Amazon has never been one to shy away from forging its own path. Founded in an era that’s as well known for failed businesses as it is for successful ones, Amazon cleared a way for online retail dominance and became a leader in e-books and Web services and a quiet underdog in the digital distribution of music and video. And no single product gives consumers better access to all the company has to offer than the Amazon Kindle Fire HDX.

Amazon has been moving away from the event-based product launch—the latest updates to the Kindle Fire were announced through targeted media interviews and a relatively quiet marketing approach, despite this being the Kindle's largest departure from, and greatest improvement over, the preceding models. Having missed the marketing mark ingloriously in the past, can Amazon compete where others have failed—against the Nexus 7 in value and the iPad in user experience? Let’s find out.

The body and build

The myriad Kindles that came before the HDX were never bad-looking devices. Black slates with little adornment have been a safe approach for Amazon, and for what it’s worth, those past Kindles were at least well-executed, nondescript slabs of black plastic. That’s not to say that a little style wouldn’t have won them some additional praise, though.

Specs at a glance: Kindle Fire HDX 7" Screen 1920x1200 7-inch (323 PPI) LCD touchscreen OS Fire OS 3.0 (Android 4.2.2) CPU 2.15GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 RAM 2GB GPU Adreno 330 Storage 16GB, 32GB or 64GB Networking Dual Band 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth Ports Micro-USB 2.0, headphones Camera 720p front camera Size 185.4 mm × 127 mm × 8.9 mm (7.3" × 5.0" × 0.35") Weight 303 g (10.7 oz) Battery ?? Price Starts at $229

The HDX moves things along by just a hair. The gentle slopes of the prior models give way to a more angular design, with a single soft-touch plastic shell comprising the bulk of the body. The back rises away from the front like a flattened pyramid and plateaus to a swath of grippy plastic. In lieu of grip-enhancing textures, the angular approach gives your fingers a place to make purchase on slightly opposed facets. One long edge of the back foregoes the soft stuff for a glossy plastic element that houses the stereo speakers. The short edges of the back panel make room for power and volume buttons, leaving the front just one smooth glass surface. Until you’ve turned it on, the only landmark on the front is the front-facing camera, centered above the screen when the HDX is held in landscape. We’ve seen buttons on devices' backs before, but they’re executed especially well here. Positioned just below (or above) the natural place you’d rest your fingers while holding the device in landscape, they’re well laid out, though slightly mushy.

Ports are limited, with a micro-USB on one side and the headphone jack on the other. Two microphones grace the top edge, and the rest of the device is untarnished.

















































Display

There’s something really vital about displays in consumer electronics these days, and the prevalence of beautiful OLED and IPS displays on small devices leaves less and less margin for error on the part of OEMs. And it’s no longer simply about pixel density and brightness, either—the slow march of technological progress has mostly laid those issues aside. Now we’re entering a period where accuracy plays a marquee role in the user experience, and that requires something different. Accurate displays are enabled by various panel technologies, but they’re achieved by individually calibrating each panel. Apple has long focused on this process, and the results have been subtle but important. When you open an Apple notebook or wake an iOS device, you can expect the colors to be consistent from one device to another. Amazon has clearly taken a page from Apple’s playbook and is guaranteeing that each of these LCD panels leaves the factory calibrated and ready to impress.

The chart above shows the sRGB color gamut coverage of the Kindle Fire HDX in a colorful outline, with the sRGB reference in the gray, dashed line. Amazon promised us 100% sRGB coverage; it pulled off 90%. We're in our early days of testing color accuracy here, but this degree of accuracy is well worth the effort. Video and games are rich and bright without suffering the saturation issues so common in mobile displays. If we come across another screen that's this good out of the box, we should consider ourselves spoiled.