A related feature will let you wirelessly "mirror" or display on the TV what is on your tablet if you attach a special Miracast dongle. Second Screen (which I couldn't test) hasn't launched yet and will only work initially on Sony PS3s and PS4s and Samsung TVs. Mayday staffers appeared quickly and politely responded to my questions at all hours of the day and night, but the true test comes once all users have access to the Mayday feature.Īmazon is promising another fresh feature for its latest Fire devices called Second Screen that will let you fling shows and movies from your tablet to a big-screen TV. The rep can pull up your account info if need be.Īmazon is staffing up so that people will be available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos insisting during a recent interview that the company will be Mayday-ready Christmas day. Amazon says the rep cannot see your password, should you have to enter it at any point. He or she can draw circles or arrows to demonstrate what needs to be done and, if you wish, do things for you. But the rep can see precisely what's on your screen and share control. Within 15 seconds, a small window pops open on the screen with a live tech support rep who you can see but who cannot see you.
When you're not sure how to do or discover something - finding out if your tablet has the latest software update, adding bookmarks to a Web page, learning how to use Kindle FreeTime to establish time limits and choose material your kids can safely access - you hit Mayday. To me the real killer differentiator in the Fire HDX tablets (but not Fire HD) is Mayday. Yet another new X-Ray feature lets you follow line-by-line lyrics on certain songs. You can jump right to the store to buy a song and jump to scenes featuring other titles from the soundtrack. Also new: X-Ray identifies any music playing in a scene. For example, I learned while streaming Flashdance that Kevin Costner was runner-up for the role given to Michael Nouri.
With X-Ray when an actor wanders into a movie scene you can pull up biographical data on him or her (supplied by Amazon-owned IMDb ) as you're watching.
It's funny that way in tech: how companies are partners and rivals at the same time.Īmazon is also expanding the X-Ray features that were available on prior models. It's lightweight, sturdy, and very reasonably priced, with good integration and crossover if you have a book collection that spans both Amazon and ComiXology ecosystems (although you have to download the Comixology app separately).The Prime Instant Video downloads feature is one of the key ways Amazon hopes to make its tablet stand out against rivals, especially since Amazon makes its content available (through free apps) to competitors. If you're low on space and wish to travel with your favorite comics and graphic novels without weighing yourself down, I would totally recommend the Amazon Fire HD 10 for keeping as close to the original reading experience possible. The sound is decent considering the size of the device, and it doesn't have that tinny, feeble tone that some tablets have. Audible narration would be my choice for those who are vision impaired, or those who simply prefer spoken word to text. There is a larger variety of voices to choose from, however. It also has text-to-speech, and while it's better than earlier versions, it still suffers from robotic speak-and-spell voice syndrome.
It's more useful for reading comics on smaller screens, where the full image when presented is too tiny to read.įor more traditional books, it presents the usual Kindle viewing options with reliable and consistent readability. While not the same as traditional reading and not showing you the full page, it can lend itself to easier parsing of the narrative for those unused to reading comics or with poorer vision.
On Kindle, or ComiXology, Amazon has a guided view for reading comics and graphic novels that shows you a comic one frame at a time.