Kindle Fire Review

There are many tablets out there on the market that are geared towards many types of people. You'll find tablets for movie-lovers, gamers, businessmen, travelers, budget-minded people, and many more. Yet, while you can easily download iBooks or a Kindle app on any of these tablets, there seems to be only one truly geared for readers. That tablet is the Kindle Fire.

The Kindle Fire was released last October in a New York City event. It generated great commotion, and is now the most bought product on Amazon. Unlike many other tablets, its design is more minimalistic, which Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said they did to let you "lose yourself in the content you love" as its border seems to disappear. What really caused commotion was its price tag: just $199. Usually, low price tags make us wonder if its performance will be good enough, as that's usually how companies cut down on price. Yet, somehow, the Kindle Fire has still been able to compete with other tablets despite this. Jump past the break to read the full review.

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Amazon seemed to aim for a minimalistic design when the built the Kindle Fire, which certainly makes reading more enjoyable. The 7" screen is a nice improvement from the 6" screen on E-Ink Kindles, and the rubber backing makes holding the Fire in your hands much nicer. 

 Though it may be a subtle engraving, the "kindle" written on the back of the gadget seems to make you look more professional when you read. I'm pleased that they chose to put their logo on the back of the device, as I found the logo on the top of E-Ink Kindles rather distracting. 

While the Kindle Fire is lighter than some of its competitors, such as the BlackBerry Playbook, its 14.6 oz weight is slightly heavier than the 9 oz E-Ink Kindles. By no means does the Fire weigh you down or become tough to hold when you read, but I would prefer a slightly lighter device. The compactness of the device proves to be very useful when reading, and it also makes it easier to carry around. The Fire measures 7.5" by 4.7", and its only 0.47" thick.


The Kindle Fire packs a lot of weight into a small space, and for some reason I've grown to like that dense feel. It makes the Kindle feel much more solid, and it doesn't feel like a cheap wannabe iPad like many other cheap tablets on the market. 


The only button that can be found on the Kindle Fire is a small power button on the bottom used to sleep, wake, shut down, or turn on the device. As with previous Kindles, the button turns orange when the Kindle is charging, and green when the Kindle is plugged in but has finished charging. There aren't any volume or brightness buttons, but the interface on the Kindle makes those buttons very easy to access. 


Unfortunately, Amazon didn't put in HDMI port in the Fire, but they do have a micro-USB port for charging and a headphone jack, the latter of which would be hard to live without, because the speakers are rather tinny and not too loud. You won't find a light sensor either, but I'd say Amazon was smart not to include some of these frills, as they would've bumped the cost up significantly.

Internal

Display 

The Kindle's 1024 by 600 display (0.6 MP) isn't as sharp as some other tablets, and that's rather noticeable. Its pixel density is 169 ppi, meaning it won't wow you like a retina display does, but its not to chunky either. Books seem completely fine to me (I disagree with Apple's theory that text has to be crystal-clear when you read). Movies aren't bad either, though it would be nice to have a display sharp enough to see HD movies on.

The brightness of the Fire's IPS panel is rather impressive (I've never had to use full brightness, even when reading outside), and its viewing angle isn't bad considering that you won't really be looking at it from odd angles a lot.

The display makes the reading experience much different for users like me that are making the switch from an E-Ink Kindle. While an E-Ink Kindle is slightly easier on the eyes and easier to read outside, text on the Fire's screen is much clearer, has much more color depth, and allows me to read in bed without using a reading light, an experience I found thrilling.

Battery

This is the only place where E-Ink Kindles really dominate. E-Ink screens are by far more energy efficient than color screens, which is why the 4th gen E-Ink Kindle can undergo 15 hours of reading with wireless off (or 10 with wireless on) on a single charge; that's an entire month if you read for 30 minutes a day.

Not to say that the Kindle Fire has poor battery life. My testing showed that it can play a movie for 7 hours and 40 minutes on a single charge. Reading consumes less energy, so I'd estimate it could undergo about 10 hours of reading on a single charge, which certainly isn't a far cry from the E-Ink Kindle's 15 hours.  

While this can't compete with the 9-10 hr battery life offered by larger tablets such as the iPad, the Galaxy Tab 10.1, and the TouchPad, only one 7" tablet, the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus, managed a longer battery life than the Fire. Even then, the Fire only lost by 27 minutes. The Playbook only gets 7 hours, the Toshiba Thrive 6.5 hours, and the Galaxy Tab 7.0 a miserable 6 hours.

Performance

 This is the spot where most budget tablets fail to impress. Surprisingly, the Kindle Fire fared quite well in my testing, clearly outperforming other competitors such as the BlackBerry Playbook and the Nook Tablet. Obviously, its performance can't match that of $500+ tablets like the iPad and the Galaxy Tab 2.

The Kindle Fire sports an impressive 1 GHz dual-core processor, though I'd like to see more RAM added to its current 512 MB. It also might be a good idea for Amazon to make their own operating system instead of modifying Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) a lot, because that likely takes up a lot of system memory.

