Kindle Fire HDX Cyber Monday Deal – To Buy or Not to Buy?
Featured, Shopping Monday, December 2nd, 2013
As anticipated, the all new Amazon Kindle Fire HD and Fire HDX are on sale today, December 2nd, Cyber Monday 2013. In fact, Amazon announced the price-cut as early as 5pm PST on Sunday, the day before the big shopping event. A lot of us predicted that there will be a price cut today, but nobody knew exactly how much will be slashed or the exact models that would be discounted. Now that we know the answers to these questions, it’s worth taking the time to analyze these offers to see which tablet suits you the best.
Which Cyber Monday Deal? The Fire HD or the Fire HDX?
Before we answer that question, let’s look at the similarities and differences of these 2 tablets.
| Kindle Fire HD 7″ | Kindle Fire HDX 7″ | |
| Date of release | Both were released in the Fall of 2013. Both are considered 3rd generation Kindle Fire tablets | |
| Capacity | 16 GB only (8GB is not discounted, therefore even more expensive than the 16GB model while the Cyber Monday sale is on) | All 3 models, 16GB, 32GB and 64GB models are discounted |
| Wi-Fi and 4G LTE versions | This budget model doesn’t have a 4G LTE version | There is a 4G LTE version, however, the discount only applies for Wi-Fi only versions |
| Display resolution |
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HD: 1920×1200 pixels; 323 pixels per inch (ppi) |
| Display special remarks | N/A | DisplayMate technologies, a professional evaluator of different types of displays found that the screen of the 7″ Kindle Fire HDX was superior to those of the Nexus 7 and iPad Mini with Retina display. |
| Processor | 1.5GHz dual-core processor | 2.2GHz quad-core processor |
| RAM | 1GB | 2GB |
| RAM/Processor special remarks | The dual-core 1.5GHz processor and 1GB RAM of the Kindle Fire HD 7″ feels very inferior to the 2.2GHz quad-core processor and 2GB RAM of the Kindle Fire HDX 7″. However, did you know that even the iPad Air has a dual-core 1.4 GHz processor and 1GB RAM? Also this popular Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 has a dual-core 1.6 GHz processor and 1GB RAM.
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Obviously the combination of 2.2GHz quad-core processor and 2GB RAM of the Fire HDX is more powerful than the 1.5GHz dual-core processor and 1GB RAM of the Fire HD. But you won’t notice the difference unless you play games that consume large amounts of CPU or multi-task a lot. |
| Mayday |
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Yes |
| Camera | None | Front camera for video chatting/Skype |
| Mic | None | Yes |
| Wi-Fi |
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Dual Antenna, dual-band Wi Fi (so you can expect this Wi Fi to be slightly faster. We haven’t done a side-by-side comparison, but we’re pretty sure that there won’t be a huge difference) |
| Battery life | 10 hours mixed use | 11 hours mixed use; 17 hours when reading |
| Price |
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| What do we recommend? | Buy this if you will use it for: routine web-browsing, checking email, social networking, Facebooking, tweeting, reading ebooks, listening to music, watching movies and TV shows, playing games, maintaining your daily calendar, doing your to do lists etc. etc.
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Buy this if you will use it for: video chatting, playing CPU-heavy games, storing large amounts of data (movies etc.) greater than 16GB, and multi-tasking in addition to what you do with the other tablet |
| What did you choose? | The Budget Kindle Fire HD | The Work Horse Kindle Fire HDX |
Here is a more comprehensive comparison of the HDX and HD tablets
Bottom line
Should you take advantage of this Cyber Monday Kindle Fire Deal?
- Definitely yes, it’s an AWESOME tablet and you get access to an awesome content eco-system
Which should you buy? The HD version or the HDX version?
- The budget Kindle Fire HD will work just fine for the majority of tablet users. If you think you’re one of them, save that extra $60 and use it towards the payment for a Amazon Prime membership so that you can enjoy tons and tons of instant movies, ebooks and free 2-day shipping this holiday season.
If you still haven’t read our Kindle Fire HDX Review and iPad vs Kindle Fire Comparison – 4 Specs That Matter Most, do read it and you’ll see that a Kindle Fire vs iPad comparison doesn’t have to be all that complex
