Price Kindle Fire, Full Color 7" Multi-touch Display, Wi-Fi Review
Product Description
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.
Too see the price
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #1 in Amazon Devices
- Color: black
- Brand: Amazon
- Model: D01400
- Dimensions: .45" h x
4.70" w x
7.50" l,
.91 pounds
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
20751 of 21318 people found the following review helpful.
A great device WHEN you consider price and function, with a few flaws
By Scott
The first and most important thing that should be said about the
Kindle Fire 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
but it is a bit heavier. It might be difficult to hold it one handed
and read a book for an hour or watch a movie. You're going to need to
rest it on something. 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 easily. 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 6,000 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. Books won't take up much room, but magazines
are around 250Mb and movies are a little under 1 Gb. 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 Kindle Touch, Wi-Fi, 6" E Ink Display -
includes Special Offers & Sponsored Screensavers. It just isn't the
same, and after hours of reading, the display would make my eyes hurt a
bit (just like with any tablet). However it is nice not to have to use a
lighted cover to see my books in the dark. The Kindle Fire is
difficult to read in bright sunlight or on the beach. The touch
navigation is very nice, but it doesn't function as nicely or quickly as
it does on the iPad or even the Kindle Touch. This can be a problem for
me, and the main reason I am using the Kindle Touch for reading books.
Additionally, the Fire doesn't support real page numbers, even though
the Touch does. So you have to use that ridiculous "location 121 of
16077 - 2%" format. A year of that with my last Kindle and I still don't
understand what that means. They need to fix this in an update. Being
able to touch a word and have it bring up the dictionary is incredibly
convenient and takes less than 2 seconds. But still, the Kindle Touch
handily beats the Fire for reading.
MAGAZINES - The Kindle Fire
can also handle magazines, however the display is just too small to be
an enjoyable reading experience. I tried out several different
magazines, and the main problem I had was with the formatting. I tried
to read an issue of Bon Appetit and my eyes were straining after three
pages. There is no way to read a single article without zooming. The
Fire handles magazines two ways: with Page View, which shows the
original magazine display, and with Text View, which attempts to just
provide the text of the article. A lot of magazines these days have
several things going on in one page, with multiple columns, little
sidebars and boxes everywhere, etc. I couldn't view a lot of this
without zooming, the text is just too small. So Page View did not work
very well for magazines like this. It is especially tough with
magazines like Entertainment Weekly, Men's Health, GQ, etc. I found
magazines like that unreadable on the 7" display. Magazines that
focused mostly on the article, like Nature, Wired, etc, were handled
much better. Some magazines even come integrated with embedded video
and audio, which is a very nice feature, and one I can see being very
useful for things like Men's Health, but I haven't had as much of a
chance to use it yet. Text View is a very nice feature that works
mostly well, but seems to get a bit confused with magazines that have
complicated formatting, so it pretty much defeats the purpose since
those are the ones I need it for the most.
COMIC READER - This is
one of the main reasons I purchased the Fire. Amazon has a fairly
extensive collection of comic books available for the Fire, including an
exclusive deal with DC to publish many of their books. In addition to a
proprietary comic reader that comes on the Fire, Amazon also has a
Comics by ComiXology app available to purchase issues and subscriptions
through. Although I initially thought the 7" display would be too small,
it is actually decent enough to serve as a comic reader. I would
definitely prefer a 10" version if they came out with one in the future.
A 10" tablet is still the way to go for comics, but if you're looking
for a cheaper option and portability, the Fire isn't too bad, and
definitely beats a smart phone. It has a "panel by panel" feature that
lets you scroll through the issue by different panels, which it will
then zoom in on. You tap the panel when done, and it moves to the next
panel. This is great for getting a larger view and working around the
size restriction, especially since some of the text in the comics is
just too small to read. Although it is fairly decent, if you are
considering the Fire just for comic books, and you are a Marvel fan, you
may want to hold off and look at another retailer's device which I
think has a few more options. You can load your own .cbr comic files on
the Kindle, but you'll need to use a third party app, like Comicat to
do it.
