Amazon Kindle Fire Review

Introduction

Today uryaen.com introduces one of the most comprehensive and involved reviews we've ever done: The Amazon Kindle Fire. Sure, we're a few days behind the big guys, but when you see the sheer amount of content and beautiful images we've prepared for you, you'll find that it's worth it. Some are slightly NSFW, but that's what makes it fun. 

The Kindle Fire is not the ONLY similar device coming out this holiday season. In fact, there is an almost exact duplicate Doppelganger in the Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet. While we'd love to have done a comparison out the gate, that might have to wait a couple of weeks. Until then, let's really take a look at this definitely different, possibly exciting new device. 

In addition to a comprehensive look at every feature, we're going to look at dozens of images of the device and the UI, and some beautiful models in action with the Fire. We'll take a look at several videos, including a live demo of browser performance benchmarks, and because the usual 3D marks do not work yet, we'll look at some live gaming with both a very popular 2D game, and a very well done and complex 3D game that wouldn't look out of place on Xbox Live. 

All info is presented independent of any advertising, or outside influences. All opinions of uryaen.com Editors and contributing friends is their own. 

Let's begin our journey in the place we usually do with tech reviews: The Overview and Unboxing:

Overview of the Amazon Kindle Fire 7” Tablet

Check out the micro review here if you just want the bottom line

What it IS

The Kindle Fire is nothing more or less than a portable window into Amazon Digital Services. If you already own an iPad, there's really nothing to see here. The Fire will not do anything that the iPad cannot do better. The issue here is that the Fire is an inexpensive ( by comparison ) way to enjoy Amazon content on the road, or more likely "on the road near good, solid WiFi". If you already have a "high end" smart phone, this is also going to be a hard sell, as the device does less than a smartphone, but does it with a bigger screen. Do you really need TWO such devices on you at all times? If you have a fully rooted 4+ inch Android phone full of custom content, you're really not the target audience for this device. Enjoy the pretty model images I've provided and please do read some of my more core audience related content, but this is not a purchase for you to sweat over. If however, you're looking for a simple, easy to use, all in one Tablet "like device" and you already have or are willing to get an Amazon account, this may be just the thing for you. 

The Kindle Fire IS an elegant, comparatively affordable foray into Tablet Devices. 

What it is NOT

It is NOT a communication device - 

The Kindle Fire has no cameras, and thus, is not a "FaceTime" type of device. It's not for taking pictures of your food to post on Facebook. It's not for running GPS software while driving. It's not for most of these forms of two way interactivity. While it is capable of handling some basic email, it's really not meant to be a replacement for your laptop or smartphone. It's a device that exists to allow you to consume Amazon approved content, mostly in reach of established WiFi and internet access. 

Is that a problem?

That depends on your level of tech expertise and expectations. It's $200, not $900, like a fully loaded iPad. Or more like $3500 like a fully loaded desktop replacement laptop. I've sat in airports with my Alienware M17x, chuckling a bit to myself at the people around me with their mere Smartphones or anemic laptops, while I had access to thousands of hours of TV shows and movies, dozens of AAA 3D games thanks to twin Radeon 5870M's, and a bigger, brighter screen than they had. Sure, it weighs 12lbs, but even with my back condition, I don't think that's anything. 

But I'm not most people, and I know that thin and light rules all these days. Sad, yet true. Well, you'll find almost nothing out there to beat the Fire for thin and light while still able to smoothly consume the various types of media that the device was designed for. Can you play Windows games on it? Of course not. Even many Android games are not certified for Kindle Fire, and that's ok. You've got your Angry Birds, calm down. Again, this device is a 14 ounce eco-system, that fits in a large pocket or small bag. If you have to travel light, it won't help you get there, but it might keep you entertained along the way. 

The Unboxing

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My Fire came shipped in its own package, but I didn't get the pretty sleeve that some got. Mine was covered in shipping labels, and even handwritten notes. Ugly is about the only word to describe it. This is no Apple packaging, not by a long shot. Was it "frustration free"? I do not recall a time I ever thought to myself "Self: this laptop box is so hard to get into, I do not believe that I shall be enjoying this device today. I am frustrated."

That said, opening the box did not require a knife or a fork, or a 12 year old. You tear a perforated line, and you're in. Once in, the device is just sitting there looking up at you like a passenger after a particularly rough coach flight. A flight where the passenger was seated right atop a cheap AC adapter in a cardboard sleeve. Talk about awkward. 

Mine woke up immediately upon exiting the flight box, as if to say "Man, what a relief! I need to stretch!"

