who does that? Also, when the tablet is right-side up (landscape, front-facing camera on the top), the volume buttons are on the back right side. Doesn't seem like a big deal until you're fist-first into a bag of chips and an explosion is just a little too loud. A minor gripe, but this is a trick the Nexus 7 gets right. Lefties, you got lucky this time.
The speaker placement, on the other hand, is perfect. The Kindle Fire HD was no slouch in the speaker department, but the HDX makes a massive improvement by moving the speakers to the top of the angled back, far away from any accidental finger intrusion.
Other tablets sound their most "tablety" as you graze a finger over a speaker and make the whole sound experience of your movie wobble awkwardly, but there's no such danger with the HDX.
Using It
A joy. When you're just looking at a list of the HDX's guts—2.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800, 2GB of RAM—it's almost puzzling why a tablet ostensibly designed for watching movies and reading books/magazines first and foremost needs these sort of muscle car specs. But as soon as you get your hands on it, everything makes an efficient kind of sense.
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Doing just about anything on the HDX is as pleasant as it is buttery smooth. With a 1920x1200 323 PPI screen—tied with the Nexus 7 2013 and second only to the upcoming HDX 8.9's 399 PPI screen for "highest-res tablet screen of any size"—the HDX has more pixels to push than ever, but they move beautifully. I can (and did!) spend entire minutes swiping through the carousel that acts as the HDX's home screen and just marveling at how fantastic it looks and feels.
And of course, that high PPI screen comes in handy for plenty. The high resolution lets videos pulled down from Amazon Prime really shine in high-res glory, and the screen's stellar contrast and deep blacks let it beat the Nexus 7 2013—its screen quality nemesis—when you put them side by side.
Books look great on the display, too, crisp enough that you can almost forget you're looking at a LCD screen under the right circumstances. The HDX's ambient light sensor—which will help by adjusting contrast (in addition to just brightness) in direct sunlight—makes an outside, directly sunlit read a little less painful than on other tablets, but it's still an unpleasant enough an experience that you'll want to avoid it.
Best of all though, the HDX positively sips battery power in reading mode. We were able to get 17 straight hours of screen-on reading time out of a full charge.
And then there's the audio quality, which is almost alarmingly good. There's a low range that really brings out the booms and bangs and the audio just kind of floats around you. It doesn't feel like the audio is coming from the tablet, it feels like it's just there.
Software
The Kindle Fire HDX has a number of different software tweaks, but there's one worth noting above all else. Historically the Kindle Fire UI has centered around a carousel. An album-flow of books, movies, apps, and whatever else you've got. It still does, but now, with Fire UI 3.0 you can swipe up and get at a more traditional app drawer.
This makes the HDX a whole different kind of tablet.
Xray for music is another welcome addition on the software side, if not an utterly crucial one. You probably don't need to be able to scan through the entire lyrics of a song, scrubbing back and forth in the audio by clicking the words, but it is also fun. And unlike Xray for movies, which is a valuable source of trivia, and Xray for books, which can be a life-saver for difficult literature, Xray for music is just sort of a toy. Nice when you remember it, but you'll often forget.
Best features
Movie- and TV-watching on the HDX is revelatory. Between the beautiful screen (if it's playing high-quality content, e.g. Prime or anything hi-res and native), the booming sound, and the hand-comfort afforded by the tablet's angled back, you'll wonder why you bother with a TV. The HDX isn't just a pretty face, or a set of powerful pipes, it's the whole portable package.
The overall scrolling, swiping, selecting, and browsing experience on the HDX is equally fantastic. Of course part of that is thanks to the 2.2 GHz processor, but Fire UI's new Jellybean 4.2.2 skeleton also helps. Unlike 2.0, Fire UI 3.0 is post-Project Butter, Google's big initiative to make stock Android fast, smooth, and then more fast, and more smooth. It shows. Fire UI is by its very nature heavy on swipes and bounces, and they all feel good.
