I’ll admit, when Amazon announced their new lineup of Kindle ereaders and Fire tablets for this year, I barely paid any attention whatsoever to the new Fire HDX 8.9. I was too interested in the Kindle Voyage and new 6-inch Fire HD to care much about a Fire HDX with only a couple upgrades from the previous model.
So the fact that the new Fire HDX 8.9 is the first tablet to feature Dynamic Light Control to help improve the reading experience on a tablet totally bypassed my attention until just recently.
It turns out that Amazon has added a special sensor to the Fire HDX 8.9 that’s designed to take in information about the color temperature of ambient lighting in the room, and change the color temperature of the screen on the fly to make the color warmer and more like a printed book.
The 7-inch Fire HDX and older models don’t have the Dynamic Light Control feature; only the newer 8.9-inch model.
I came across a YouTube video posted by Len Edgerly of the Kindle Chronicles showing how it works during an interview with Jon Oakes, director of product management for Kindle, at the unveiling event in September.
The video compares text on paper with an iPad and the Fire HDX 8.9. It shows how the iPad’s light is more blue than reading on paper, and how the Fire HDX dynamically changes the hue of the screen to a warmer color more like an actual book.
I find the parallel with the color temperature of frontlights on E Ink ebook readers interesting. The color of frontlights seems to vary widely from one brand to the next, and even sometimes among the same exact model. Some ereaders have frontlights that are blue in tone and others are more yellow. Some people prefer one over the other, and you never really know what you’re going to get. Perhaps in the future users will have the option to change the color temperature of the screen on tablets and frontlights on ereaders to suit their preference—that would be pretty cool.
There is an app called Twilight that can change the tone to make it warmer on any tablet and works on the whole tablet not just the reading apps. I started using it recently because using my tablet near bedtime seemed to disrupt my sleep. I actually sleep deeperand longer now. I wasn’t convinced that this would work but thought it couldn’t hurt to try it and was pleasantly surprised.
Thanks for the tip! I use dimming apps to make the screen dimmer at night because the lowest setting is usually too bright on most tablets. I didn’t know there were apps that could change the tone as well.
Is the hdx 8.9 much lighter than the previous version? Still wondering if upgrading is worth the high price.
I just checked the Kindle Comparison Table and the new one is actually 1 gram heavier. It must be the Dynamic Light Sensor. 🙂
Geez. Of course, what I have is the HD 8.9. Wasn’t thinking. It is quite heavy.
Wow. The HD is heavy. At 20 ounces that’s about 65% heavier than the HDX.
Yeah. Just think how pampered we’ve become!