Gadgetory

this is David with the verge and this is the Amazon Kindle Fire HDX this is the 7-inch model which cost two hundred and twenty nine dollars there's also an 8.9 inch version that starts at three hundred and seventy nine dollars this is the model that competes with the Nexus 7 in the iPad Mini and to do that Amazon's tweaked its formula a little bit more than ever Amazon's try to turn its tablets into more than just shopping malls basically screens on which you purchase Amazon content with the Fire HDX Amazon's trying to build a tablet that can compete with the best of them like basically every other tablet out there the HDX is a thin black plastic slab of a device it's a little more striking than the iPad Mini or the Nexus 7 though the matte back is all angles and speaker grilles with a pretty steep taper towards the back it's not uncomfortable but it doesn't feel quite as perfectly machined as some of the other great 7-inch tablets it's a little thicker than the Nexus 7 and imperceptibly heavier but it does feel really different in your hands I don't hate the look but I do hate the button placement there are awkwardly recessed power and volume buttons on the edges which are just impossible to find they're indistinguishable from one another so when you try to turn up the volume odds are good you're going to turn off your tablet and since the tablet works fine in any orientation it's constantly impossible to figure out where the buttons are in the first place the biggest upgrade by far here is the new display a 7-inch 1920 by 1200 screen that looks just like the Nexus 7 which is to say of course it looks fantastic bright with great viewing angles and great color reproduction amazon claims it's not as reflective as some other tablets but I don't buy that it's still really reflective the speakers sound great too even though they're on the back pointing away from you I really don't like the origami cover which is incredibly confusing and lost most of its magnetism after about three days which made it basically useless luckily you don't have to buy it honestly the hardware here isn't that important it's fine it's good enough it's totally usable in one hand and in either portrait or landscape as always with Amazon tablets the HDX is all about the software the Kindle Fire HDX ships with a new version of Amazon's fork of Android called fire OS 3.0 it comes with a lot of really important upgrades from more enterprise friendly features two huge upgrades for some of the core apps for one thing you don't have to cycle through all your apps and books in a clumsy carousel anymore there's finally just a grid view for all your apps the new email client works impressively well almost like a faux Gmail app the calendar and document editing suite are likewise much improved that by itself makes the Kindle Fire HDX a lot more appealing because it's now something you can use instead of a computer it used to be just a secondary for watching movies and buying stuff of course watching movies and buying stuff is still the whole goal of the Kindle Fire HDX and it's still just terrifyingly easy to buy a movie from Amazon's huge library or even watch it for free if you're a Prime member you can also now download Prime videos and watch them offline which is huge for me the experience of reading and watching movies is fantastic and it's constantly being upgraded by Amazon to xray is now more powerful than ever it'll show you song lyrics the music that's playing in a movie and everyone who's in the scene all the characters in a book and so much more Amazon's upgraded some of its magazines to much more optimized iPad like experiences and they look really great there's also still a huge Music Store still more books than you could read in a hundred lifetimes and a one-way click to buy diapers it's still an Amazon catalog yes but the HDX is a much better overall tablet than ever except for one crippling thing you can't download a lot of the best Android apps since Amazon forked Android and took it in a new direction there's no access to the Play Store or Google's other core services Amazon's app store is growing slowly but it's a long way from where it needs to be there's no candy crush no Netflix and only knockoff versions of about half the games I looked for even the apps that do exist seem to be outdated and unoptimized everything you can do runs faster and smoother than ever thanks to a 2.2 gigahertz Snapdragon 800 processor 2 gigs of RAM and an Adreno 330 GPU that's all pretty high-end and it's all pretty fast apps load and resume instantly from the multitasking menu games play really well movies never seem to stutter and it does all this while getting really solid battery life more than two days of heavy use and more like 4 or 5 in most cases it's not quite perfect there are definitely some odd laggy moments in fire OS but the Kindles used to be slow they're not anymore honestly though half the fun is when things break on the HDX that's when you get to hit the Help button on the home screen and activate Mayday Amazon's insanely ambitious new support system you tap the button then hit connect and within 15 seconds you're connected to an actual human whose face you see on your device they can't see you but they can see everything on your HDX and more importantly they can control the tablet so I had an install for an app I was trying to download the LinkedIn app and it didn't download and I'm just trying to figure out why that didn't work I got yeah like I can take a look at it sure don't we yeah yeah it it like I have the icon on here but it's showing up with a exclamation point on it down at the bottom every one I use it's very friendly and helpful came on quickly and could either show me how to do something or just do it for me I'm still not convinced this can scale as quickly as it might have to in part because using Mayday is just really fun and I did it basically for no reason a few times but it's a really incredible system so all of this comes for $229 and it's a fantastic deal if you're already invested in the Amazon ecosystem if you have a big watch list of Prime videos Kindle books everywhere magazine subscriptions a music library everything through Amazon you should buy the HDX it's not only a fantastic vessel for Amazon stuff it's just a really good tablet but if you're not completely wired into Amazon services you're going to find too much of what you want on Android is missing from the HDX and when the Nexus 7 offers an equally great display and the full power of Google and Android for the same $229 it's hard to recommend the HDX to everyone Google or Amazon you pick and choose wisely