Amazon Kindle Fire HDX 7 Pro Reviews

The Kindle Fire HDX does its primary job brilliantly — with a great display and fast internals it’s the best way ever to consume all of Amazon’s content, from books to movies to music to banana slicers. It’s also a much more broadly capable device, finally able to replace your computer in places and not just complement it. For $229 (with 16GB of storage and Amazon's Special Offers ads) that’s a pretty great deal. But when Amazon and Google went from partners to enemies, everyone lost. Amazon doesn’t offer the best of its services and apps for other Android devices, and the Fire HDX is missing the Play Store and its hundreds of thousands of apps. If you have Kindle books, Prime videos, recurring Amazon orders, and all the rest, there’s no better tablet to buy than the HDX. But there’s a huge ecosystem of apps that live only on Android tablets. Tablets like the Nexus 7, which just so happens to also have a great screen, beautiful hardware, and a $229 price tag. Amazon claims the Kindle Fire lineup is massively popular, and that it’s easy for developers to port their apps from Play to the Amazon Appstore, but something’s not working. Amazon has everything else, but it doesn’t have the apps. The combination of Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire HDX would be virtually perfect: all the content, all the apps. We don’t get the best of both worlds, and you’ll have to decide which you want to pay your $229 to enter. It’s Amazon or it’s Google, and ne’er the twain shall meet.

A lovely piece of hardware, but the Nexus 7 is almost as good, boasts more features and is more flexible

Fast, well-built and great value, but some may find its OS a bit restrictive

The Amazon Kindle Fire HDX does a lot to make itself a competitive offering. The detail in the display and the power on offer, for the price, make the Fire HDX a compelling choice of 7-inch tablet. It also offers excellent speaker performance. But the Kindle Fire HDX finds itself in the same position as last year. It's fighting incredibly hard, but stuck to the Amazon track. There's a lot that's nice about the software that's on offer, there's plenty of refinement and it's lovely to use. Amazon has introduced new features, like MayDay to assist, and the offering for kids that will add to the appeal to parents, but still faces an Android world that's racing along, fuelled not only by Google, but by app developers and device manufacturers. The result is that, when it comes to content, you can get everything in competition Android land - aside from Lovefilm. But on those other devices you get more freedom and you're part of the bigger system, with more choices. If you're after a good quality tablet that performs well, with a great display, plenty of power, at a good price and you're more interested Amazon's content than having the latest apps, then the Kindle Fire HDX may well make you very happy. If you're looking for an experience that brings the familiarity of your Android smartphone, you may want to consider a straight Android tablet instead.

The Kindle Fire HDX 7 is a stronger product at the time of release compared to the Kindle Fire HD 7. Its Snapdragon 800 SoC and Adreno 330 graphics truly do belong on tablets and smartphones worth at least twice the price and its bright full HD IPS display is bested only by the Nexus 7 2013. The sleeker design, improved chassis, rearranged buttons and slight modifications to the software for easier multi-tasking and reading make the new Amazon tablet harder to pass up compared to the last outing. Is the HDX 7 recommended over a standard 7-inch Android tablet? Its true competitor in this segment is the Google tablet, which includes weaker hardware for less theoretical performance. Our conclusion here remains the same as it was for last year's HD 7: The Kindle Fire tablet is highly recommended only if the user will take full advantage of Amazon stores and offerings. Otherwise, the similarly priced Google tablet is the way to go for standard web surfing, gaming, extensive customizations and general Play Market downloads. The HDX 7 is designed to sell Amazon products and it does so extremely well. Ignoring this would mean ignoring most of the features of the HDX 7 and reducing the device to a basic web surfing tablet. This is a tablet best served for Amazon aficionados.

Knowing already what its competition has on the market, you’d think that Amazon would try to somehow one-up the Google Nexus 7 2013 Edition to become the premier 7-inch budget tablet offering heading into the upcoming holiday season. However, that’s not particularly the case, since it’s doesn’t quite match its close rival. Indeed, the pricing of this year’s model has increased to $229, up from the previous $200 mark, but it’s still an option to consider – even more if you’re heavily invested in the Amazon ecosystem. In the specs department, it’s stuffed with some impressive gear to justify its higher price point, but it’s still lacking the well-roundedness of the 2013 Edition of the Google Nexus 7. For starters, it lacks a rear camera, which is a convenient thing to have on board in those worst case scenario situations. Secondly, the updated “Mojito” Fire OS 3.0 experience still doesn’t have the same level of functionality or diverse apps ecosystem to match what stock Android has to offer. And finally, its design is just too blah for our taste. We’re not saying that the Amazon Kindle Fire HDX should be avoided entirely, but considering that the Nexus 7 is priced identical to it, we’re less inclined to fork over our money to an inferior tablet. All told, it’s a tablet you would only settle on if it’s on sale for under the $200 mark. Well, either that or if your other option is completely out of stock. For now, we’ll just hope and pray that Amazon will be more aggressive with next year’s model to outclass the competition.