Apps run very smoothly on the Kindle Fire. I had no problem with any of the apps I downloaded, which include Sketch n' Draw, Sudoku Free, Words With Friends, Pulse News, and Quick Office. 2D games like Angry Birds and Falldown Classic run quite seamlessly, as do 3D games like Fruit Ninja.

The only app the Fire seems to have trouble with is its web browser. It often shows a dark screen for 5-10 seconds before opening. It stopped responding twice out of about 25 uses, which isn't too good.

I only had one major performance problem with the Kindle Fire. I opened the web browser and performed a Google search, but the page wouldn't load. I restarted the browser, but it only showed a dark gray screen. After waiting a minute and seeing no response from my Kindle, I went back to my home screen and decided to restart the device. However, the Fire only showed an orange spinning wheel; it clearly couldn't stop the browser. Seeing nothing else to do after a minute (it usually takes 5 seconds max to shut down), I pushed the power button again.

Bad move. The screen went blank, and when I tried turning the device on, nothing happened. After calling Amazon customer support, I learned that holding down the power button for 20 seconds made the gadget reboot from stretch. After trying the trick, it finally turned on. The good news: I hadn't killed my Kindle Fire. The bad news: the browser almost made me.

In general, however, the graphics were slightly choppy; turning the page didn't flow as much as it does on the iPad, and scrolling down didn't feel as nice as it does on some other tablets. This must be a problem with the app, not the software, as the carousel on Amazon's home page was surprisingly smooth.

Interface

Technically, the Kindle Fire runs Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), but Amazon modified it so much that if I hadn't heard about the Kindle's OS previously, I would've thought Amazon made their own operating system. The only thing left from Gingerbread is its app store.

Pressing the power button on the Kindle Fire, you'll be greeted with a very simple lock screen; A black strip across the screen with the time and date, and an arrow on the right side of the screen that you can drag across to unlock. Password protection is optional, but I'd recommend it when using your Kindle in public. If you choose a letters as a password, a semi-transparent keyboard will appear when you slide the arrow, or a number pad will appear if you choose numbers only.

Upon unlocking your device, you'll find one of my favorite home screens I've seen on a device. At the top of the screen, you'll find a carousel. This allows you to flip through your most recently used items, whether they are books, movies, documents, apps, or any other form of content. Because the apps you use most frequently will usually show up in the first few titles of the carousel, it makes finding what you want very easy. Some people disagree with me, but I far prefer this to Apple's home screen, where my home screens get so cluttered up I end up using Spotlight Search, which is quite slow and clumsy.

For the people that prefer Apple's interface, you'll find icons below the carousel if you scroll down. However, these icons don't show all of your content; just the ones that you use frequently, hence the name "favorites." You can put anything on your favorites simply by holding your finger on it and selecting "Add to Favorites". You can easily rearrange your favorites icons by holding down on them and dragging them to another spot. Some people say that when trying to open applications from the carousel, the device instead flips to the next item. Maybe its that they have awful motor skills, but I don't see this problem at all. It hasn't happened to me once.

If you choose, you can navigate the interface by choosing Newsstand, Books, Music, Video, Docs, or Apps from the top of the screen. And instead of having an icon for the web on your favorites, Amazon puts it with those tabs at the top of the screen.

When you tap on one of the tabs, you'll view all of the content stored in your cloud. Everything you get is stored on your personal cloud space, which offers up to 5 GB of storage. You can also switch to the "Device" tab, which shows only the content stored on your device. To download an item from your cloud onto your fire, you just tap it and the download starts. 

Amazon placed a simple, intuitive notification bar at the top of the screen. At the top left, it shows the name of your device, which can easily be changed on Amazon's "Manage Your Kindle" page. If you include the word "Kindle" in your device name, its color changes to orange on the notification bar, which adds a nice touch of style to your device. In the center is the current time, and on the left is a gear, a Wi-Fi strength symbol, and a battery life indicator. Touching the gear opens a drop down menu where you can quickly adjust your volume and brightness, lock or unlock your device orientation, connect to a Wi-Fi network, or sync your Kindle. You can also tap "More", which brings you to a list of more settings. 

I find this feature to be quite useful for quickly adjusting my brightness when my surroundings change, or connecting to a nearby Wi-Fi network.  Its much faster than Apple's "Settings" icon, because you can access the quick settings from any app, and they only show the settings you change frequently.

The fact that you have to tap at the bottom of the screen to bring up your notification bar and the dock at the bottom with home, menu, and back buttons is a little bit clumsy, but I find it worth it, because a home button might distract from your reading. I would've liked a multitasking tray, but going to the carousel isn't much slower, and besides, apps remember where you left off.

Browser

Amazon's Silk browser is unique in the sense that it doesn't use your Wi-Fi to actually load the page. Instead, it uses your Wi-Fi to send signals to the cloud saying what you want it to process, and to receive them back from the cloud when it has finished processing your page. This technology has proven to be much faster than almost any other browser on the market, and it doesn't hog your Wi-Fi as much.

