Amazon Kindle Fire HDX Review
Tech support, and in particular, Mayday, is at the center of Amazon’s new Kindle Fire HDX. The new Mayday service has been included in the majority of Amazon’s marketing material and although it may not seem like a big deal to some consumers, Mayday could end up being the future of tech support as we know it.
As with most tablets, there are three different models of the HDX, a 16GB, 32GB, and a 64GB. At the low-end, Amazon has been able to reach the key $229 price point meaning that it directly competes against Google’s Nexus 7.
When it comes to hardware, Amazon spent a lot of time focussing on the HDX’s screen by packing 1,920 x 1,200 pixels into the 7-inch display. From a user perspective, this resolution looks comparable to Apple’s retina displays found on some of its iPads and as a result, watching movies is stunning on the HDX (as long as you can deal with a 7-inch display.)
Almost every part of the HDX has received an upgrade when compared to its predecessor and that trend is obvious when looking at the tablet’s processor and other internal specs.
Even though most components saw an upgrade, Amazon really improved the HDX’s processor by including a 2.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 inside of the device. This is a massive upgrade when compared to the 1.2GHz processor that was included in the previous version.
With such an impressive processor, the HDX simply does not have to deal with any sort of lag no matter what tasks are being carried out on it. When quickly switching between apps, watching movies, or playing CPU and graphics intensive games, stuttering and lag were nonexistent.
Apple’s iPad Mini still comes out on top in terms of battery life with nearly 13 hours but Amazon’s gave it a good shot with the HDX. With regular use, the HDX usually lasts around 10-11 hours on a charge meaning that you can use the HDX all day before having to plug it in.
Fire OS did receive some nice upgrades as well and the most popular upgrade is Mayday, Amazon’s new tech support system. If you were to distill Mayday down to its core features, it is a live video-chat tech support system which also provides the support rep with access to your HDX so that they can further help in various situations.
Even though Mayday is an interesting feature, it seems to be something that would only matter with business-level applications and not with a relatively simple consumer product. Of course, some customers may not be acquainted to Fire OS and in those circumstances, Mayday can be useful but for the average person, it will be an unused feature.
While Amazon is definitely onto something with Mayday, it is not useful enough to warrant a purchase. That being said, the HDX is easily one of the best 7-inch tablets on the market, especially for media consumption.
Rating: 8/10
Price: $229.00 (Amazon)
