An iPad2 It Is NOT – But What Do You Expect For $199?
When I first got wind of the Fire, I knew it was destined to be mine. Okay, I know that sounds a bit dramatic, so let me explain:
I’m a bit of a bibliophile. I loved my first generation Kindle and am too cheap to buy a real tablet – so naturally the promise of one that would make reading all the content I’ve already invested in easier to access with a more accessible interface was just too good to pass up.
That the device would stream video from a specialized content library was just the icing on the cake. When I found out it had a browser too, well – Holy Cherry on Top, Batman – I guessed a Kindle Fire would be well worth its purchase price in entertainment gold.
So, on the first day of preorders, I committed to spending $199 of my hard-earned money on one, and also thereby committed to eating Top Ramen for a few weeks.
After a week of staring at the glossy pics in the Amazon Store, it was in my hands, and I could taste and see that Kindle Fire was indeed good.
It’s almost everything I hoped it could be. But its mere seven inches leave me with desires only a real tablet can fulfill.
Long and short of the Kindle Fire is there are some good features, there are some ugly ones and there are some things that could and should just be better.
5 Kindle Fire Shortcomings
As far as I’m concerned these 5 shortcomings are obvious and should not have been a problem, but when your competing with Apple you have a mountain to climb!
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Apps
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The Selection of Music
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Speed
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It’s So… Tiny!
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The ‘Newsstand’
There are not so many, but this is obviously a greater Android market problem.
iTunes this ain’t. Hurry up and catch up to 20 Million, Amazon!
Silk is faster than I expected with all the ‘slow’ I’ve been hearing, but still not quite as fast as promised.
Maybe this will improve with further data for the algorithm that’s supposed to be in place between the device and the compute cloud or whatever, or maybe not.
But I can stream as long as the wireless signal is solid, so at least there’s that. Kindle Fire vs. iPad 2 vs. Tab 8.9: Performance Speeds.
I know it’s just supposed to be a “little tablet.” But 7 inches just isn’t enough! Where have we heard this before?
The ‘Newsstand’ portion on the navigation bar is a pretty much waste of space.
Also, I paid .75 for a copy of the Washington Post. It was poorly laid out and when I can access content from the Washington Posts website for free with Silk or most other news sites through Pulse, free as well, I feel like I was overcharged to put it mildly!
I’m a bit disappointed that it’s even there, it makes the interface feel a little clunky.
5 Awesome Things About The Fire
Even though the Kindle Fire is not perfect, there are a some good points:
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Free Streaming with Prime
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My Cloud
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Netflix, Hulu Plus and Pandora are available.
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The pricepoint
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Pulse
Jeff Bezos, you’re so going to get me to pay $39 for an Amazon Student subscription now if you keep this as a feature. I’m sorry that year of free 2-day shipping wasn’t enough to make me commit.
My stuff I bought literally follows me wherever I go, and with very little effort. It took hardly any time to load and all automatically shows up in my carousel for easy access.
Pandora was even preloaded! I was really worried about these when I ordered; I use them all the time.
This is the one reason why this device is even a contender.
Can’t go wrong with well-organized free news content!
The Amazon Kindle Fire, in my opinion, is not the kind of sleek, intuitive design I’d expect from a product that got so much hype.
But if the price point is your main concern, you can get it here…
Kindle Fire, Full Color 7″ Multi-touch Display, Wi-Fi