That consistent ability to do stuff smoothly and without stutters translates to the world of apps too; the Kindle Fire HDX can run just about anything app you can throw at it and run it well. We tried Dead Trigger, a whole flock of Angry Birds, and handful of other games and all ran like a dream. Even with so many pixels to push, it seems like you'd be hard-pressed to throw something at the HDX that it can't handle. And man, it's sort of weird to be saying that about a Kindle Fire.
Some flaws
There are of course, issues like the lack of Google apps, but that's not so much a flaw as it is a choice you just might not be fond of. Still, it's a choice that comes with a lot of consequences. The Amazon App Store has better selection than it used too—most big players are there—but it's still cut off from the greater Android world in some meaningful ways. Apps you've already purchased through the Play Store (if any), do not transfer over to a Kindle Fire HDX. App updates pushed out over the Play Store have to come through Amazon before a Kindle gets ahold of them. It's probably easiest not to think of the Kindle Fire as an Android tablet at all; Fire OS is forked so strongly, it's an entirely different experience, with its own rules and, yes, its own apps. The fact that it shares anything with Android at all is more just a bonus than an integral part of what the Fire UI aims to be.
Test Notes
17 hours of reading time, just like amazon told us
11 hours of video time, on auto brightness which is also in keeping with amazons estimations
Should You Buy This?
With a starting price of £199, the HDX is set up squarely against the Nexus 7, and on most fronts the HDX wins. So even if the Play Store and stock Android is of singular importance to you, take a second to reconsider:
Like watching things on your tablet? The Kindle Fire HDX has a great screen—the best screen. And, it's got pipes for content hooked right up.
Like listening to things on your tablet without headphones? The Kindle Fire HDX has unmatched audio. The speakers have great range, great power, and they're perfectly placed, which is rarer than it should be.
Like smooth UI and being able to run whatever apps you want? The Kindle Fire HDX has a crazy processor. That 2.2 GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor is nothing to trifle with, and it's going to continue being a beast for a while. You're not going to find an app (in the Amazon App store) that this sucker won't run nicely. The Nexus 7—with its under-clocked Snapdragon 600—can't touch these guts.
Like checking your email and social networks and browsing the web on your tablet? The Kindle Fire HDX does this plenty good. The built-in email app and Silk browser are not best-in-class, but they work fine. They work well. You are by no means getting screwed or even really inconvenienced here unless you have absurdly specific needs.
Like reading books? The Kindle HDX is no e-ink slab, but between the contrast-adjusting light sensor and the totally bonkers 17-hour battery life in reading mode, this is the best reading experience you're going to get out of device that's not a devoted ereader.
If stock Android and the Play Store is more important than all that, you want a Nexus 7. Duh, you knew that already. But if there was ever a gadget to make you reconsider your (absurd? maybe not, but maybe so!) priorities, this is the one. The Kindle Fire line has often caught flak for not being a real Android tablet (true!) and somehow therefore not being a real tablet in a world of Play Store-enabled 7-inchers (not true!). But really, both of those are meaningless distinctions; the Kindle Fire HDX does the things that tablets do, and in almost every case, it does them the best.
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But for the time being, the Kindle HDX has eked out a victory, pulling waaaay ahead on the hardware front in a year where the Nexus 7 sort of let off the gas. There's still time in this race for Apple to make a move, but the HDX has established one hell of a lead to beat.
7-Inch Kindle Fire HDX Specs
Processor: 2.2 GHz Quad-core Snapdragon 800
Display: 7-inch IPS LCD
Resolution: 1920x1200 (323 ppi)
Memory: 2GB
Storage: 16GB/32GB/64GB
OS: Android 4.2.2 (Custom)
Camera: Front Cam
Video Recording: "HD"
Networking: WiFi (5GHz MIMO)
Weight: 10.7 ounces
Dimensions: 7.6" x 5.4" x 0.4"
Price: $230/$270/$310 + $100 for 4G LTE
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