Kindle Fire, Full Color 7″ Multi-touch Display, Wi-Fi
Kindle Fire, Full Color 7" Multi-touch Display, Wi-Fi
Movies, apps, games, music, reading and more, plus Amazon's revolutionary cloud-accelerated web browser - 18 million movies, TV shows, songs, magazines and books - Amazon Appstore - thousands of popular apps and games - Ultra-fast web browsing - Amazon Silk - Free cloud storage for all your Amazon content - Vibrant color touchscreen with extra-wide viewing angle - Fast, powerful dual-core processor - Amazon Prime members enjoy unlimited, instant streaming of over 10,000 popular movies and TV shows
List Price: $ 199.00
Price: $ 199.00
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A great device WHEN you consider price and function, with a few flaws,
I have had the Kindle Fire for a little over a week now, and I think that is enough time to provide my first impressions on the device. The first and most important thing that should be said is that this is not an “iPad-killer.” It is not designed to be. I have seen so many articles and comments comparing this to the iPad, and surveys where people are asked if they will be buying a Kindle Fire over an iPad this Christmas. If you are expecting an iPad, or even a tablet, you will be disappointed. The main purpose of this device is to deliver Amazon content to you more effectively. It is designed for consumption, not creation. That is the reason it is so cheap and why Amazon is taking a loss on it. They are hoping to make up for that loss through sales of videos, music, books, and apps through Amazon’s Web Services. You can also use it to view your own movies and media, but will find that it is more limited in that way than a regular tablet. Personally, as someone who has ordered several rentals from Amazon Video, and had to contact customer support for every single one of them due to problems with Amazon’s Unbox player or purchases not appearing in my downloads, I can really appreciate this. But if you don’t plan on using Amazon at all to obtain your media, you may want to take this into consideration before purchasing the Fire. Additionally, the reason this product is so hyped, and one of the reasons I like it so much, is due to the ridiculously low price. Amazon reviews shouldn’t focus on price, but it is hard not to with this device. On price alone, this is a five star device. However when looked at the Fire overall, and when compared with other touch devices (what little there is to compare it to), I have to give it four stars, since there are a few areas I feel could use definite improvement.
FORM FACTOR – The Kindle Fire feels almost the same in my hand as my 3rd generation Kindle and very similar to the Kindle Touch 3G, Free 3G + Wi-Fi, 6″ E Ink Display – includes Special Offers & Sponsored Screensavers. The display is made of Gorilla Glass, which is a highly damage-resistant. You can still crack it, but I have used a phone with Gorilla Glass for two years on it and it has zero scratches on it despite being kept daily in my pocket with my keys. The back of the tablet is rubberized, so it won’t slide around and won’t get scratched. It also feels good in my hand. Despite all the companies that will be selling them, I do not think you need a screen protector. I have scratched Gorilla Glass before, but it is very difficult to do.
CONNECTIONS/STORAGE – On the bottom are a headphone port (which will accept external speakers), micro-USB (for charging and file transfer), and power button. The Fire doesn’t come with an SD card slot, with good reason. As mentioned, Amazon wants you to get content directly from them. It also reduces the production costs. You can transfer your own content to the device through the USB connection from your home computer. The Fire comes with 8Gb of storage, which is enough to hold about 8 downloaded movies, 80 apps, 800 songs, or 6,0000 books. I filled mine up right away so I never checked it out of the box, but apparently it is closer to 6.5Gb as the OS is going to take up some of this. You have to really become adept at managing your content through the Cloud. Free videos available through Amazon Prime cannot be downloaded, only streamed. So unless you buy a movie from Amazon or transfer one of your own, you must be connected through a wi-fi connection in order to watch your movie.
