Stefan Mileschin

There was surprisingly little fanfare surrounding the announcement of Amazon's latest Fire tablets. Where last year's unveiling involved renting out an airplane hangar at the Santa Monica airport, the new tablet trio was quietly shown off to a small gathering of journalists at the company's Seattle headquarters. Asked why Amazon opted for something so low-key, a rep answered, that CEO Jeff Bezos "just likes to mix things up." (Those wacky billionaires.) Indeed, there was little rhyme or reason to the scaling back. After all, the new HDX tablets, available in 7- and 9-inch sizes, bring a number of key upgrades to the Kindle Fire line on both the hardware and software fronts.

And that's a good thing: between the Nexus 7, iPad mini and a seemingly endless parade of pocket-sized tablets, Amazon has more competition to contend with than ever. But while the company's acknowledged that its tablets are basically just content delivery vessels, it's chosen to compete on specs as well, with a 1,920 x 1,200, 323-ppi display, a quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor and new software features that include baked-in video customer support and a "Second Screen" TV feature.

http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/02/a...&ncid=rss_semi