Priced at $199.99, Kindle Fire is the first full – color touch in the Kindle line. With a price a like that and features comparable with a small iPad is certainly an attractive offer for all tablet lovers. Currently, the Kindle fire is the best in Kindle’s line of tablets and amazingly, it only cost half the price of the first Kindle introduced more than four years ago and it is also do more than just display books. The Fire is more of a tablet computer than a basic eBook reader. It supports video playback and internet browsing not mention other applications like e-mail and gaming. With so many things to do with Fire, you will be lucky if you can get any reading done at all.
But just like any other product, Kindle Fire has to be weighed versus other competing tablets. With a price under two hundred dollars, Amazon is pushing the boundaries of the tablet industry to kick start Kindle Fire in the market. The question is, can this mini tablet vie with behemoth brands like Apple’s iPad? Will it be able to keep with other Android based tablets in the market? Kindle Fire may just be able to do that but they must do some enhancement first.
First of all is the design. PCMag.com described it as a solid little brick and Joshua Topolsky thought that it is nearly identical with BlackBerry PlayBook. In design, the Kindle Fire is even is more ascetic compared to iPad. Measuring around seven inches, all the controls of this tablet is on-screen apart from the integrated power button. Its smaller size certainly makes it more portable and convenient to carry around than iPad.
The monolithic appearance of Kindle Fire is not much of an issue as well as its seven inch size. However, Kindle Fire offers a highly responsive color monitor which opens up plenty of possibilities especially in viewing comic book pages and magazines. But with the small screen comes a disadvantage because pages look so small and Amazon has to make some adjustments in order to make it readable such as offering an option wherein users can opt to show only the texts. The same snag has been experienced by Barnes & Noble’s when they launched their Nook Color last year.
But under the hood, Kindle Fire offers some good value deal for the dollar. Compared to other low cost tablets especially China made ones, Fire has an 8GB memory capacity which is more than enough for books and other applications. It also carries a 1GHz TI OMAP4 dual core processor with a Gingerbread custom version Android 2.3.4. For non techies, the custom part is good news. For first time tablet users, this offers an easy to use interface and you will know exactly what you want to do with Fire once you open it. Navigating through Newsstand, Books, Music, Video, Docs, Apps, and Web is easy and it will not take you hours before you can fully understand how this tablet really works.
