Amazon has released their latest tablet, the Fire HDX 8.9. They promise better performance than the last incarnation, and appear to be continuing with their focus on media.
The Amazon Fire is a pretty good consumer tablet. It is aimed at those who consider media to be their primary concern, and the high quality graphics and smooth streaming were a draw for quite a few people. Plus, Amazon has a rather loyal fan base that will always choose their brand over more tech heavy hitters.
Now, they are once again releasing a tablet. This time, the Fire HDX 8.9 promises to continue the tradition of a casual, user friendly tablet with high media performance.
Technical Specs
Like the last Fire, they have a really high display resolution at 2560 x 1600 with 339 ppi. It is 8.9″, a really decent size that will allow those graphic capabilities to thrive. They are boasting a lot about “Dynamic Image Contrast” as a feature, but that apparently just filters out glare. Something you can do by shifting position.
That isn’t to say there aren’t real things to brag about. The Fire HDX will contain a 2.5 Ghz Quad-core Snapdragon 8084, and an Adreno 420 GPU. A bit disappointingly, there will only be 2 GB of RAM…not bad, but a 3 GB upgrade would have done a lot to put that high resolution screen to work.
You will have three options for storage, including 16 GB, 32 GB and 64 GB. Prices start at $394. The device comes with their “Mayday” button, their creative answer to immediate customer service that allows for video chat with a support agent at a single press.
As Amazon continues to find their place in the media world, including releasing their own series the way Netflix is, their tablets and other devices are sure to play more of a factor.
That is shown by the coming feature of Family Library. It will allow families with different accounts to share content for the first time, rather than jumping from one to another to access games, apps, films, and other media that has been purchased on Amazon.
For those with an Amazon Prime account, that will be a big step towards full user integration that has been a long time coming.
One downside is the Prime account in itself. Rather than giving extended access to people who spend almost $400 for this high end tablet, they only offer a one month free trial to those who haven’t already tried it.
Source: Amazon
