The Amazon Kindle Fire HDX ($229/16GB with Special Offers) is the easiest tablet in the world. Its new Mayday remote video support feature is as revolutionary as Apple's Genius Bars once were, giving you unlimited, personalized video support for all of your tablet needs. Combined with an extremely easy-to-use interface and very solid specs for the $229 price, the Kindle Fire makes an ideal first tablet—as long as you're comfortable buying your media from Amazon. For the tech-savvy PCMag.com reader, though, the more user-configurable Google Nexus 7 remains our Editors' Choice for small tablets.
Physical Features
With each generation of the Kindle Fire, the tablet has become classier looking. This one feels downright premium, with one exception: A huge bezel around the 7-inch, 1,920-by-1,200 323-pixel-per-inch screen. The back panel is angled and mostly soft-touch, with a big embossed Amazon logo. Sizeable Power and Volume buttons on the back edges are a big leap forward from the previous-gen Fires.
At 7.3 by 5 by .35 inches (HWD) and 10.7 ounces, the HDX is wider than the Google Nexus 7 but not as wide as the somewhat awkward Apple iPad mini. The Nexus 7 is certainly easier to use in a single hand in portrait mode, but the HDX is still usable.
The IPS LCD screen is remarkably sharp, marred only by a barely noticeable blue glow around the edges. Dual stereo speakers sit on the top back edge; they give a sense of space, but offer almost no bass. Fortunately, you get a lot more low end when you plug in headphones.
The Kindle Fire HDX suffers from the fate of all slim, small, super-high-resolution tablets, which is so-so battery life. I got 5 hours, 40 minutes playing video with the screen set to full brightness, which doesn't compare well with the 7 hours, 37 minutes the Nexus 7 turned in on the same test. Amazon said a firmware update before the ship date may improve battery life; I hope so, because the company claims 11 hours of video viewing time.
We reviewed the Wi-Fi-only version of the HDX, which supports 802.11 b/g/n on the 2.4 and 5GHz bands. Tested side by side with a Nexus 7 against a Meraki 802.11n router, the HDX had slightly better performance than the Nexus 7 did, especially in weak signal areas at the edge of the router's coverage zone.
Beyond the $229 base model, you get some options, which you can mix and match. $15 cleanses the lock screen of ads. $40 more gets you up to 32GB storage; $80 gets you 64GB. $100 more buys an AT&T or Verizon LTE modem, which work with standard carrier tablet service plans. The LTE version of the HDX has a GPS radio; the Wi-Fi version does not. Both versions integrate Bluetooth 4.0. Neither offers NFC.
Fire OS 3.0 and Performance
The new Fire runs "Kindle OS 3.0 Mojito," which is a fork of the open-source version of Android 4.2.2. It's compatible with most Android apps, but has an entirely different interface.
Like all Kindle Fires, the HDX starts with a clear, text menu across the top of the device: Shop, Games, Apps, Books, Music, Videos, Newsstand, Audiobooks, Web, Photos, and Docs. Below that, there's a carousel of big thumbnails of your most recently used media. Below that, new to OS 3.0, is a more traditional grid of apps.
Each of the tablet's main sections, meanwhile, is divided into three parts: Cloud (stuff you've purchased, but might not be on your tablet), On Device, and Store. If you're getting the idea that this tablet is an ideal way to shop at Amazon's stores, you're right. That's always been at the heart of the Kindle Fire. Amazon doesn't bar competitors—Netflix and Pandora, for instance, are free in Amazon's Appstore—but it makes accessing Amazon content easier than anyone else's content.
The Kindle Fire comes with a $5 credit for Amazon's Appstore, which has a very wide range of high-quality Android apps. If an app isn't available in Amazon's store (like, say, Google Chrome), you can sideload it by dragging and dropping its APK package file over from a PC or Mac; during testing, I did that with no problem. Unfortunately, the only legal way to get those APK files, for most apps, is to download the app onto another Google-ized Android phone, back it up onto an SD card, drag it off onto your PC, and then drag it to the Fire. That isn't exactly a no-brainer.
The Kindle Fire runs a 2.26GHz, quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon Pro 800 processor; technically, that's one of the fastest processors available in a tablet today. Our Browsermark and Antutu benchmarks crashed on this tablet, and Geekbench 3 wasn't available. The tablet outpaced the Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone on Geekbench 2, though, and it was itself slightly outpaced by the Nvidia Tegra 4-powered HP SlateBook X2 tablet. The tablet also showed 51 frames per second on the GLBench Egypt HD benchmark, indicating good gaming performance.
Browsermark crashed because the HDX runs Amazon's Silk browser, which does some cloud-based pre-fetching tricks that speed up the appearance of some pages to an insane extent. I loaded NYTimes.com in 1.9 seconds, Amazon's home page in two seconds and CNN.com in 6 seconds. The home page for a local Thai restaurant also appeared in under two seconds, as did PCMag's mobile page. That's pretty wild.
To test gaming performance, I ran Asphalt 8 and got smooth, clean game play. The only issue I discovered was that some games (like Triple Town) didn't seem ready for the new higher-resolution screen with equally high-res graphics.
Amazon also updated the Kindle Fire's email, calendar, and contacts apps. They're now all similar in capabilities to the apps included in Android 4.2.2; the email app can do push from Gmail (although not Google Apps accounts) and shows threaded mail with buddy icons. The Kindle reading app handles PDFs adroitly.
Mayday
Mayday is Amazon's most exciting feature. Pull down the notifications bar, press a button, and an Amazon rep appears in a video window within fifteen seconds, 24/7. I tried Mayday half a dozen times at various times of day and the rep always appeared quickly, although I got the same guy twice, which tells me they didn't have a huge number of people working yet.
The Mayday advisor can see your screen, draw on it, and move things around. He or she can't see you. The advisors had no problem answering tech support questions or helping me navigate Amazon's store, but they wouldn't give me any answers that required editorial judgement.
For instance, asking about how to mirror my screen on a TV and how to switch between multitasking programs were easy. When I said, "I want a great new science fiction book to read," the advisor pointed me to the science-fiction section of Amazon's bookstore. When I asked about children's books with a read-along function, the advisor sent me to the Immersion Reading directory in the bookstore.
So Mayday staff members aren't going to help you pick your media, and they won't solve your life problems. But they'll make the Kindle Fire experience relatively painless, which is a huge step beyond the limited, poking-in-the-dark tech support you get with tablets like the Nexus 7 and Samsung Galaxy Tab line.
The one big question about Mayday is whether it will scale. Handling the questions of a few nosy reviewers is one thing, but what about when everyone and their brother starts dialing in? Jeff Bezos himself told me that they're prepared, but only time will tell.
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