New Kindle Fire

Kindle Touch readers have grown accustomed to the X-ray feature that lets users view extra information without leaving the current page. Fire customers now have the same ability to delve further into topics without navigating away from a page. X-ray now extends to movies and textbooks on the Kindle Fire HD.

While watching a film, you can now access IMDB for those moments usually spent wondering what else an actor has appeared in. Additionally, textbooks viewed on the Fire HD, will have pop-up glossaries and access to relevant Wikipedia and YouTube entries.

With a beefed up resolution, the Kindle Fire HD models have a display Amazon claims reduces glare by 25 percent compared to the new iPad. The 8.9-inch Fire HD has a 1920x1200 resolution and the 7-inch version has 1280x800 color resolution. The tablet's Advanced True Wide LCD panel filter promises that the colors of the screen will appear the same from any angle, rather than the washed out hues you may be used to when watching a laptop in bed.

Amazon boosted the storage capacities of the Kindle Fire HD tablets: the 7-inch is available with 16GB or 32GB of storage, while the 8.9-inch offers 16GB, 32 GB, or 64 GB of storage. As with the original Kindle Fire, customers have access to additional free storage on Amazon Cloud.

Amazon's new form of parental controls is called FreeTime. Parents select any and all media content their children can view and restrict all other use of the Kindle with a password protection.

• WiFi — Bucking the standard 2.4 GHz WiFi network, the Kindle Fire HD also includes the less crowded 5 GHz network. That, along with dual antennas means you'll be surfing and streaming faster than ever.
• 4G LTE Wireless Package — If you're sick of searching for an open WiFi network, the pricier Kindle Fire HD with AT&T 4G LTE Wireless is an option to consider. For a yearly fee of $50, the 4G package gets customers 250MB of data per month. There's the catch: megabytes. With all the video streaming and media downloading your tablet is used for, you're running through those 250MB fast. Upgrades to 3GB and 5GB data plans are available from AT&T.

Finally, for Skype addicts a front-facing HD camera has come to the Kindle Fire. Specifications on the camera's megapixel resolution haven't been revealed.