In a very close battle, the Kindle Fire HDX wins this face-off 7 rounds to 6. The HDX is the ultimate content-consumption tablet, offering a better HD display, crisper audio, and a more robust selection of video, music and books. HDX buyers will also appreciate the excellent parental controls and Mayday feature for quick access to tech support right on the device. Amazon’s tablet has the speed advantage, too, thanks to its Snapdragon 800 processor. However, Google’s tablet benefits from a thinner and lighter design, an interface that’s more familiar to Android phone owners, and a back camera. Plus, Google Now puts tons of useful information at your fingertips. The Nexus 7′s biggest advantage is its wider array of apps in the Google Play store and access to Google apps such as Gmail, Google Drive, Google Maps, YouTube and others the Kindle HDX lacks. It all comes down to what you’re looking for in a 7-inch slate. If you want the most apps, the Nexus 7 is the device to get. But the HDX is the better pick for parents, tablet newbies and (if you’re an Amazon Prime member) those who want to enjoy a wealth of free content.

Amazon continues to step up its game (and its prices) with the Kindle Fire line. Still, despite a $20 price increase, $229 doesn't seem like a lot to ask for a device like this. From the 1,920 x 1,200 (323-ppi) display to the 2.2GHz quad-core chip inside, there's nothing about this slate that screams budget. Granted, if you want to pay the lowest price possible, you're going to have to turn screen space over to advertisements in the form of Special Offers, or else shell out $15 to banish them from your device. And, of course, LTE will cost you even more. The software continues to be somewhat limiting for power users, due to a content-based UI and a lack of Google Play access, but Amazon has sprinkled in plenty of new features, including Mayday, Second Screen, a grid layout and additional X-Ray functionality. If you're searching for that perfect starter tablet for a loved one, the HDX is a compelling proposition with plenty of user-friendly features and specs that match the Nexus 7 blow for blow. Looks like it's going to be another Merry Christmas for Amazon's hardware division.

With a starting price of $230, the HDX is set up squarely against the Nexus 7, and on most fronts the HDX wins.

If you're an active Amazon Prime member, you'd almost be doing yourself a disservice not to buy the Kindle Fire HDX 7. Its deep integration of Prime features like streaming video, video downloads, and the ability to borrow books makes the HDX feel like a required Prime member companion device. If you're not a Prime member and have no plans to become one, then the alternative 7-inch tablet options like the Nexus 7 and iPad Mini become a bit more appealing. The Nexus 7 starts at the same price, gives you access to a much more open platform with an incredibly bright screen, a rear camera, and the promise of frequent Android OS updates. The iPad Mini is $100 more expensive, features a larger but lower-resolution screen, unimpressive gaming performance, but still has the best app ecosystem of any tablet OS. However, that tablet's due for a refresh soon, so it'd be best to wait a few more weeks to see what new Apple has in store for the Mini.

There’s a lot to like about the Kindle Fire HDX. The screen is superb, the form-factor sober but sturdy, and the processor cutting edge for the market. Amazon’s $229 starting price (with subsidizing Special Offers on the lockscreen, 16GB of storage, and WiF-only connectivity; figure $100 more if you want LTE and $15 more if you don’t want the Special Offers) is highly competitive, and while the Mayday functionality may seem gimmicky to some, the selfish part of us is looking forward to those unexpected “help!” calls from our parents drying up.At the same time, if you’re not a devotee of Amazon’s store and services, then the Kindle Fire HDX isn’t for you. What makes it so adept at handling the retailer’s content and cloud, also means it’s not really set up for third-party video, music, ebook, and other stores. Yes, you could jury-rig the Fire HDX with sideloaded media, but you’d be missing out on most of what makes the tablet distinctive, and probably better off with a Nexus 7. Luckily for Amazon, the potential audience of its customers keeps growing, though. The Kindle Fire HDX ticks the right boxes across the board, in that case: ebooks look great and can be read for longer; movies and TV shows will soon have the clever Second Screen functionality; and Prime subscribers get the benefit of offline playback. It’s fast, portable, and well constructed, and if you’ve bought into the Amazon ecosystem – or are looking for a one-stop-shop in which to set up your digital life, that isn’t Apple – then the Kindle Fire HDX makes a compelling argument to be that shopfront.

Amazon's 7-inch Kindle Fire HDX is the simplest high-quality small-screen tablet you can buy, and ease of use doesn't come at the cost of performance.