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Does Your Kindle Fire HDX Have a Blue or Purple Fringe? (video)

Amazon Kindle Fire HDXIf your newly arrived Kindle Fire HDX has an off-color fringe around the edge of the screen, you’re not alone. An unknown number of HDX owners are reporting complaints along the lines of:

I have a weird issue with my new kindle fire hdx 7″. The long edges of the screen show a light purple fringe, most noticeable on white pages but there on grey also.

You can kinda see this issue in the image at right or in the video below.

I have not seen this issue myself, and if I were going to keep my HDX I would consider myself lucky. This issue first came to my attention last night, and I have since found a growing number of similar complaints on MobileRead, Amazon support forums, and elsewhere. The reports vary from one user to another and the issues also vary in severity, with some users not being nearly as bothered as others.

This problem is also disturbingly common, with one commenter on Amazon’s forum reporting:

Same issue here. I actually took it back to Best Buy first. We opened up three units at Best Buy to examine them and they all had the same blue/purple glow around the edges.

Another commenter chimed in with a concurrence:

I just got back from BestBuy. I have checked 2 other units, and they all had the same issue. The tech person there said they were told this is the way it is for the new Kindle. One thing I observed was that there was variations on the "intensity" of this purple hue. My original one was rather dark whereas other ones were light. So, they exchanged mine with a new one. The new one has the hue, but it is not as intense as my original one.

Luckily Amazon is responding with their usual customer service. a number of users have reported that Amazon was more than willing to replace their defective Kindle Fire HDX; all they had to do was ask.

The Kindle Fire HDX has a 7″ screen with an impressive 1920 x 1200 resolution display. It’s running Amazon’s own Mojito OS on a 2.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm processor with 2GB of RAM, Wifi, Bluetooth, and a camera (more details here). The base model comes with 16GB of storage and retails for $229.

Kindle Fire HDX

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Comments


Sherri October 21, 2013 um 3:25 pm

Mine does have the purple glow around the edge, but strangely, I hadn’t even noticed it until I saw this post! But I’ve mostly been playing with the ability to download video from Amazon Prime onto the device and watch it without streaming, and the purple glow isn’t really noticeable with video.


Ruby October 22, 2013 um 12:16 am

This is posted on the Amazon Kindle HDX page right at the top:

We want you to know…

The Kindle Fire HDX 7″ has perfect color accuracy (100% sRGB), and we wanted to share more details around our display design decisions that helped us achieve this.

You may notice a very narrow, faint blue tint around the edge of the device when looking at items with a white background, such as books or web pages. All displays have some level of light emission around the edges, and the light on the Kindle Fire HDX 7″ is blue due to the technology used to render perfect color accuracy. Most LCD displays use white LEDs, and then apply filters to extract the desired color. The result is oftentimes a compromise to tone and color accuracy, or—if attempting to address these compromises—an increase in battery consumption and, thus, device weight.

We’ve taken a different approach. To achieve the perfect color accuracy on Kindle Fire HDX 7″ at the lowest possible battery consumption and device weight, we used blue, not white, LEDs. Blue LEDs allow for a much more accurate and rich representation of color and result in an up to 20% improvement in power efficiency.

Nate Hoffelder October 22, 2013 um 6:44 am

It’s not a bug, it’s a feature!

Yeah, I don’t buy that. They might use blue LEDs but you shouldn’t be able to see the fringe of color. The color should be consistent.


Rob Siders October 22, 2013 um 2:28 am

Mine does, except I wouldn’t call it blue or purple. It actually looks to be bright white compared to the page color, which appears to be off-white/cream. If Amazon says it’s a defect, then it is. I simply thought it was a change to the ereader software, giving white ebook pages a subtle paper-like color. /*shrug*/

It doesn’t bother me. Besides, I have one for testing and the defect doesn’t affect that. I also use it for watching movies every once in a while. The defect doesn’t affect that, either.


Ruby October 22, 2013 um 1:06 pm

Someone asked for a link to the Amazon explanation. It is on the HDX page right under the In Stock section. You have to click on the "Learn more" to get the text.

We want you to know…
Learn more about design decisions to help make an informed purchase


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