AMAZON CLOUD – If you have not tried out the Amazon Cloud Drive, you will be pleasantly surprised. You get 5Gb (which they will probably increase in the near future) of free online storage to store anything you want, and you can access it from anywhere. This combines very nicely with the Fire. 5Gb isn’t much for my collection, so I upgraded to a higher plan (rates are $1 per extra gigabyte per year). I can upload a playlist to it and listen to it on my home computer, then when I get to work the Fire can access it and pick it up where I left off. Any songs you get from Amazon Mp3 are automatically stored on the Cloud and don’t contribute to the 5Gb storage space.
E-READER – This was going to be the big determination in whether I should get a Fire or the new Kindle Touch. Ultimately I ended up getting both since I prefer the E-Ink technology to the backlit display of the Fire. If you are the type of person who reads a lot and expect to spend at least 50% of your use on reading books, I don’t think you will be satisfied with the Fire over your Kindle 3 or the…
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|Outstanding Value at $199 and Full of Functionality / Bells / Whistles,
I’ve had a chance to play with the Kindle Fire for a few hours now, and overall I think it is a great tool /toy when you factor in the cost of ownership and what you get. Compared to $500 minimum for the introductory price of the bottom of the line iPad2 (WiFi only), at $199 this is a great buy.
Using a Wifi connection at two different locations, the speed was pretty fast connecting to the Amazon server as well as to a couple of Internet sites. I had fast connectivity and display on Fox News, CNN, my personalized Yahoo page, and the website of the International Association of Penturners (hey, I do have hobbies!). I had slow connectivity at both Wifi locations with Google, ESPN, MSNBC, the Houston Chronicle, and the Weather Channel – I hope the unique app for ESPN and the Weather Channel are a lot faster, but I haven’t loaded them onto the Fire yet. I will point out with the exception of the Google website, those other sites listed as slow are usually slow on my other handheld devices such as my Droid phone and my work iPad2 (yes, the Kindle guy owns and uses an iPad for work purposes). The web browser is called Silk, and it is nice and user-friendly.
Let’s talk about what I see as the benefits first:
The screen size to me is just right for what I will be using it for – I have used an iPad and the screen is larger – but I did watch about 15 minutes of an episode of season 3 of 24 on the Fire and I didn’t have screen envy or felt like I was missing anything. The sound quality was good, but I listened to it mainly with a set of headphones so I wouldn’t wake my kids.
Concerning size of the overall unit – not too heavy or bulky and it fits nice in your hand. I have it in one of the Marware covers and it just “feels” right: that’s not a firm statement for a review, I know, but what else can I say? Holding the iPad feels a little bulky at times but the Fire is just a little bit larger than my Kindle keypad, so I was pretty much conditioned to this size over the past few years. Compared to the iPad, the Fire doesn’t generate near as much heat.
Speed of the apps as well as reading a book is VERY fast and responsive. I haven’t tried a a challenging spreadsheet or Word document with the Open Office app yet, but then again I can’t think of too many times where (based on my guesstimated usage) I will be doing those kind of tasks on my Fire: I like to keep my work separate from play. Maybe the time will come when business applications will become more prevalent with the Fire, but that’s a story for another day.
Back to the pricing – $199 is an absolute steal for a unit with this many features. Compare that to an iPad2 at more than twice the price for a few more inches of screen space. Some people really want that, but it doesn’t bother me. You will also receive a month free of Prime membership and I highly recommend you try out the benefits, which are more than free two-day shipping. You get full access to thousands of movies and tv shows for free. You can give them a test drive on your Fire and see if it is for you or not. I already rent a lot of movies to my Tivo via Amazon, and I can see the functionality of the free movies combined with the for rent options being able to be played on this device as very compelling for when I go on business trips.
And, for those of you I’ve been playing Words with Friends with, this morning’s moves were made on the Fire – the touchscreen worked flawlessly.
I transferred some music to the Fire and it works like a charm. I haven’t had enough time to really dive deep into this feature yet and come up with a playlist or jukebox list, but the sounds quality was nice: not too loud and not too soft.