AMAZON MP3/VIDEO - Amazon hopes that you will get the
majority of your content from them. That is why the Fire is so
reasonably-priced. Amazon music is DRM-free. DRM is copy protection.
That means that the record labels haven't locked down the music you buy
from Amazon to restrict how you use it. Amazon MP3 music is playable
anywhere, even on your Apple devices. It also has a very high bitrate
so you are getting great quality. You don't have to worry about not
being able to listen to your music 15 years from now if Amazon goes
under. It's yours forever. As far as video, I have always disliked
Amazon's Video services. The prices are very reasonable and they now
have a huge selection, but obtaining the videos is a huge pain due to
Amazon's terrible Unbox player. That changes with the Fire, as
everything is native and streams/downloads beautifully. If you make a
lot of purchases with Amazon, or if you have several Amazon customers in
your household, you should take advantage of their Prime program. In
addition to the large selection of free videos now available to Prime
members, the shipping advantages are amazing. I once had a 200 lb
exercise bike overnighted to my house for only $3.99. Everything I
order I get within 2 days. The Prime program seems expensive but it has
certainly paid for itself over the years for me, and now is even better
that it is integrated more with the Fire. The only problem I have with
video playback is that everything I watched did not fully expand to the
screen, and was letterboxed. Considering the small 7" display size,
this was an annoyance for me. I know shows have different aspect
ratios, but some should fit the display, and I think many users will be
annoyed that they can't zoom or stretch the display to fit.
WEB
BROWSING - This is another feature I was initially excited about. I like
the idea of being able to use the Fire as a netbook. Amazon advertises
"ultra fast web browsing" using Amazon's Silk browser. It is based off
of technology that is designed to increase page loading times by
pre-fetching part of the content. Sounds like a great idea, but doesn't
work as well in practice. I tried out the Fire on several different
connections and compared page loading times with other devices (all
connected wirelessly). The Fire was one of the slowest. Amazon's own
web page, which has actually recently been optimized to work with the
Fire, takes an average of 7 seconds to load. Other major portals took a
similar amount of time or slower. My iPad and my Xoom both load pages
much faster. It is not slow enough to be a problem, but not fast enough
to impress me or be worthy of Amazon's marketing regarding it. This
needs to be improved. UPDATE - As of February 2012, page loading times
are much improved. It can still be a bit slow and stutter at times, but
you can increase this by following the steps at the bottom of this
review. I am mostly satisfied with browsing now, although Silk still
occasionally won't recognize it when I touch a link.
BATTERY LIFE
- Amazon advertises 8 hours of reading or 7.5 hours of video playback.
As an average, that's probably fairly accurate. During testing I got
an average of 7.4 hours of continuous reading, and 7 hours of video
playback over five tests for each. This is a big change over the
roughly 30 days of continuous reading with the traditional kindle, so it
may hamper you a bit if you're a voracious reader. I just got into the
habit of charging it every night with my cell phone. You can shut down
the Kindle or put it in sleep mode. I keep mine in sleep mode all the
time because it is so efficient that it uses almost no battery. I can
leave it in sleep mode for 2 days and come back and not notice any
change in battery life, and since I don't have to reboot, it starts up
immediately.
VS IPAD - As said, this isn't designed to be an
iPad. I have an iPad and there is so much more I can do with it
compared to the Kindle. The Fire serves a different (but sometimes
similar) function. I just don't ever see Amazon building up the type of
app store that Apple has, and that's where you're going to find the
major differences. Additionally, the 10" display on the iPad makes a
huge difference to me over the Fire's 7" display when it comes to
watching movies and TV, and reading magazines and comic books. However,
I think there is definitely room for the Fire to steal some of iPad's
market share, as many people (I am one of them), will find the functions
they want in a tablet can be covered by the Fire.