On the top flap of the box is an additional slot of cardboard that does nothing more than act as a sleeve for another bit of cardboard that acts as the "Quick Start Guide". Nothing Earth shattering here. It tells you how to turn on a device that has but ONE button. If you're incapable of figuring this part out, you probably shouldn't be trusted with the device in the first place, but we're not here to judge. 

First impressions

See my First Impressions Video for most of the relevant details:

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The very first thing I noticed was that the Fire "feels" heavier than it looks. We know the specs: 14.6 ounces. But somehow that just "feels" like more than it should. This is a device meant to sit in one hand for long periods of time, right? That's no problem for me, but I wonder how quickly this will become a point of contention for many users . . .

A Full Tour of the UI

The general motif of the UI is that of wooden shelves, bathed in gray. This is exactly the type of UI I might have designed in about an hour as a mockup for a website back in 1996. For today, it's just meh. 

The top of the UI features the Name of the registrant on the top left, the time in the middle, and the Settings, WiFi, and Battery indicator. 

Below that, The brushed gray "shelf" motif begins and on this level is the search bar. You can use this in any tab. 

Below this are six "Tabs": Newsstand, Books, Music, Video, Docs, Apps, and Web.

The Newsstand Tab

The first Tab is Newsstand: On mine it's currently blank.

Hit the store, and you'll be met with the following:

Attempt to download a Magazine and you're met with the following screen:

The Books Tab

The Books Tab is next. Let's see what's in there:

A look at the shelf for Books. Mine is pretty bare right now, but I'm sure it can get pretty crowded. 

This is what it looks like to read a normal book. I'm not sure that hours of this will feel that easy. 

Back out at the Book Store, let's see what it's like to "Borrow a Book": 

Let's just pick something. How about Hunger Games? Seems reasonable enough. Hit the "Borrow for Free" button, and like any purchase in seconds the download begins. 

Now we can read. To Amazon's credit, this is about as easy as any UI can make it, but a lack of parental control to your credit card is going to make a lot of parents VERY mad. 

Back to the main screen, the book shows up just like everything else does. 

The book also shows up in the UI for Books. 

The Music Tab

As I've said, I'm really not a huge music fan in general, but here's the quick overview of the music player:

The Music store is about what you expect, no surprises here. 

The Videos Tab

Unless you own downloaded AMAZON video content, this tab will be blank, EVEN if you put videos in the Videos folder on the device. So we'll start with the Store. 

With your Prime membership, you're allowed unlimited downloading of videos. The vast majority of which you won't care about, but there might be some gems in here. Let's take a look.

Movies are $2.99? Last I looked, which wasn't that recently, RedBox Blu Rays were $1.99 and I could play those on a full size Blu System. If mobile streaming video is going to take off, it has to be a LOT cheaper than this. I'm far too tech savvy to get my content this way anyway, but for widespread adoption, they're going to have to do better if they expect this to last. 

For the sake of demo, let's pick something to stream . . . 

Even through a camera lens, the contrast is evident here. It does look good. Not $3 good to me, but good. 

Ok, so that's movies, let's back out and look at TV Shows. I see 24 on here, that's a great show. I don't watch LOST but it's popular. There's loads of others, but they're mostly stuff you're not going to care about it. Let's find something: 

Again, video looks pretty good, as long as you get it FROM Amazon. Trying to encode video from outside sources, like pretty much EVERY other device released since the early 2000's is just an exercise in frustration. We'll return to this issue in a few weeks or so once we have a Nook Tablet in hand. 

The Docs Tab

The Docs tab is a weird addition to an otherwise relatively sensible UI. You can add videos not obtained by Amazon to the Fire, but they will not show up in Videos. But if you you add books, they will show up here, and not in Books. Why have a "Docs" Tab anyway, and not an "Email" tab, which would have made more sense in the flow of their UI DNA? In any case, this is where your random crap shows up. Email yourself and random attachments show up here, eventually. In my testing it took several hours. 

The Apps Tab

Next up is the one you're all curious about but don't get too excited just yet. Apps must be approved for Kindle Fire, and while it is POSSIBLE to force it to take one or two that aren't you're more than likely to run into problems trying to run them. Yes, there are a fair few apps out there but most of them are likely to be something you'll never use or are complete crap. 

