Gadgetory

the Kindle Fire HDX 7 is Amazon's new flagship tablet it costs two hundred and twenty nine dollars for 16 gigabytes of storage 269 for 32 gigabytes and there's a 64 gigabyte option for 309 dollars the HDX is smaller thinner and lighter than the company's previous 7-inch er and has a 1920 by 1200 resolution screen both the power button and volume rocker have been moved to the back and while the buttons are easier to find and press compare it to the previous fire having them on the back takes a little getting used to sometimes when I'm holding the tablet it's easy to forget whether it's the power or volume that's on the right or left side I do think it's really comfortable to hold in one hand though it's well balanced light without feeling to aerate there's a microUSB port and a headphone jack but the micro HDMI port from the previous fire is gone there's a front-facing camera but no back camera the new version of the fire OS is more a refinement over last year's than something completely new the Carousel returns but swiping up from the home screen now brings up an array of your installed apps and thanks to the high resolution all menu items can now fit on the screen at once the web experience has finally been fixed now feels fast without the bugs and sluggishness that plagued previous iterations also email and calendar apps have received some small but useful interface improvements managing your storage is now a lot easier as items can be found by typed and delete it on the fly and while we're on the subject 16 gigabytes of storage about 10 gigabytes effectively is fast becoming too small if you want to store HD content the 1080p version of The Avengers would not fit on the tablet even with no additional apps or content installed I instead have to settle for the 720p or standard def versions Mayday is Amazon's new customer service feature for Kindle Fire owned if you're having trouble with something tap the Mayday button and within 15 seconds police that's Amazon's goal a real-time video chat window but customer service rep will appear the rep can't see you but they can take control of the system they can also draw on it in order to illustrate how to do whatever it is you need to do it's a pretty cool feature but we'll have to see how well that 15-second response time holds up when thousands are tapping the button daily x-ray for music lets you sing along accurately to your favorite songs an x-ray trivia is a pretty effective way to learn more about your favorite movies or TV shows it seems Amazon finally got the horsepower to interface overhead balance just about right thanks to the new Snapdragon 800 processor pages and menus are accessed near immediately gaming performance hits about Nvidia shield level maybe a bit lower but definitely Trump's the new Nexus 7 in frame rate I think we can safely say that Kindle Fire HDX 7 is a good tablet with definite improvements in performance and design made a is an intriguing a potentially useful feature but will require a lot more field testing before we can give a final judgment call there are plenty of other small tweaks and changes I haven't even mentioned and we're still waiting for a few new features to be ready like Goodreads and a video fling feature before we can give them a fair assessment however keep checking out my full review at cnet.com to see how things continue to evolve I'm Eric Franklin and this has been a first look at the Amazon Kindle Fire HDX 7 you