USER INTERFACE
- The Fire uses a heavily modified version of Android. I really liked
the interface, however I don't think it works as well on the Fire as it
does on a full tablet device like the Motorola Xoom. Occasionally I
would try to make a page turn and have it not register on the Fire, or
have it register more slowly than I am used to. If you have a lot of
experience with the iPad, you are going to notice that the software
doesn't respond as quickly on the Fire as it does with other tablets.
Although this is an inconvenience and something I definitely feel needs
to be addressed, I can accept it given the lower price point. I will
have a problem though if this is not resolved through a firmware upgrade
in the future. The Fire's custom version of Android is very nice. The
most recent applications or files accessed will display in a carousel
format that you can rotate through. You can also set up commonly-used
applications as favorites. If you want to access movies and pictures
that you manually load onto the Fire, you have to open up the "Gallery"
app, rather than accessing them from the "Videos" and "Photos" tabs.
The gallery app does not very user-friendly at displaying these files.
For instance, it just creates thumbnails for all your video files and
doesn't let you view the file names when selecting a video. If you have
dozens of videos from a single TV show, there is no easy way to organize
them in the gallery. It's clear Amazon wants you to view their videos
purchased from them rather than your own. I would really like to see
them fix this through a simple firmware update but I doubt they will.
NEGATIVES:
-
No bluetooth and no HDMI. I could really use bluetooth for integration
with bluetooth-capable speakers and so I can use bluetooth audio in my
car. As a media player, I feel this really should have been included,
and I imagine it will with future versions. This is especially
important since the audio from the speakers is a bit tinny and weak. I
have been using headphones with all my media-playing, which
significantly improves the sound. There is also no physical volume
button, which is a pain when you need to silence the device quickly
(EDIT: You can sideload the "Volume Control" app by RubberBigPepper"
from the Android Market for a great software workaround to this). I
also would like HDMI output so I can take my Amazon video purchases and
watch them on my big screen TV. Another big disadvantage in a device
that is made for media. This will also likely be included in a future
edition, so at $200, I don't feel bad about possibly having to upgrade a
year from now to get it.
- Only 8Gb storage space. As mentioned,
this device is mainly designed to integrate with Amazon's Cloud, so 8
should be enough, but it would be nice to have at least 16. I imagine
Amazon did this on purpose to force people to use their Cloud service.
-
Touch capability can sometimes be sluggish. iPad and other tablet
owners may be disappointed with the touch reaction time and some aspects
of the software.
- Video doesn't include option to zoom or stretch the display to fit the screen.
-
Very limited selection of apps from the Amazon App Store. Most of the
apps are mediocre games. UPDATE - you can get around this by manually
loading apps onto the Fire. Do a search for "sideload kindle fire." It
is very easy.
- Web "Accelerator" is not as fast as other tablets.
-
No Micro-USB transfer cable included with it. Another way for Amazon
to discourage you from transferring your own files to the device. If you
want to do that, you will need to purchase one separately, like the
AmazonBasics USB Cable - 2.0 A Male to Micro B (6 Feet / 1.8 Meters).
SUMMARY:
Bottom line, you will not find a cheaper device out there for streaming
music, video, and books than the Kindle Fire. The reason that this
device is so amazing is not for what it can do, but for what it can do
at such a cheap price. The price tag, not the technology, is the story
here. Although I definitely feel there is room for improvement and will
be interested in seeing Amazon's second generation of this device
(which I think will be significantly improved), the Kindle Fire is a
solid start. If you can wait a year or more for Amazon to work out the
kinks with the Fire (like it did with its 1st generation of the Kindle),
you should definitely do that. The next version should fix a lot of the
problems that keep the current Fire from being a "Five Star" product.
Unfortunately, reviews shouldn't focus on price, so due to some issues
with the form factor and touch interface, I can only give it four stars.
It is just not "perfect" enough for me to say it is a five star product
without taking price into consideration. But aside for that, there is
really only one device you can compare the Fire to - The Nook. So for
what it is, I would have no problems recommending the Fire to consumers
who can take advantage of it. This product more than lives up to what
it is DESIGNED to do. If you plan on getting most of your content from
Amazon AND you have a Prime membership, I think you will really find
this is a pretty incredible device for the money.
