Before you go and cancel your layaway plan for your second iPad 2, hear me out fellow Heeders.
The Kindle Fire is NOT an iPad ‘killer’!
Instead, the Fire is a brilliant attack on the color e-book reader market. By coupling an accessible price point ($200), cloud service, and access to not only books but also music, movies, and applications all on a customized Android OS called ‘Amazon Silk’, the Fire maximizes the Amazon digitally offered services. Without boring you with more technical jargon, let me assure you that their approach to making an appealing and approachable internet tablet is brilliant and flawed at the same time.
The Kindle Fire vs. the Nook Color
Physically, the Kindle Fire is the perfect size. The 7” screen makes it big enough to comfortably watch movies and small enough to fit in the inner pocket of my coat. This handy size makes it a lot more attractive to haul around when on the go than the massive 9.7” iPad 2. The physical size of the Fire is basically the same as the Kindle Touch e-reader only it has a slightly larger screen than its e-reader sibling.
The touch response on the Fire is a bit spotty at best. Don’t think that playing Fruit Ninja on this 7″ screen is better than your iPhone. At times, touching or tapping the screen the wrong way will bring up the Fire’s menus in the midst of gameplay. This phenomenon continues to happen in the midst of web browsing and other applications as well just showing how unresponsive the controls can be at times.
Keeping things simple, Amazon opted to not incorporate a slew of ports, cameras, and buttons on the fire. So the 8 Gigs of internal memory (6 gigs are available for user storage) are all that you’ll be able to use to store all of your music, movies, apps, and books. This is a decent amount of local space but keep in mind that a typical digital movie is between 1-2 gigs. So don’t think you’ll be able to slap a couple of movies on your Fire and expect to have a ton of space for all of your apps and music when on the go. Just as the new iPad and iPhones have begun to do, Amazon is looking to capitalize on their Cloud technology to access their massive media library. Just make sure that you are around free Wi-Fi if you are on the go. I say this because the Fire does not come in a Wi-Fi + 3G or 4G model. Streaming music and video can only be done via Wi-Fi. For the price point, this is an acceptable compromise though. You’ll also probably want to buy a charger that has the USB connector on the recharge cable as well so that updates or hard downloads can be done from a PC. Unfortunately, this cable is separate.
Here’s the catch though. The cloud service that Amazon provides allows for 2 Gigs of music. Anything you buy through their store doesn’t count towards that storage space. If you want to upload your OWN library into it then you would probably need to invest in Amazon’s Prime program which allows for unlimited storage space as well as 2 day shipping and preks within their digital video store as well. Most people probably won’t take that route since uploading your own music physically to the Fire will be the probable solution.
The battery life is pretty good as well for a device that has such a gorgeous and bright color screen. At around 8 hours, this Li Polymer rechargeable battery handles the rigors of streaming music and video fairly well. Still, this comes up slightly short in comparison to the quoted values of other tablets like the 10 hours for the Nook Tablet or the +11 hours for the iPad 2. Considering you will be using the music or video of this device in a Wi-Fi hotspot or at home, the life isn’t that bad.
Since I don’t do a lot of traveling, it was hard to evaluate the usefulness of the instant video service that Amazon provides. Set up in a manner much like Microsoft’s Zune service, you can buy or rent most movies and TV shows in either standard def or HD. With their Amazon Prime service, you are treated to a select choice of movies and TV shows that can be watched for free. The selection provided around the time of this review included shows like 24, Lost, Firefly, multiple Star Trek shows, Farscape, and The Tudors. Pricing to watch these without Prime membership was around $1.99. Of the movies available, the new Star Trek was probably the only relatively recent blockbuster movie on the list. Though the listing didn’t have many recent movies, classics like Ghostbusters 2, Interview with A Vampire, Brokeback Mountain, Speed, and Carlitto’s Way were noted. In total, the list was around 3000 available movies. Without Prime membership, renting (24 hours) was typically $2.99 or $3.99 for standard def. High definition was typically a dollar more than the standard rental price.
Honestly, with the other digital services out there like HuluPlus and Netflix, it is a wonder why a subscription service (be it monthly or annual) wasn’t used to allow for unlimited access to the digital video library.
As with the movies, Amazon’s media selection and service is top notch. There are millions of albums, thousands of books, movies, shows, and plenty of digital newspapers and magazines. Amazon’s bookshelf-looking interface (called the Silk) is built on an Android operating system and works quite well. The most recent selections are kept on a scrolling shelf and are easy to sift through and select. Finding the store for each media type is easy. At first, distinguishing between buying Amazon content on the website and buying it on the Kindle dedicated digital store was a little confusing. The Fire has a button for Amazon’s website that has a box under the Amazon logo as a shortcut to the store. While digital content can be purchased this way, the Fire actually has the digital store set up differently than the website. Featured in categories listed above the shelves near the top of the screen, each category allows you to flip between what is in your Library (whether in the Cloud or on the device) and the Store with a simple touch.
Once I got over the initial honeymoon period with the Fire, I noticed a few quirky things Amazon did. I like comic books and I saw my Kindle Fire as a great way to get back into reading them. I’m not a collector by any means and find myself buying graphic novels as a way of reading a storyline rather than buying a bunch of issues. Now that the major publishers are flexing their digital muscles, I took this opportunity to check out the comic book offerings on the Kindle. As I began looking for the different digital comic apps, I noticed that they were ALL absent! In the default ‘bookshelf’ though was a peculiar application called Comixology. There I found that all of the different publishers are represented and I could download recent and back-issue comics and graphic novels. Odd thing is that the major publisher graphic novels that feature multiple issues are absent from this service. Instead, you must purchase storylines issue by issue. Since this isn’t a Comixology review, I’ll leave it at that. Still, it was interesting that the app store contained this service and not the individual service for each publisher.
Another strange this is the lack of an integrated tie-in to their new Audible.com audiobook service. While it is easy to buy e-books and such, the Audible service is treated as a separate service/app that must be logged into.
When using the Audible service, the default mode of going to ‘sleep’ and requiring a password to log in sometimes makes for an annoying experience when listening to a book. Also, changing the volume and other features is a bit of a chore since an external volume button is not featured. Instead, it is treated as a setting that external even to the application itself.
This makes listening to music equally annoying as well since changing songs after a time require logging back into the Fire. Their media player is not too user friendly either. Good luck trying to set up playlists or organizing anything with this bare minimum player.
Another common gripe noted are the fact that the Fire has a power button at the bottom that is accidentally pressed too often.
In the end, the Fire is a good start to breaching the color e-reader market (because that is really what it is honestly). Since it doesn’t have a 3G or 4G model, it really can’t be classified as an internet tablet. This is a decent step for Amazon but it feels as if it is a bit late to the game. If it weren’t for the tie-in to Amazon’s digital music service, this Kindle might even be irrelevant. Many people are already looking forward to a 3G or 4G model sometime down the road (possibly June 2012), but with Apple rumors flying about and the Nook Tablet hitting the market, Amazon may need a little something extra to stay competitive.
- “3 stars out of 5″
