The Kindle Fire HDX 7 leapfrogs pretty much every current tablet in performance by housing a 2.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 system-on-chip, with a Krait 400 CPU.

Kindle Fire: The Bookshelf The Fire presents books against a bookshelf backdrop, much as Apple does with its iBooks app. You get a limited number of options for how to display your books.

The Kindle Fire spurred a new market of affordable, 7-inch tablets. Google, in partnership with Asus, released the Nexus 7 in June for $199, and it quickly become extremely popular.

The Kindle Fire HDx will begin shipping on Oct. 15 and the 8.9-inch version on Dec. 10. Of course, the competition is steep with the Nexus 7 at $229 and the iPad Mini at $329, but Bezos said there ...

Kindle Fire lets you sideload Android apps, but there’s no guarantee that they’ll work, let alone display well. Apps that I sideloaded but that needed the tablet’s accelerometer, for example ...

The Amazon Kindle Fire is powered by a dual core CPU and, of course, it has Wi-Fi. All syncing is invisible, wireless and in the background. Users don’t have to do updates of any kind.

If you're primary interest is watching movies and TV shows, also consider the Kindle Fire HD 8.9" that has a larger and higher resolution display. The Kindle Fire HD runs Android OS 4.0.3 Ice Cream ...

The Kindle Fire HDX 7's crowning glory is undoubtedly its display, though. The 7-inch panel runs at a hefty 1920 x 1200 resolution – that's higher than Full HD – for 323 ppi pixel density.

The Kindle Fire HD also has audio profiles which change depending on what you’re doing. The output is optimized for different activities like watching a movie or listening to music.

The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 was made for Amazon's new Fire interface. Compared with the 7-inch version, navigation is snappier and the higher-resolution screen better displays menu options.

Gift givers beware! The Kindle Fire you buy for a friend may end up giving her access to your personal Amazon media and the ability to buy new books, movies, music and apps using your credit card.

Image: Amazon Amazon sent me a Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 to test recently and my review made it clear I was impressed by it. I found it to be so good it didn't take me long to buy one. Why I find it ...