One issue that has cropped up immediately is that even with several extremely popular "approved" apps, there are suddenly paid "Kindle Fire" versions of that same exact app. This has already occurred with Angry Birds AND Plants vs. Zombies, with no automatic way to get credit for your previous purchase. This is going to hurt trust, and cause a lot of support issues later. Amazon: Seriously, get with it on this issue, and allow customers who've already purchased the app to get the "Kindle" version as either a free upgrade or if there are any additional features, a VERY inexpensive upgrade. You are going to alienate a lot of customers who are ALREADY a little miffed about how hard it is to put content on the device as it is. 

Why was there no "Images" Tab to begin with? That's a perfectly valid form of content right? Because Amazon doesn't just SELL images. Here we launch the image viewer app, and there are a few:

The Comic Store

Let's swing back around a bit to the Comics store. Apparently Amazon thinks that all comic nerds are like the guys in the Big Bang Theory, which could not be more of a fallacy if they tried, but hey, let's stick to the UI at hand: Here is the Store itself.

Actually reading a comic takes a bit of effort as default full page is really just too small to enjoy. I don't see this as being a feature that sells a lot of Fires. 

Amazon didn't do their homework here, in touting this as a huge feature for the Kindle Fire. I grew up around comic collectors, from birth. I've spent more days total inside a comic shop than most of the target audience has days to count period, and while it may be true that there are a few core comic nerds who take the ludicrous stories and characters WAY too seriously, most comic collectors I know never actually open or read most of the comics they buy. It's a hobby of collectors. Once a month or so, the hobbyist will enter a comic shop, ( as we called them then ), purchase a stack of comics about a foot high, all of which are immediately bagged and sealed with a cardboard back, and taken home to be placed in a cardboard box, in the hopes that one day they will be worth something, not unlike baseball cards. Even for those comics that are read, I highly doubt that the ability to store them in a Kindle is going to justify the rather surprisingly high premium placed on these. 

IMDB App

Before we move on to the final tab and content, Fire included an IMDB app that worked very well, and although you can see it in action in the First Impressions video, I'm including a shot here. 

A Free Paid App, every Day - It's like apps for Junkies

Every day, you get a paid app for free. Whether you will care will vary a lot. As of this photography session, that app was Enhanced Email. I also got Documents to Go for free, and that's pretty awesome. We'll look at that one another day. 

Here we are downloading Netflix . . .

I don't have a current sub, so I'm not going to sign in. 

The Web Tab

Viewing sites on Fire is reasonably painless. Nothing terribly more special than doing it on a smartphone. Here's a look a the tab screen:

The Requisite look at my own site, rendered fully and correctly. 

Let's have a look at the web options. All the usual stuff here . . .

Here we see the "Accelerate Web Pages" Option. Turn it off. Just do it. 

Device Settings "Tab"

Not really a tab but the section on device settings may be accessed by swiping a finger around the upper right of the screen. 

And that's really it. That's all there is to it. Here we are back on the very front page, on our "Favorites" shelves.

I hope you have enjoyed this full tour of the UI. Let's move on . . .

The Architecture

The Kindle Fire is a unique device in most ways. Neither an "E-Ink" reader nor a fully fledged tablet ( where we expect to see a much more open OS, expandable storage, and more flexible networking ), and while it does have direct competition in the Nook Tablet, Amazon hopes that it can do what only Apple has been able to do so far: create a closed system and make it work. How well this works in the long run is up to History, but for now, what we have is a fascinating look at a post Steve Jobs era of computing. Ironic that this closed system is built on top of Android, which is meant to be a more open alternative to iOS, which in turn is the little brother of Apple's OS X, which is a closed system built on top of a form of Linux, which is an open system. Ain't technology funny sometimes?

 

As I have only one I do not plan to do an autopsy, but I'm sure plenty of other sites will. We pretty much know what is in the thing, and perhaps more importantly, what is not. The first thing you should know is that the unit lacks Bluetooth. I can accept the lack of an expansion slot ( although I'm not happy about it ) but a lack of Bluetooth? Even my cheap, crappy off brand Android phone has Bluetooth, so this is unacceptable. The ability to stream audio to my car is a huge thing, and not being able to do this severely limits the utility of a unit already somewhat crippled by anemic storage and a lack of 3G. 

