Kindle Fire Review

Kindle Fire. I have it, I like it, and I think it will be a huge success if Amazon can manage the expectations of its customers.

Contrary to the hype that’s been swirling around the media, the Kindle Fire is no real competition to the iPad, except in the sense that many people (including myself) lump all tablets into one big category the same way some people (not me) lump all laptops into one category. If you accept the premise that the iPad 2 is the MacBook Pro of tablet computing, then the Kindle Fire is the tablet equivalent of a netbook–very good at doing what it was designed to do, but designed to do only the things that a majority of people do the most and not to meet the demands of power users.

To put it another way, the iPad 2 is like a powerful and complex DSLR camera compared to the Kindle Fire as a point-and-shoot. For most people, I’d imagine, the Kindle Fire is more than enough to get the job done.

Holding the Kindle Fire, one is struck first by the heft of the unit, then by the polish. There are no obvious seems or joints, no visible screws, nothing to indicate that this is a machine. In fact, once the Kindle Fire is brought out of sleep mode, there’s nothing to indicate proper orientation of the device, either. At least not from the front. Flip it around any which way, and the screen snaps to alignment. The home button is built into the software, unlike Apple’s iDevices, so technically there is no right or wrong way to hold the Kindle Fire.

The back and most of the side is comprised of a rubberized material that keeps fingers glued to the device. The Kindle brand is engraved into this rubber material and the appropriate markings are printed in glossy black beneath this engraving. It is obvious that the Kindle design team took lessons from the school of Steve Jobs, as the entire tablet is beautiful and seamlessly built.

Speaking of Jobs, the Kindle Fire’s screen is glossy and reminds me very much of my MacBook Pro, both in the quality of the image as well as that shiny sheet of glass over the LCD. And, just like the MacBook Pro, I find the screen almost too bright at its dimmest setting. There is a light sensor and the option to let the Kindle Fire auto-adjust brightess, but I have that turned off, and keep the brightness turned all the way down. This option might help, however, if you plan to use your Kindle Fire outdoors.

Compared to an iPod or iPad, the Kindle Fire is thick as well. This, I believe, is to the Fire’s benefit. It feels solid; it feels good in the hand.

Turn on the Kindle Fire, and one is greeted first by a shimmering Kindle Fire logo as the device boots up, then a screensaver with a swipe-to-awaken strip in the middle of the image. Swipe it, and one is greeted by the Kindle Fire bookcase, where icons sit and the device history is displayed on the top shelf. If you already own a Kindle, your book purchases information will be downloaded from the cloud and immediately available to scroll through. To read a book, however, the device must first download it.

If you’ve ever used a Kindle app for your computer, phone, or other tablet device, then you already know what the reading experience is like on the Kindle. The only new twist is the ability to change the font used altogether, in addition to changing font size and a choice of font and background colors. It should be noted, however, that most of the content for Kindle is designed with the black text / white background setting in mind–even the welcome letter from Amazon looks a little strange if you stray from this default.

Any music you have stored in your Amazon Cloud drive is available to play as well, though the built-in speakers have a distinctly muffled sound compared to typical laptop speakers. With a pair of decent headphones, the Kindle Fire sounds as good as an iPod (and, IMO, better than some older iPods), with no noticeable hiss or noise floor. There are a number of preset EQs to chose from in order to taller the sound to your liking.

The Kindle Fire’s video tab will take you straight to Amazon’s video marketplace, where you can buy movies and TV shows or rent them. In addition, if you are a Prime customer, you can instant stream many movies and TV shows without any additional cost. The Prime streaming function produces a very clean image that makes great use of the Fire’s screen. Even on my slow (768k down) DSL connection, video watched through the Prime service was crisp and clear and needed very little buffering.

