Kindle, Wi-Fi, 6″ E Ink Display

This is the smallest and lightest Kindle so far, described as lighter than a paperback and thinner than a magazine. Its E Ink display is designed to read just like a real book and to not reflect any glare, even in really sunny conditions. It’s the lightest product of the Kindle range and is therefore a great option for people who are constantly on the move.
What we think is really impressive is that the battery can last a whole month if you use it for half an hour a day! Equally exciting is that it can also save up to 1400 books.
The unit’s built-in Wi-Fi allows you to find some of the newest releases or one of your favorite books online and be reading it within only one minute. We think that it might be the ideal gift for bookworms who have yet to embrace this amazing technology.
Another benefit is that it is very easy to use right out of the box. It requires no time to set up, no computer, and no software to download.

Kindle Wi-Fi Features and Specifications

• Uses Amazon’s 6” most advanced E Ink display.
• Comes with a 1-year limited warranty.
• No system requirements.
• Stores up to 2GB or 1400 books!
• The battery can last up to a month based on half an hour of reading per day.
• Weighs 170g and measures 6.5” x 4.5” x 0.34”.

Buy from Amazon

Kindle Wi-Fi, 6″ E Ink Display Review

The Kindle has been reviewed many times on Amazon and has generally had very positive feedback. There have been some complaints made about it but such reviews certainly make up the minority view of this unit.

64% of reviewers have given it a five star rating, which we think is very impressive. Its current review rating at Amazon is 4.3/5 stars.
CLICK HERE to get the Kindle for the best price available at Amazon.

The Negative Reviews

We will briefly summarize some of the negative reviews that have been given for the Kindle so that our readers can be more informed about the product.
The most common complaint made about the unit seems to be that the keyboard is difficult to use. Some reviewers have found that typing on the Kindle is time consuming and tedious. According to them, if your primary use of the Kindle involves typing then you may be better off with the Kindle Keyboard.
Other complaints about the product include that it doesn’t come with 3G, that it is a bit awkward to hold, and that there are some problems with the display such as poor contrast and the effects of glare.
We should point out that most reviewers really like the display and the Kindle in general.
CLICK HERE to read the customer reviews for the product in more detail.

The Positive Reviews

The feedback for the Kindle has been very positive and there are many reviewers that are very satisfied with their purchase of it. There are a large number of different features that customers like about the Kindle. We can’t fit them all into this article but we will discuss the most common sentiments of the reviewers.
A lot of customers really like the unit’s screen and that it won’t show a glare or reflection. They also like that it doesn’t have a keyboard, which makes for a better reading experience. These comments are obviously a contradiction to the negative remarks that we discussed before.
Customers also appreciate how compact and easy it is to hold, that it is available at an affordable price, that it can hold up to 2 GB of memory, and that it has a strong battery life.

There are really just too many benefits of the Kindle that customers seem to love for us to list them all here and we encourage our readers to see the product’s reviews at Amazon for more information.

Conclusion

Would we recommend the Kindle Wi-Fi to our readers?
Absolutely, and here’s why:
This is the most affordable product of the Kindle range at the moment and it provides immense value. We really like that you can save up to 1400 books on it, that you can carry it around with you in your pocket and read it wherever you go, and that it has a battery that lasts one month.
We are very impressed with the feedback and our research has shown that this is definitely a high value product of which the 1700+ five star reviews are testament to.

CLICK HERE to get this product for the best price available through Amazon, to see a video demonstration of it in use, and to read through the customer reviews.

Buy from Amazon

Kindle Fire Review and Comparison to iPad 2

The Kindle Fire is about to be released and people want to know if it lives up to the hype. In a word: Yes. The Fire is best for those that want a tablet PC that handles all of the most important functions and does away with some of the least used functions found on other tablet PCs like the iPad 2. This focus on the most important functions of a tablet PC has allowed Amazon to offer the Fire at an incredible price-point of only $199. If you always wanted to get a tablet PC but couldn’t afford something like the iPad 2, this is for you. Below is my video review. Available at Amazon here.