UPDATE 28 Dec
2011: After getting a new case for the Fire that makes it easier to
hold, I'm starting to use it more for reading (although I still prefer
my Kindle Touch for anything over about 45 minutes). Some magazines are
now better adapted to the Fire liked my subscription to Wired, and some
are still terrible and just compressed PDFs. An update released last
week adds more privacy features so you can delete recent history form
the carousel, and does improve noticeably on the touch sensitivity,
although it can still be frustrating at times and not as smooth as
something like an iPad. Browser loading times are still disappointing,
but not as bad as they were at first release, and I don't notice them as
much. I am continually impressed at battery usage for this device.
Despite using it less than an hour a day, I never turn it off and only
charge it a couple times a week. The rest of the time it sits in
standby mode which is extremely efficient. If they could improve a
couple more options I'd be closer to giving the Fire five stars.
UPDATE
7 Feb 2012: I have been able to update the browser significantly by
doing the following: Open up the browser and select the menu button at
the bottom, select the Settings button, and then change the following
options:
Enable plug-ins: Change this to "off." This will
disable Flash, so if you have any web sites that need it you can
re-enable it (YouTube works fine).
Accelerate page loading: Uncheck this. If your wifi connection is decent, it's not really necessary.
Mobile
(This one is optional, but I prefer to view everything in mobile mode
rather than having Silk trying to force a desktop view on a 7" screen."
5719 of 5927 people found the following review helpful.
Great device, you will enjoy it
By jjceo
I picked mine up today at Best Buy. At home I plugged it in and set
up the WIFI and my Amazon account and it immediately told me that an
update was downloading. After about 10 to 12 minutes it rebooted and
started working. I own an iPhone, iPad 2, HP Touchpad and a Kindle
Keyboard version. This device compares with the Ipad. The reviews that
blast the Kindle Fire as being no good are just not true. I am a
retired CEO and computer Guru and have a great WIFI set up in my home.
Here is my quick and dirty review:
WIFI fast and easy to set up and use
Keyboard types great, much better than the HP Touchpad and as good if not better than the iPad.
Display high resolution comparable to the iPad 2
The
device downloaded my 100 books in minutes. Most books downloaded to
the device in 3 to 4 seconds. A couple of large books took 5 seconds
and I am talking about books with 800 pages!
Web browsing is
extremely fast. I loaded up a dozen sites that I go to with complex
screens and they took 2 to 3 seconds to load. The people who are
complaining should fix their WIFI instead of complaining about the
Kindle Fire. I see no problem and the speed on the sites I tested is
comparable to the iPad 2. One site for a local TV station took about 8
seconds and the screens are complex and contain a lot of videos and
changing photos.
Apps load and work great, Facebook, Words With Friends and the Weather Channel loaded fast and work quickly.
Scrolling works very fast and responsive on the capacitive touch screen. Better than the HP Touchpad
Video download is very fast and I have no complaints.
Sound
is very good on the device. Much louder than on my iPad 2 device. I
saw several reviews blasting the Kindle Fire and in my opinion the sound
is better than the iPad 2.
I put the Kindle Fire into a case I purchased from Oberondesign and it fit tightly, but it did fit.
The Kindle Fire is more portable and easier to hold than the iPad and HP Touchpad.
The
power button is bad. It is easy to bump and it is right next to the
power plug. I have already turned the device off 4 times by accident
while doing the testing. I was unplugging the power cable and touched
the switch every time. This switch should have been on the top of the
device.
Overall the Kindle fire is a 9 out of 10. For the price it is a 10 out of 10.
I
am not a professional reviewer nor am I a paid reviewer. The Kindle
fire is worth the money and it works well. What happens after 5 million
users get onto Amazon is a new test that Amazon must prove they can
handle.
******************************
Please look at one of
my later comments on an excellent WIFI APP tool than could help you test
your home WIFI system. Amamzon sells it and it is free!
