UPDATE September 2012 - With the comparatively-priced Nexus 7 tablet out
now, and an official announcement of the Kindle Fire 2 expected to be
made this month, I don't recommend anyone purchasing the Fire anymore
unless you can find it at a discount. It is expected to be replaced
with a new version within the next three months. I still think it's a
decent e-reader/tablet hybrid and great for Prime members, but it's a
bit outdated now.
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 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."
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