Thanks to this cloud technology, web pages loaded much faster than they did on tablets with similar specs to the Kindle Fire. The Fire is great for people like me who chose not to have particularly fast Wi-Fi in order to save money, because it depends on the speed of your Wi-Fi network much less.

This explains why some technology blogs are reporting that the Playbook loads pages just as fast as the Fire; because if your Wi-Fi is almost as fast as Amazon's cloud (as the Wi-Fi networks of many techies are), than it doesn't really matter if you use Silk or not. So if you have a rather slow Wi-Fi network in your home, Silk should be a huge plus when you consider your tablet options, but if your Wi-Fi is already very fast, Silk shouldn't matter to you at all.

As far as the browser interface goes, I like it; the address bar disappears as you scroll down, but your list of tabs is always there. Just like the iPad, it has a reading feature, and it's easy to bookmark pages - or even add them to your home screen favorites - from the browser.

Keyboard

By no means is the Kindle Keyboard bad, but it certainly could see some improvements. It is one of the first keyboards to offer suggestions of the word you're trying to type above the keyboard, which makes typing much quicker. My only complaint is that while adding a period button to the bottom row of the keyboard is useful, it crams the spacebar into the left side of the screen, so you.might.hit.the.period.instead.of.the.spacebar.sometimes.

Naturally, the keyboard is slightly cramped in portrait mode (though you'll soon get used to it), while it's much nicer in landscape.

Reading Books

You can tell Amazon put a lot of effort into the interface of reading books; after all, it's called Kindle Fire for a reason. One of the nicest features is that if you do reading on other Kindles, smartphones, tablets, or computers, you'll be able to pick up right where you left off on your other device. And all the Kindle books you've ever downloaded come free on your cloud. If you're a member of Amazon Prime, you can even lend books to other Prime members, just like you can on Nooks.

When reading, tapping on the right side of the screen turns the page forward, tapping on the left side of the screen turns the page backwards, or you can swipe in either direction. Amazon doesn't give you the page-turning visual found on iBooks, which is nice because I find that feature distracting.

Tapping in the middle of the screen pulls up the menu, and tapping on the "Aa" icon from there brings up a beautiful list of options. You can choose black text on white background, which is my favorite color theme, or you can choose white text on black background, which is easier on your eyes. Finally, you can choose brown text on yellow background, which gives your book an old-fashioned look. You can also choose from 8 available fonts, though I prefer the default font, Georgia. If you don't know on a word, simply hold down on it, and a definition appears, as well as options to make a note, highlight, web search, or share.  

Reading Magazines

One feature that has pulled many buyers, including me, to the Kindle Fire instead of an E-Ink Kindle is its ability to read full-color magazines. There are over 500 titles available on the newsstand store with a huge variety of topics, so there's sure to be a few that tickle your fancy. I subscribed to Wired, The Atlantic, National Geographic, and Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Many of the magazines have "Page View" enabled, which means you can view the pages as they actually look on the magazine. However, the small screen becomes a problem here; not only is it rather small, it has different dimensions than paper, so there's some gray space above the magazine pages. You can toggle between page view and another mode named "Text View", which takes the articles of the magazine and puts them in exactly the same format used to read books. I typically use page view to flip through the pages of the magazine, and when I find a good-looking article, I read it on text view.

For some reason I can't understand, I find that when reading Kindle magazines, I read many more of the articles than I do when I read text magazines. Maybe its because I'm not intimidated by all of the remaining pages in the magazine because I can't see them, or maybe it's just because I enjoy the articles more when I read them in Kindle format. But as far as I'm concerned, that's a good thing.

Conclusion

Considering its $200 price tag, the Kindle Fire is quite a mind-blowing product. While power users may not be satisfied with its sub-par specs, Amazon isn't gearing the Fire toward power users. It's the first tablet truly geared towards readers. 

Even if you aren't a reader, I'd still recommend getting the Kindle Fire. Its beautiful interface really encouraged me to read, and I found that that was quite a good thing. Most people don't realize that settling down with a good book is far more enjoyable than other things people do in their free time. They don't realize that you don't have to be a bookworm to have fun with a book.

See, in life, a lot of things that seem like they would be a lot of fun actually aren't very fun. Many people can't wait for vacations, only to realize that they're far more boring than they thought. Many people look forward to playing video games on the couch, only to realize that all it does is waste their time. And a lot of things that don't seem to fun turn out to be a lot of fun. Most of these things are different for everybody; for me, running Tech n' Cars is much more fun than I thought it would be. Yet only one thing in this category seems to hold true for everybody; reading. 

Many things that aren't as fun as they seem appear fun because they involve technology. Good examples of this include video games, web surfing, and YouTube videos. So, reading a book on a Kindle Fire seems fun because the technology is amazing. And it actually is fun; but for a different reason. So ultimately, the Kindle Fire has finally made reading seem as fun as it really is. And as ridiculous as these last two paragraphs may sound, they're true. Before I got my Kindle Fire, I finished a book about every two months. Now, I'm finishing a book every week. And loving the technology.

The Kindle Fire can be bought at OfficeMax here: Kindle Fire B0061VVO5S