Earlier this morning, I had to take my mother-in-law to the doctors office. It wasn’t supposed to be done until tomorrow, but an opening came up so they moved her a day.
Normally, my wife takes her parents to appointments and such, but she was tied up with other errands, so I ended up taking her.
Would you believe that as a software developer with an extensive collection of different devices, every single gadget I could take with me was without a charge?
You don’t realize how spoiled you get with these gadgets until you sit there, in a waiting room filled with Spanish magazines. I was lucky enough to be able to grab a hold of the only English one, a Better Homes and Gardens mag from about 7 years ago.
So, I figured with that experience under my belt, today would be a good day for my Kindle Fire review.
Foreword:
As you can read from the title, as well as something I mentioned in an article and a newsletter or two on my website, many reviews on the web seem to have a bias towards the Apple devices, some sites are plain and open about it, and others, well if it doesn’t have an Apple logo on it, it somehow always rates quite low on everything. Its sad, very sad.
One of the big differences I have as a developer over my competitors is that I actually pick up devices of certain types and groups. By just looking at the specs I can come up with something that works, but by actually having a real device to test things on, it is possible to do so much more. Higher quality video files, custom resolutions to maximize the video size etc. So because of this, I have a large collection of tablets to compare the Kindle Fire with. Since everyone else does a Kindle Fire vs iPad, I will not do that, however, I do have a Blackberry Playbook, a Motorola Xoom, a NOOKcolor, NOOKtablet and an Acer A100 within reach, and of course, my experiences with those will be reflected in this review.
Don’t get me wrong, the iPad itself is cool, but its not because the iPad itself is such a great device, its the tight integration of Apple’s iTunes that is what makes the iPad what it is, a media consumption device.
Since the iPad was released, Android has been struggling to get a piece of the pie, but all it managed was to take a small bite out of the Apple. Apps, books, music, movies, while possible on Android, only recently this all became available in a single login. Before Google introduced its music service (2 weeks ago) or its movies (5 or so months ago) for each content type you had to use a different service/company in order to access it. With iTunes, Apple provided a single app that enables you to access (read “purchase”) whatever content you want.
Now, there is the Amazon Kindle Fire.
Rather than releasing a device first, and add services later, Amazon has been using the success of both fronts, Apple iOS and Google Android, to work on its services first. Its mp3 store gained enough popularity by selling no-DRM mp3 files for the same price as Apple’s DRM-protected songs, that Apple was forced to stop DRM on its songs. The Kindle Apps, for both Apple and Android provided an easy way to purchase books online, and of course, its “subscription service”, Amazon Prime, that is way more now than just the free 2day shipping it started out with. And, lets not forget the Amazon Appstore for Android, with its “free app of the day” initiative, which, with the free release of Angry Birds Rio, resulted in a million users in its first week of existence. Now, Amazon came out with a single device that ties all its endeavors together.
The Kindle Fire:
Similar as to the other reviews I did, I don’t care much for specifications when it comes to portable devices. All over the web you can read up on the specifications of the Kindle Fire, but does it actually matter? For me, the most important thing is, does it work, and how does it work. Actually using the device gives you a much better impression than just reading a bunch of numbers.
When you turn on your Kindle Fire for the first time, it takes you through the basics:
When you get it first out of the box, it comes already setup for your Amazon account. While great for newcomers, this very fact has actually put me off from purchasing some of these as x-mas gifts. When I pre-ordered my Kindle Fire, I did not see an option to have it not pre-setup, so if I would order more do I have to open each box and unregister it?
The looks:
While the Kindle Fire is running Android, Amazon decided to make the user experience less “desktop”-like, and opted for a custom user-interface to make it a bit easier to access your content.
Kindle Fire Main Shelf
The main “home screen” resembles a bookshelf, and you can flip through the content you last accessed.
It even remembers and displays the last webpage you accessed:
Of course this can get a bit cluttered, so Amazon nicely added a bookmarks section underneath:
News Stand:
From the home screen you can also access your (amazon-purchased) content with ease. My news stand is a bit empty, but there is an easy link to the store so you can fill it up quite easely.
Books:
Here the Kindle Fire provides a shelf containing the books you have on your device. I don’t have much time for reading, but I did download a free book and managed to read a couple of chapters on the Kindle Fire.
Videos:
My section, of course. I didn’t become a developer of video software because it is the best paying job in the world. I love gadgets and movies, and here is where it all comes together. Unfortunately, for Amazon, I don’t like paying for movies more than once, just to get them in a digital form, so aside from the free shows I get access to on Amazon Prime, or, if a DVD purchase on Amazon gives me a free digital version (thats why “The Bodyguard” is in there), I just convert my own movies. Mine look better anyway 
Docs:
This is where your own documents end up at. Your Kindle Fire has its own email address, so you can just email things like PDF documents over to it by email. No need to transfer them over using your computer.
Apps:
This is where your apps and games reside, and of course with a link to the store as well to get more
Web:
No tablet is complete without a webbrowser.
