Amazon Kindle Fire HDX: Performance

The Kindle Fire HDX runs on a quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor clocked at 2.2GHZ with 2GB of RAM to help things run smooth when you are running multiple apps at once. The Adreno 330 GPU also aims to take care of more graphically demanding gaming. It’s a lot faster than the Nexus 7’s Snapdragon S4Pro CPU which runs at 1.5GHz, with Adreno 320 GPU and 2GB of RAM.

It’s almost identical specs to the Sony Xperia Ultra and the Galaxy Note 10.1, but at a fraction of the cost. Overall, it’s a slick experience and a massive improvement on the last Kindle Fire. Jumping around the UI and opening apps is quick and smooth. It runs games like Real Racing 3 and Dead Trigger with ease and handles streaming apps like Netflix and YouTube consummately.

Something tablet manufacturers often overlook is
speaker quality. If you use a tablet to watch videos or listen to music
you don’t want tinny sound you can hardly make out. The Kindle Fire HDX features dual stereo speakers which perform brilliantly both in terms of richness and directional sound. Some clarity does get lost at
the higher volumes, but these are the best sounding speakers on a tablet
we’ve played with by a mile and are miles better than the speakers on the iPad mini 2 and Nexus 7.

In terms of storage it’s worth noting that if you go
for the 16GB model you actually get around 11GB you can use, so you
will need to rely on Amazon’s cloud storage if you are planning to
consume a lot of your own content. There’s is a 1-Tap
archive option to free up storage space by archiving items that have not
been recently used which does help to manage onboard storage.

Amazon Kindle Fire HDX 7 – Camera

While the 8.9-inch HDX tablet gets two cameras, Amazon opts for just the front-facing 720p HD camera for its 7-inches tablet. We don’t really have any complaints about that, but it’s worth noting the Nexus 7 2 does include rear and front-facing cameras.

Its nothing to really shout about. The camera UI is on the basic side letting you choose whether to shoot video or take pictures and adjust the focus point. There’s also a camera roll to review photos. Images typically look grainy, lack vibrancy and it’s clear the camera is designed with video calling in mind.

What is new is the native camera app which comes with a surprising amount of editing tools you can have fun with. You can crop, add filters and adjust colour saturation. Best of all though, you can add stickers and even create a meme from your photo.