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Welcome to Engadget’s holiday gift guide! Head back to our hub to see the rest of the product guides as they’re added throughout the month.

Weighing your e-reader options isn’t as difficult as, say, deciding on a new smartphone. There are fewer models to sift through, for one, and your allegiance to Amazon or B&N could further narrow things down. Still, you have a range of options in every camp — from barebones devices meant for reading and nothing else to full-fledged tablets with the higher-end specs to match. Below, we make the case for some of our top picks.

Filed under: Sony, Amazon

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So, imagine you just shelled out $200 or $300 for one of those new Kindle Fire HDXs, only to have it scratch in your backpack as you pull it out to gloat to one of your friends. Oh, you poor, poor soul. If only you’d had the foresight to pick up an Origami cover. Like the new tablets, the case goes up for pre-order today — and will start shipping at the same time as their respective devices. Jeff Bezos was pretty keen to show the accessories off today, demonstrating how built-in magnets allow them to fold together in such a way that the tablets can be positioned in either landscape or portrait modes.

Neater still for the 8.9-inch version (the one with the rear-facing camera, mind), is a feature that triggers the photo app when the cover is slid down on the slate. Behold, magnetic magic that would leave the Insane Clown Posse pondering scientific inquiry for months to come. Amazon’s made cases for both HDX models and the new HD. The polyurethane versions of the 7- and 8.9-inch HDX cases run $50 and $55, respectively, with the leather versions coming in at $65 and $70. The covers for the HD run $45 and $60.

Philip Palermo contributed to this report.%Gallery-slideshow90902%

Filed under: Tablets, Amazon

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It’s no surprise, of course, that the Kindle Fire HDX was the thing Amazon wanted to shout about from the Seattle mountaintops today. But Jeff Bezos had another little surprise up his impeccably tailored sleeves — a surprise that makes the $229 HDX look downright extravagant. A warm (if decidedly overcast) Pacific Northwest welcome to the new Fire HD. Well, “new” is perhaps not entirely accurate. This Kindle shares a lot with its predecessor, though there are some notable changes. Namely, the body. See, if we’re strictly talking form factor here, this guy is a dead ringer for the 7-inch HDX. Inside, however, you’ll find last-gen processing power: a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, and on the front, the same old 1,280 x 800 display. Still, not too shabby for $139 — that’s $60 less than the last version cost moments before this post went up.

That price also gets you access to Fire OS 3.0, aka “Mojito,” Amazon’s latest sugary rum of an operating system. Naturally, some of the new features just won’t work on this hardware — things like Mayday, which requires a microphone for use. Like the HDX, this slate plays nicely with those neat new Origami covers. You can pre-order one right this second, but you’ll have to hang on until October 2nd before it actually starts shipping.

Philip Palermo contributed to this report.%Gallery-slideshow90901%

Filed under: Tablets, Amazon

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Source: Amazon

The case for an incoming Kindle Fire update seems to be getting stronger every day — not only have we seen benchmarks and alleged photos of the device, but now @evleaks seems to have come across an official render. The purported press image matches previous leaks in bezel size and design, but lacks the front-facing camera Amazon introduced with the Kindle Fire HD. This leads us to suspect that the render is of a non-HD model of Bezos’ latest tablet. The flagship model is rumored to have a 2,560 x 1,600 resolution, the aforementioned camera upfront and an OS based on Android 4.2.2. We’re still waiting for Amazon to give the official word of course, but for Kindle users waiting for an upgrade, it’s something to salivate over.

Filed under: Tablets, Amazon

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Source: @evleaks (Twitter)

It looks like you may well start seeing more links to products sold at Amazon in your Android apps. The company has just announced the launch of its new Mobile Associates API, which will let app developers hook into its popular Associates program to earn a kickback of up to six percent on all products sold through their apps. Those purchases can be made either entirely within the app or through an external link to Amazon, and the API covers both Amazon’s own Kindle Fire tablets as well as other Android devices (we wouldn’t hold your breath for iOS support). In announcing the new option, Amazon said that it hopes it will provide an alternative revenue stream to fully paid, ad-supported or “freemium” apps for developers, but it’d also obviously also get quite a bit in return itself if they fully embrace it.

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Mobile, Amazon

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Source: Amazon