The Kindle Fire HDX has crushed the latest Apple tablet, the iPad Air, in a display test shootout.
The Tablet Display Technology Shoot-Out was conducted by DisplayMate's Raymond Soneira who pitted the Kindle Fire HDX 8.9, the iPad Air and Google Nexus 10 against each other, with the Amazon tablet emerging victorious as the best performing tablet in the lab tests
For the uninitiated, Dr. Raymond Soneira is DisplayMate's developer, which is recognized as a global leader in video diagnostics. His test compares and analyzes all three tablets in details.
The Kindle Fife HDX 8.9 and Nexus 10 have a higher resolution than the iPad Air i.e. 2560 x 1600 vis-à-vis 2048 x 1536 pixels. The Amazon offering also betters the Google tablet with a higher ppi of 339 versus 300 ppi. The iPad Air's ixel density is 264 ppi.
Soneira put the iPad Air, Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 and Nexus 10 through several tests which included brightness and contrast, viewing angles, color and intensity, display power efficiency and more.
The Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 performed better than the iPad Air in terms of brightness, screen reflectance, high ambient light contrast and absolute color accuracy. The Amazon tablet scored a "very good" rating for the absolute color accuracy, whereas the iPad Air got a "good rating" and the Nexus 10 was "poor."
The outcome was that the Amazon tablet "significantly" outperformed the iPad Air.
"Most impressive of all is the Kindle Fire HDX 8.9, which has leapfrogged into the best performing Tablet display that we have ever tested, significantly out-performing the iPad Air in Brightness, Screen Reflectance, and high ambient light contrast, plus a first place finish in the very challenging category of Absolute Color Accuracy," writes Soneira.
Both the iPad Air and Kindle Fire HDX 8.9, however, have impressive displays that are better than those on the current crop of tablets.
"The Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 and iPad Air both have impressive display hardware and impressive factory calibration. The Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 has high performance Low Temperature Poly Silicon LTPS LCDs and the iPad Air high performance IGZO Metal Oxide LCDs, significantly better than the a-Si amorphous Silicon LCDs being used in most current displays," says Soneira.
The Nexus 10, even though a year old, was included in the shootout as it had a very high pixel count, which was the highest for a tablet at the time of its launch.