	Amazon Kindle Fire	Apple iPad 2
Price	$199	$499-829
Content Source	Amazon	iTunes
App Store	Amazon App Store & Android Apps	iOS App Store
Apps Available	15,000+	90,000+ for iPad
Screen Size (inches)	7	9.7
Screen Resolution	1,024×600	1,024×768
Screen Pixels Per Inch	169	132
Size (inches)	7.5 x 4.7 x .45	9.5 x 7.31 x .34
Weight	14.6 ounces	21.28 ounces
OS	Custom Android	iOS
Capacity	8GB	16-64GB
Expandable Storage	No	No
3G	No	Optional
Wi-Fi	802.11 b/g/n	802.11 b/g/n
Processor	Dual-core TI OMAP 4	Dual-core A5
Camera	No	Front and Rear
GPS	No	On 3G Models
Browser	Amazon Silk	Mobile Safari
Battery Life	8 hours	7.5 hours

Kindle Fire Review 
Our review will be constantly updated as we spend more time with the Fire, so check back throughout November and December for updated information.

Construction

The Fire is extremely well constructed. The display is made of Gorilla Glass which is very resistant to damage/cracks/scratches. The back of the Fire has a nice rubberized texture which keeps it from slipping in your grip. The quality of the screen is high enough that you may not need the screen protectors sold for it, however time will tell. Overall it has that “solid” feel you get from a well constructed product. The screen is another big plus– it’s crisp, clear, and on par with the iPad. If the only screens you’re used to looking at are a monitor or laptop, the clarity will impress you (I fall in that camp).

Music, MP3′s

Music is another thing that Amazon gets right. Unlike Apple iTunes, mp3′s you download from Amazon are Digital Rights Management (DRM)-free, which means you aren’t restricted in how you use the songs or what devices you put them on. This is great from a future-proofing standpoint because you’ll always have those favorite songs available to you in extremely high quality no matter what device you may be using to listen to yours songs in the future.

Video

Video is now much more convenient as well, with built in Apps for Netflix, Hulu Plus, and others. More importantly, Amazon’s Prime membership allows you to stream thousands of movies and TV shows with native support, which means it looks great and doesn’t have the issues that sometimes plagued its player when used on a PC. In my tests of the video portion, your video starts within 5 seconds of clicking Play. It also has a nice Resume feature for any videos that you stop watching partway through.

Magazines, Newspaper, Comic Books

This is an area where the Fire has been criticized, and it’s mainly due to the fact that the screen is only 7″. It’s just tough to view all of the pictures and text on a screen that small, so you should be prepared to accept that you will have to zoom in frequently to be able to read magazines. Some of the included free trial magazines (like Golf Digest, shown in my video) are actually Apps which are optimized for the Fire and actually make magazine reading very easy and much better than those magazines which aren’t optimized. Newspapers are simple to navigate and easy to read. One thing I forgot to show in the video is that the upper left corner has a “Sections” drop down menu to quickly navigate to the section of the paper that you’re interested in. Comic books are generally very good looking on the clear, vibrant screen, and each panel can be zoomed in on with a simple tap.

Books

The screen is crisp enough that you can read for a couple of hours without eyestrain, but for more extended reading sessions the Fire isn’t as good as its dedicated e-reader Kindle cousins. That said, it’s still quite good and the positive is that you won’t need a light to read it at night since it’s backlit like any lcd screen.

Web Browser

The web browser actually surprised me. I had seen videos and reviews saying that the browser was too slow, but in my experience that was far from the truth. You can see in my review video that it loads pages quickly enough that you aren’t bored waiting, and it’s generally faster than any other demonstration videos I’d seen from sites that reviewed it prior to release. I think this is because of the Amazon Cloud caching which predicts surfing behavior and stores caches of webpages as more people use their Fires. This means that hopefully in the weeks to come the browser will only get better and faster once more people receive their Kindles.

Shipping

I included this information because you get a free month of Amazon Prime with your Kindle Fire. Amazon Prime membership includes free 2-day shipping on a LOT of items, which can save you a good bundle of cash this holiday season if you do much shopping on their site. Since you get a free month of Prime with the Fire, take advantage of the shipping deal, especially if you need larger items shipped.

Kindle Fire vs iPad 2

As you can see from the basic specs above, the Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet are direct competitors to each other and it will be interesting to see which tablet comes out ahead. My preference right now would still be for a Kindle Fire because it’s the least expensive while still offering a huge number of features, plus the awesome selection of movies and TV shows that come with an Amazon Prime membership (you get a free month with your Fire too). As always, we’ll keep this review updated as more information becomes available. For now, let’s compare the Kindle Fire and the Ipad 2:
The Kindle Fire clearly does not have as many features as the iPad 2, but the question really becomes: “Are the extra features of the iPad 2 worth $300+?” The answer for many people is going to be, “No.” Let’s look at the basic $500 version of the iPad 2. Going straight down the feature list in the table above, the obvious standout is the huge price difference. Apple has long charged a premium for their products above and beyond what competing companies charge for similarly spec’d tablet PCs. This is nothing new. So the price is a huge difference in favor of the Kindle Fire.