I can’t say the same for the Netflix app for Kindle Fire. While the Netflix for Fire app is beautiful and easy to navigate, the picture quality is disappointing on my connection. It reminded me of being a student at a rural college in 1999, trying to watch video on the internet through Real Player. The picture was very distorted, to the point the actors’ faces were mere blurs and the audio seemed to go off sync with the video. I’m sure a slightly faster connection would remedy this, as many have reported crystal clear video with Netflix on the Fire, but this strikes me as odd since I have perfect image and sound quality on my TV with Netflix streaming through my PlayStation 3.

As for apps, the Amazon app store is as easy to navigate from within the Kindle Fire as the iTunes store is from within an iDevice. Pick what you want and it installs automatically. There’s even a handy one-click purchase button. The only downside, in my opinion, is the volume of emails you will receive from Amazon confirming and thanking you for your app store purchases.

Speaking of apps, Netflix does not come pre-installed on the Fire. Nor does Hulu Plus. The apps that do come pre-installed are the Amazon store app, an email app, a help and support app, and an email app. The email app is wonderful in that you can connect pretty much any major online email service to one mailbox. I have two gmail accounts, a Yahoo! account, and a Hotmail account all connected through my Fire. I can’t seem to figure out a way to automatically check all those boxes without going through my unified inbox (one screen where all your inbox accounts are lumped together). I use different email accounts for different purposes, and it’s helpful for me to see which box my new mail is in. However, this is a small nitpick. Otherwise, the Kindle Fire mail app is wonderful and I”m thrilled with it.

The Facebook app, on the other hand, is nothing but a shortcut to Facebook’s mobile website. Facebook’s mobile website, thankfully, is very well designed and functions well on the Fire, but still, I think most users are expecting a dedicated app. In addition, there is no Twitter app, but Twitter’s mobile website works very well within Fire’s web browser.

The web browser itself will be very familiar to anyone who has ever used Chrome. There are tabs at the top and one bar for search or entering addresses. The navigation and menu options are housed in the grey bar at the bottom of the screen where the Fire’s home button resides. Pages load smoothly and look good, and if you turn the default font size up to large, there’s very little zooming required to read most web pages.

Because there’s only 6.5 GB of internal storage (1.5 GB is used for the operating system), managing content on the device will be a challenge for some users. Amazon made it easy to get rid of stuff you don’t want by simply holding your finger on its icon and then selecting the option from a pop-up menu to remove from device. The icon never goes away, however, reminding you that this content is still in the cloud, ready to download again whenever you want.

In all honesty, another 8 GB wouldn’t have killed them, especially since there’s no SD card slot.

This limited storage, while well documented, is apparently an issue for many users. The Kindle Fire is likely not a device you’ll load up with movies and music and take on vacation. You’ll be able to get some movies onto the device to watch on, say, an airplane, or while riding shotgun in the car, but mostly this is a device you’ll use at the hotel to check email and surf the web, or a device you’ll take to Starbucks or McDonalds or Panara Bread to use in-store wifi. I have the sense that most Kindle Fires will find a place on the coffee table in their users’ homes, ready to grab for a quick web browsing session or to look up prices on some need-it-now items and little more.

Is the Kindle Fire a serious contender in the tablet arena? I’m not sure. But Amazon has scored a home run in designing a device that’s drop dead simple to use and functions just as it’s suppose to. In fact, just like the more traditional kindles, the Fire has a way of disappearing in your hands and you don’t even think about it.

The bad? Lay the Kindle Fire flat on a table and overhead lights create enormous glare. Stand it up on a table with the power switch on the bottom, and you’ll accidentally initiate the shutdown sequence (a touch-screen indicator does ask if you really want to shut down in most cases, however). But the worst that I can say about the Fire, aside from a few glitches with the touch screen not registering the touch I wanted, is that my dog is insanely jealous of the device.

That pretty much covers my experience with the Fire.

I am a creator by nature. My main sources of income are through graphic design, video editing, and for me, no tablet will replace my trusty MacBook Pro. But the Kindle Fire is a nice supplement, an easy to grab device for checking mail and surfing the web. I suspect I’ll find some magazines to read on it, try out some graphic novels, and watch a a lot of blurry Netflix videos. And that’s all I really wanted it for.