How does it work:
As you can tell from the screenshots above, the Kindle Fire has the looks. The interface is well-thought off, and you don’t get lost in a collection of different submenus or different home-screen screens.
A lot of reviews mention something about sluggishness, but I have not experienced any issues with the interface itself, aside from once in a while a glitch with the menu tabs, where they become unresponsive after unplugging the USB connection every now and then.
Games, one of the more demanding tasks for a tablet run quite well
Reading, not something I do much, but the hour or so I did manage to get in was fine.
There are plenty of options to make your reading experience more comfortable too:
I prefer white on black:
Video:
As an Amazon Prime member, I have access to a nice collection of free video content:
but unfortunately, once you are done with a season, and want to continue with the next, Amazon’s true colors shine through:
Its a great way to discover new TV shows and movies, but I believe that Prime works best, together with Netflix:
Prime by itself is a great service, and I’m sure Amazon will improve it and add new content to it, but right now I’m watching my Top Gear episodes on Netflix rather than Prime, because I have access to 3 more seasons
But there are a few issues with the Kindle Fire regarding video.
First off, and this is for just about everything except reading a book, is the permanent little menu bar at the bottom of the screen. Because the Kindle Fire only has a power-button, it has a little grey menubar to provide access to buttons like back, home and settings. Thankfully, the menu bar does minimize, but it is there though.
Video wise, things get a little more tricky. The videos you add yourself don’t show show up in the menu, so you have to use the limited “Gallery” application in order to be able to access them. Unfortunately, Gallery doesn’t show filenames:
making things a bit hard to find, basically making MovieGallery pretty much a requirement for the Kindle Fire:
http://www.tools4movies.com/2011/10/moviegallery-1-3/
Unfortunately, Amazon’s approval process for new apps is a little slow, so until it is approved, you can use the following link to download and install it manually on the Kindle Fire:
http://www.tools4movies.com/2011/11/moviegalleryfree-for-kindle-fire/
The Kindle Fire is perfectly capable of playing HD videos, even 1080-sized videos work without any stutter or hiccups, however, the higher the quality the larger the video file is. Something I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere else yet is that the Kindle Fire has a 2GB filesize limit. While the storage is a bit limited, with only 5GB of usable space available for movies on the device, it is enough for 2 full resolution movies at great quality, but unless they are less than 2GB in size, they will not play. So you either have to use lower quality video settings to make sure your files end up smaller, or you will have to rely on a cloud-system or a streaming solution such as this:
http://www.tools4movies.com/2011/11/kindle-fire-video-streaming-guide-part-2/
My own experiences:
As I mentioned earlier, I have a fair collection of different tablets, thanks to the work I do, including a Xoom, Playbook, NOOKtablet and some others, and while each has its advantages and disadvantages, the Kindle Fire is currently the one I use the most.
For $199, the only tablet I have that is similar in price (not counting the Playbook because I did pick it up for full-price when it came out) is the NOOKcolor, and while this is a great device by itself, the ease of accessing media content on the Kindle Fire makes it a winner. If I ignore the price, the Kindle Fire would compare with the Blackberry Playbook, the Acer A100 and the NOOKtablet (the Xoom is larger in size). The Playbook seems to have a better build-quality, the Acer A100 feels cheaper than the Kindle Fire, and the NOOKtablet feels a little less comfortable in the had in my opinion.
Batterylife has been good for me with the Kindle Fire. Last week, I watched Kill Bill 1 and 2 on it (from files on the device, not streaming) and while I did have it charge for 10 minutes inbetween, I still had enough charge left for 2 hours of Top Gear through Netflix. Its not as much batterylife as the Xoom, or the Playbook, but it does hold up quite nice.
Speakers are a bit weak, so you will need to use it with headphones or ear-buds. The position of the speakers is, similar as to the Acer A100, a bit weird for a media device. In portrait mode, the speakers are located at the bottom, one on each side, which works great for reading and listening to music, but for watching a movie on it, having them located in a different spot would work a lot better.
Performance-wise, I did not encounter any issues. It feels smooth, and does what it needs to do.
Browsing worked fine, but performance fluctuates a bit from site to site.
Email worked fine for me as well.
Amazon Prime, unless you make use of its other features, using it for just the media streaming part is not worth it (yet) for me. While it works great for the shows you have access to, or the ones you can purchase, Netflix Streaming seems to be a better deal. If you have both, your are golden
Gripes:
Filesize limit for movies
No expandable storage, and only 5GB available on the device
No HDMI out, and the free portion of Amazon Prime isn’t enabled on other devices I have.
Small menubar at the bottom. Its needed, but if only they would have added a small button on the back or something.
Speakers basically unusable for video playback.
Is it worth it?
Absolutely.
Closings:
As mentioned earlier, right now, the Kindle Fire is my device of choice. I love my Xoom, but its just too big to lug around when I need to go somewhere. The Kindle Fire is smaller, but perfectly sized. Batterylife is good enough to keep you entertained for your daily commute and then some.