******************************
Update 12-21-2011
Amazon
has made an update to the Kindle Fire operating system effective today.
Make sure that your Kindle Fire is fully charged or plugged in and
press the power button for about 20 seconds. Turn on the Kindle Fire by
pressing the on button again and it will begin to come on slowly. It
will be downloading the update. After it starts it will shut down
automatically and then restart again. When the swipe arrow comes on,
swipe it and enter your password (If you have one) and your Kindle will
start. Be patient when downloading this and wait for the Kindle Fire to
totally restart!
The new operating system is number 6.2.1 and it
was 6.2. You can check this by touching the small gear in the upper RH
corner, touch "+More", touch "Device" and then looking at the entry for
the "System Version".
Major changes that I can see:
-Memory is
now segmented into two parts that are available to you. The first is
Application Storage which is set at 1.17 GB. It will appear at the top
of the device screen and you can see how much is used for Apps. This is
the memory allocated for your down loaded and resident Apps.
-
The remaining memory is called Internal Storage and it is now 5.37 GB
for your books, movies and other storage besides Apps. It is listed
below the Application Storage.
-When looking at the Settings page
you will see a new access for "Restrictions" which allows you to enable
a password to turn WIFI access OFF or ON. If you enable this you will
be asked to enter a password, (Minimum of 4 characters) that will allow
you to turn Off the WIFI access. You have now just enabled a "child"
mode where you can play games, read books, or do anything that is
installed on your Kindle Fire. You will not be able to get new email,
browse the internet, buy anything, or communicate in any way to the Web
as the WIFI is turned off. You will see a key in the upper RH corner
where before you saw the WIFI strength indicator. The key symbol means
the WIFI is locked OFF. DO NOT FORGET YOUR PASSWORD! Remember you can
do anything that is on your Kindle but you cannot download anything from
the "Cloud" so make sure that your Kindle has everything you want to do
on it resident in the Kindle memory. In order to enable the WIFI you
must touch the key symbol, touch WIFI, touch WIFI "ON", enter your
password and click OK. Your WIFI will reconnect in about 5 seconds.
-You
are able to remove anything from the Carousel by simply touching it for
a few seconds and then selecting "Remove from Carousel". This is a
nice new feature and you can still access your books or Apps by using
the menu bar items above the Carousel.
- Amazon states that
operation fluidity and performance enhancements have be added but it is
difficult to see what they are as the device does so much you don't know
where to look for the enhancements.
-Amazon states that the
touch navigation is more responsive and again it is difficult to see
changes. I do seem to notice that the back arrow symbol on the bottom
of the screen seems to be more responsive.
There is a post on
Amazon to download this update using a computer and a micro-USB cable
but I have updated two Kindle Fires using the method I discuss above
without a problem. If you would like to look at the Amazon post look
here:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_k6_updatesi?nodeId=200790620
Many people may not own a micro-USB cable.
I
could not use the automatic update mode where it says to touch the
"Update Your Kindle" button on the Kindle Fire under the Device page as
that selection was grayed out. Cycling the power to do a hard reset
forced the download automatically. You should receive this update
automatically on your Kindle Fire in a day or two after it begins the
automatic update roll-out.
7528 of 7824 people found the following review helpful.
I want to love it, I really do. But I can't.
By Billy Radcliffe
As a long-time Kindle fan I was eager to get my hands on a Fire. For
the most part I've found that it does what I wanted it to, which is be
the one device I can take with me anywhere. There are some great
features; the reader app is excellent (though not without flaws), the
app store experience is terrific, videos are fantastic, and the device
is quick and for the most part dead-simple to use, all thanks to the
services Amazon provides. And of course the extras that come with Prime
membership really make it a real value - I won't be cancelling my
Netflix streaming account just yet (watching Netflix on the Fire works
very well) but I imagine within a year Amazon's free streaming video
catalog will be just as good as Netflix. The free "lending library" book
every month really is the icing on the cake though, and makes Prime
membership a no-brainer. The hardware itself is solid and has a quality
feel, it's just the right size for one-handed use, and the screen is
fantastic (for an LCD screen) with good brightness and excellent color,
and a very wide viewing angle. So as a reader, video player and music
streaming device the Fire excels, and as an occasional browsing,
emailing, game playing tablety thing it does pretty well.
