We Love Amazon

You will not find a more avid group of Amazon customers anywhere than in our offices. Around here, Prime membership saturation is near 100%. (And if you’re not a Prime member, what are you, nuts? Get over there and sign up right now.) We even sent our 1,000 best friends Amazon gift cards so they could buy us stuff to decorate said offices. Amazon is literally in the air we breathe.

It’s not just their huge selection and ridiculously fast shipping. With their vast collection of customer reviews and up-to-the-minute pricing info, Amazon is also one of the greatest weapons consumers have ever had to keep retailers honest. And the crazy crap you can find in its far corners provides a valuable look at the deeply unsettling psyche of our species.

Of course, we might feel differently about the 'zon if we were warehouse workers or book publishers or Stephen Colbert or parents whose kids have just spent hundreds of dollars on virtual in-app bullshit. And take it from us, Amazon has absolutely no sense of humor.

But we confess: as self-indulgent consumers, Amazon hits all our buttons. This Kindle Fire HDX is exactly what we’d expect from the Amazon competence-borgs. That display is as supernaturally sharp as its 1920x1200 and 323 PPI specs would indicate. 11 hours of battery life isn’t bad, and that goes up to 17 hours if you’re just reading. It’s crazy fast, responsive, and easy to buy and download content onto (too easy, even). Rumor has it Amazon might be rolling out a “Kindle Unlimited” service offering all-you-can-eat ebooks and audiobooks for a flat fee every month, a la Netflix. And - while we personally are not at all interested in videoconferencing with support staff - you “WHO CAN I CALL?” types will appreciate the Mayday button for instant customer service.

Taking today’s 30% savings into account means the only reason we might not buy this Kindle Fire HDX from ourselves is that we wouldn’t get as many points on our Amazon Rewards credit cards. Well, that and our piss-poor shipping.