2013 Holiday Gift Guide: The 5 Best Tablets

Amazon Kindle Fire HDX 8.9″

Price: $380
Amazon proved the skeptics wrong when it released the surprisingly good Kindle Fire back in 2011. Now the company has managed to transform its flagship product into a full-fledged slate backed by the power of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 2.2GHz quad-core 800 chip and sharp-looking 339ppi display. Battery life is just as impressive clocking in at a good 12 hours upon heavy media playback and eBook reading sessions. Overall, it’s a major upgrade to the Kindle brand.

Google Nexus 7

Price: $230
With a sleeker profile, multitasking-ready CPU, and the most gorgeous display present on any machine in its price class—the Nexus 7 offers far more premiums than one would normally expect from a near $200 tablet. Expect speedy performance from the 1.5GHZ Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro quad-core, as it breezes through UI navigation and opens everything from apps to web pages instantaneously. HD content looks stellar on the 7-inch 1920 x 1200, 323ppi display. Unique features like “restricted profiles” and the pure vanilla flavor that comes with running stock Jelly Bean 4.3 is sure to satisfy the hunger of most Android conformists.