But
there are some downsides too; the small bezel size makes holding it
without inadvertent page-turns difficult, the lack of buttons makes
controls harder, the accessible storage memory is limited to just 5GB,
which seems awfully small when carrying my own video content on a trip,
and overall the interface of the system is just a little awkward and
unfinished. Sometimes the back button doesn't work, buttons are hard to
push accurately or launch the wrong function, navigation isn't exactly
intuitive, etc. Particularly annoying are things like the way that
almost half the screen is taken up by menu bars when browsing in
landscape mode, the "momentum" of the browsing not stopping, menu bars
that sometimes just pop up randomly while reading, and the navigation of
Newsstand content like the New York Times is incredibly awkward. And
then there's the jerkiness that happens when browsing or navigating
other content; to me, this just shouldn't happen when reading a book.
This is a Kindle, after all.
On the missing or unfinished side
its disappointing that there isn't even a little bit of social media
built in - no sharing clips of books or newsstand material via email, FB
or twitter. Also missing is the "read out loud" found on other Kindles,
and the new "X-Ray" feature found on the other new Kindles. There is no
archiving or syncing personal documents - they have to be mailed
individually to the Fire. And there's no page numbers in the books -
c'mon, Amazon, this is even available for the old Kindles at this point.
The browser lacks some basic functionality like being able to rearrange
bookmarks, and other little annoyances. The email application is very
basic, and doesn't always format text properly, and doesn't have simple
things like a landscape mode to view a list of messages. But the biggest
"unfinished" feature of the Fire is the Cloud integration; the Cloud
doesn't work hand-in-glove with the Fire in the way you think it might.
In order to access features like the video or the docs, you basically
have to go through a browser the way you would from any other device.
For the most part the Cloud acts only as a digital locker for items
purchased from Amazon, not seamlessly as a repository for any kind of
content you want to access from the Fire. The way the Cloud seems to be
marketed, and the way it should work, is that the Fire and the Cloud
should work seamlessly together for all kinds of content; if you upload
your own movie from your PC to the Cloud, you should see it in your
Video tab on the Fire, and be able to stream it or download it. If you
upload folders of work documents to the Cloud, they should be available
to browse and download from the Fire's Doc tab. But that's not the way
it works. For whatever reason, the Fire's using a Frankenstein mix of
the Cloud, Kindle digital library, the app store, and local storage to
handle content needs. It just isn't quite ready for prime time, and it
isn't what people are expecting when they pick up the Fire.
All
of these little things add up to make what could be a great device
merely adequate. Many will be able to overlook these problems and enjoy
the Kindle Fire for what it is; an inexpensive all-in-one-entertainment
device. I only point them out to remind people that they should not
expect perfection from the Kindle Fire, at least not out of the box.
Over the next few months it's possible (likely) that many of the
problems I have could be fixed with software revisions - i.e. the bezel
problem could be fixed by making the margins in the reader app
non-active, for instance, and the problem with the menus taking up too
much room could be fixed by making them accessible via swipe-up or
swipe-down. Hopefully Amazon is already working on these things. Until
then, I'm trying to learn to live with the Fire as best I can. Maybe I
can learn to love it.
NOTE: This review has been edited slightly
since it was originally posted for the purposes of clarity and to answer
questions that have come up in the comments thread to this review.
Please leave a comment if you need clarification or think that something
has been missed.
UPDATE NOV 30: a recent software update seems
to have fixed several of the above problems, specifically the system
speed and page-turning speed are better, and the button response is much
improved. Random menus no longer appear when reading, momentum in the
browser doesn't seem to be a problem anymore, and the carousel is much
easier to use as a result of it having slightly more "friction" in
paging through the most recent items used..
Too see the price
