Amazon unveils next-gen Kindle Fire HDX slates, and more

Amazon has announced its third generation Kindle Fire slates, which bring the Kindle Fire HDX branding with it. The US retail giant has also unveiled a refreshed version of its Kindle Fire HD tablets, which have seen a drop in price.

The Kindle Fire HDX arrives in two sizes: 7-inch and 8.9 inches, with both slates seeing some nice increases in horsepower and specs. Both HDX models feature the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 SoC (2.2GHz quad-core processor), 2GB of RAM, 16/32/64GB of on-board flash storage, and high resolution displays. The 7-inch model sees a 1920x1200-pixel display (323PPI) but the 8.9-inch features a gorgeous 2560x1600-pixel panel which provides 339PPI.

The 8.9-inch HDX also features an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera, too. Better yet, the 8.9-inch HDX is 34% lighter than its predecessor. Moving onto the software side of things, the new HDX slates are running Fire OS 3.0 "Mojito" which provides a bunch of new features such as X-Ray for Music, Prime Instant Video downloads and updates to all of the pre-installed apps.

The Kindle Fire HDX 7-inch pricing starts at $229 for the 16GB version, but for $40 more you can nab yourself the 32GB variant. The Kindle Fire HDX 8.9-inch model starts at $379 for the 16GB version, with the 32GB version costing $50 more.