Here are some potential negatives:
I don’t think I will be reading too much on this device. Who knows, that opinion may change, but I REALLY like the Kindle for reading with its eInk screen. I read a lot outside or in bright light, and based upon my experiences with reading on an iPad the eInk is better than the full color for reading outside. However, my youngest child really likes the full color resolution as the books he likes to read has a lot of pictures in it (he’s in elementary school). So, to each their own. I didn’t purchase the Fire for reading, but more for entertainment.
As mentioned above, the screen is smaller than an iPad. That doesn’t bother me (see comments above), but it may bother some people where size matters or they have to have the “biggest” of this and that.
I really wish they would have shipped this thing with a micro USB cord: if there is one in the packaging I missed it. Luckily, I have a few of them in the house, so I wasn’t too put out. I imagine they did that to keep the overall cost at $199.
There are lots of apps available for the Fire because it uses the DROID platform, but Apple lovers will…
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|Kindle On Fire,
I found the Fire to be perfectly well-suited for anyone seeking a small, portable interface into the digital content world ‘out there’, especially but by no means limited to Amazon-provided content.
For background and reference frame: we own (3 kids household) a XOOM, a Touchpad, a 3d generation Kindle and the new keyboardless (no touch) Kindle. A Kindle Touch is on order.
So, after a few hours of playing around with Amazon’s latest, I can say that I am generally happy with my purchase. This is how the Fire met my expectations and this is where it exceeded them:
IN LINE WITH EXPECTATIONS:
- A quality, affordable, Amazon-centric and Amazon Cloud-relying tablet that is NOT a reader.
- Amazon’s interface makes it VERY easy for anyone who’s never heard of ‘Android’ to navigate and enjoy mostly but not only Amazon-provided content.
- Many essential apps are available on ‘day one’. Pandora, Netflix are essential to this Fire’s designated user (our daughter) and they are there and running.
- Storage size makes it impractical to keep full movies on Fire’s own memory but we don’t do that on our much larger XOOM either. It’s adequate for keeping dozens of apps and over a thousand songs.
- It’s not a ‘reader’ the way the other Kindles are. The screen is bright and sharp but, remember Amazon’s Kindle commercial? Can’t read off a backlit screen outside, especially on a sunny day.
- There is no 3G, Bluetooth, GPS, camera or memory expansion – again, I knew that when I placed my order so no surprise here.
EXCEEDING MY EXPECTATIONS:
- The Fire is not as ‘locked’ as I thought it would. Thanks to the USB port it’s easy to add media to the Fire.
- With some skills, it’s possible to install and run apps from non-Amazon store sources – I’m about 95% relying on Amazon’s store for my XOOM and I don’t believe I’ll really need Google’s but it’s good to know that I’m not a prisoner on Amazon’s reservation.
- The smaller format/weight make it VERY convenient to carrying it around.
POSSIBLE ISSUES:
- The touch screen is generally responsive but there are moments where feedback is not instant.
- The SILK browser is not as fast as I expected. Amazon’s tech support told me that it would take a while for its database to accumulate sufficient knowledge to anticipate my next moves. In other words, the more people use it, the better it gets. We shall see.
- The battery life is not as good as my XOOMs but the picture brightness and sharpness should make up for that.
MY RATING
This, after only a couple of days of use. I expect to revise and expand my remarks in a couple of days but I can say the following so far:
I love the Fire because it’s an inexpensive, easy to use, capable, not fully locked tablet. It makes it easy to ‘consume’ all kinds of media, especially that stored in Amazon’s cloud (free for all Amazon purchases). The Fire is not a replacement for PCs or laptops but no tablets are, in my view. I don’t miss on outward looking camera because there are much better alternatives to taking pics with tablet but a little cam looking at user’s face (video calls) would add some value to an already great product.
I’m going to grant the Fire 4.5 stars, rounded up to 5 because I love the product and, knowing what I know now, I’d still buy it.
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