Sunday, November 20, 2011

Kindle Fire Review

I had a chance to demo the new Kindle Fire at my local Staples store yesterday and was very impressed.  For $200, you will be hard-pressed to find a better media consumption device.

The key thing to remember is that the Fire is not a Google Android tablet.  It is primarily a book reader with many additional features that allow you to consume various types of media, including movies, music, games and applications.  You won't find any Google applications on the device and the Amazon App Store only offers a fraction of available Android applications.  In addition, you won't find any cameras, GPS, Bluetooth, 3 or 4G, or other niceties on the Fire that you will find on your typical Android tablet.  And if you are looking seriously at the Apple iPad, it may or may not be adequate.  It really depends on what you want to use it for.  But keep this in mind: it is less than half the price.

That said, the Kindle Fire has a lot to offer.  If you are an avid book reader, the Fire offers a great reading experience with color screen, backlighting and crisp text.  (The battery life is decent but nowhere near that of the e-Ink Kindles.)  If you love movies, the Kindle Fire offers a great movie-watching experience on a small screen.  If you love music, the Fire has you covered as well.  In addition, many of the top apps and games are also available on the Fire.  The Amazon ecosystem provides a very wide range of media to consume.

And since the unit is heavily subsidized by Amazon, you get great hardware ( dual-core processor, great screen, etc.) at little more than cost.  The memory is the biggest limitation with only 8GB onboard.  The accelerated Silk browser is adequate, but judging from the benchmarks I’ve seen, it is hard to say whether the acceleration feature lives up to its hype.  When you get one, you may want to experiment with turning acceleration off and see what the performance is like.

If you are looking for a true Google Android tablet, you need to look elsewhere.  The Samsung Galaxy Tab would be a much better choice since it does offer all of the Google applications, dual cameras, GPS and more memory.

But if your objective is getting an inexpensive media consumption solution, the Kindle Fire will fit the bill quite nicely.