Content Source and App Stores Compared

Next, consider the content source and the Apps stores. Amazon has just about every form of content available, and the prices are always either extremely competitive or better than iTunes. So score one for their store. However, the Apps section is a different animal. Apple has long dominated here with a huge selection of Apps and this is clearly a check-mark in their favor. However, assuming Amazon does as well with the Kindle Fire as they expect to, I wouldn’t be surprised if the available number of Apps grows by a huge amount in 2012. Until then, there are already thousands available and probably more than anyone could ever need.

Screen Size and Resolution

iPad 2 wins in the screen size department, but loses in the clarity department. The number of DPI generally has a great effect on the clarity of text and graphics on screen (particularly text), and so a higher DPI means it will be easier to read the screen of the Kindle Fire.

Size and Weight

Here again, the Kindle Fire has an advantage in that it’s more easily portable and much lighter.

Capacity and Storage

The iPad is the clear winner here. If you want to have a lot of video on your tablet PC, then the iPad can accommodate more. The way that Amazon plans to help to offset this is by virtually unlimited Cloud storage, which is basically storing your files on their hard drives and then being able to access that data on any computer with an Internet connection. Apple plans to roll out a similar service in the coming weeks as well.

Camera

The last thing worth mentioning is the lack of camera on the Kindle Fire. This may or may not be an issue for most people since we all have cell phone cameras these days that can upload instantly, but if you need a camera attached to your computer all the time for some reason, the Kindle lacks that.

Summary

The Kindle Fire is a very strong competitor to the iPad 2, and for most people will make more sense as a better value for the money. The few strong points of the iPad must be extremely important to you in order to make it a better choice for you than the Kindle Fire. Look for more information to be added here once the Kindle Fire is closer to release and more details are available. If you’d like more detailed information on the Fire, click here to visit Amazon’s official Kindle Fire page.

Amazon’s New Tablet, The Kindle Fire

Amazon is introducing a new tablet, the Kindle Fire, into the marketplace.  In some aspects it resembles the Blackberry Playbook, but it has so much more to offer.  The Kindle Fire has a sleeker design and all of Amazon’s content behind it.  Other tablets can’t really compete with access to 18 million songs, books, apps, movies, TV shows, games and magazines.

All of that is not free, but the tablet is designed to integrate seamlessly with all of Amazon’s content.  If you are an Amazon Prime member you have access to 10,000 streaming movies and TV shows at no extra cost.

The Kindle Fire, Full Color 7" Multi-touch Display, Wi-Fi has a dual core processor and although it looks nothing like a Google android tablet, the android apps work really well.  It has no system requirements because it is wireless.  It has a 7 inch color touchscreen and all amazon content can be stored in the cloud for free.

The introductory price of $199 reaches a much wider audience than the other tablets on the market.  One of the reasons the tablet can be offered at such a low price is because it has 8GB of storage which is about half of the base storage of other tablets.  The Kindle Fire also does not have the support of the 3G network, but it is WiFi capable.  You can use it in WiFi hotspots where you can stream movies, TV shows, and other content from Amazon’s cloud.

The tablet also has a web browser so you can surf the web.  Amazon is using a new kind of browser called Amazon Silk.  Amazon Silk is what attaches the tablet to the cloud network.  It is like a traditional browser but it is faster.

As far creating content, the Kindle Fire does not have a camera or a microphone.  But it does let you email word documents and pdf documents to your Kindle so you can read them anywhere, at any time.

The Kindle Fire is going to be direct competition for the Barnes & Noble Nook.  The Fire has more current hardware and a fluid interface which makes it more appealing.  It also supports Adobe Flash Player which the Nook does not.

The Kindle Fire will offer a free one month trial of Amazon Prime which normally costs $79 per year and includes access to 10,000 movies and TV shows, and free 2 day shipping.  At $199, the Kindle Fire is going to give the other tablets on the market a run for their money.

Click Here to Preorder the new Kindle Fire