But enough about what it doesn't have, let's go over what it DOES have:

Specs

From the Amazon Site:

Display	7" multi-touch display with IPS (in-plane switching) technology and anti-reflective treatment, 1024 x 600 pixel resolution at 169 PPI, 16 million colors.
Size (in inches)	7.5" x 4.7" x 0.45" (190 mm x 120 mm x 11.4 mm).
Weight	14.6 ounces (413 grams).
System Requirements	None, because it's wireless and doesn't require a computer.
On-device Storage	8GB internal (approximately 6GB available for user content). That's enough for 80 apps, plus 10 movies or 800 songs or 6,000 books.
Cloud Storage	Free cloud storage for all Amazon content
Battery Life	Up to 8 hours of continuous reading or 7.5 hours of video playback, with wireless off. Battery life will vary based on wireless usage, such as web browsing and downloading content.
Charge Time	Fully charges in approximately 4 hours via included U.S. power adapter. Also supports charging from your computer via USB.
Wi-Fi Connectivity	Supports public and private Wi-Fi networks or hotspots that use 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n, or enterprise networks with support for WEP, WPA and WPA2 security using password authentication; does not support connecting to ad-hoc (or peer-to-peer) Wi-Fi networks.
USB Port	USB 2.0 (micro-B connector)
Audio	3.5 mm stereo audio jack, top-mounted stereo speakers.
Content Formats Supported	Kindle (AZW), TXT, PDF, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively, Audible (Audible Enhanced (AA, AAX)), DOC, DOCX, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, non-DRM AAC, MP3, MIDI, OGG, WAV, MP4, VP8.
Documentation	Quick Start Guide (included in box); Kindle User's Guide (pre-installed on device)
Warranty and Service	1-year limited warranty and service included. Optional 2-year Extended Warranty available for U.S. customers sold separately. Use of Kindle is subject to the terms found here.
Included in the Box	Kindle Fire device, U.S. power adapter (supports 100-240V), and Quick Start Guide.

 

Kindle Fire Special Features

As this is such a huge release in consumer electronics, I'd like to take a moment to go over each and every one of the marquee features in listed order from Amazon and how I feel this device delivers on said promises. The Amazon copy will appear in "uryaen orange" and my evaluation will appear below that. 

Stunning Color Touchscreen

Movies, magazines and children's books come alive on a 7" vibrant color touchscreen that delivers 16 million colors in high resolution. Kindle Fire uses IPS (in-plane switching) technology - similar technology to that used on the iPad - for an extra-wide viewing angle, perfect for sharing your screen with others.

Sharing a 7" screen with others? I'm not sure about you, but I find it painful enough to share content on my 24" monitor with one other person. That part of the claim is dubious. As to the quality of the screen:

As you see from my First Impressions video the screen is quite nice, but for sharing? I don't think so. The brightness drops off significantly after center. I don't know if I would call this a truth in advertising issue, because who buys a 7" Tablet to watch movies with friends? However, we can safely say it's a good screen for one person, just not much more than that. 

As for resolution, the Fire has a 1024x600 screen. This makes play back of any HD content scaled. The issues of HD resolutions and scaling are a bit beyond the scope of this discussion, but I'll just say that video looks decent enough, but if you're a videophile, it might be a bit painful to watch, no matter what source you used. 

Magazines in Rich Color

Enjoy your favorite magazines with glossy, full-color layouts, photographs and illustrations. Choose from hundreds of titles, such as Bon Appetit, Elle, and Oprah. Special editions of titles like Vanity Fair, Wired, and GQ come with built-in video, audio and other interactive features.

Hey, WIRED is free, so I'll check that out: 

This bugs me. You can "buy" the Wired "app" for free, but unless you have your own subscription, or sign up for one, you will see nothing. I'm not going to sign up for three months free, and risk being charged for something I'm never going to use. As far as I can tell, you can't test any of the magazine content without paying for something, but since the screen is the same screen, I'm going to assume it won't look any different than a PDF or a web page. Magazines, while not dead, are nowhere near the relevancy they use to be. There is a certain art to the layout of a GOOD magazine, but most users just want the info, and do not care about fancy layouts, which is the design philosophy behind this site as well. 

Beautifully Simple and Easy to Use

Designed from the ground up, Kindle Fire's simple, intuitive interface puts the content you love at your fingertips - spin effortlessly through your recent titles and websites straight from the home screen. Whether you are in the mood to watch, read, listen, play or browse, you can get to all your favorite content with a single touch. It's that simple.

Intuitive is a matter of opinion. I'm going to hand off the device to a few others, and see what happens. For my part I find the interface needlessly convoluted. It breaks content into clearly defined, but limited categories, and ONLY Amazon content is available in those categories. If you have video you encoded yourself, don't expect to find it in the "Video" section, it will not be there. It will instead be buried in the file system, accessible only to a video player app. As of this writing, only ONE is available on Amazon's version of the App Store ( how many App Stores do we need anyway? ) and that app sucks. 

Intuitive? I would have assumed that my videos, which were PUT in the VIDEOS folder, would show up on the VIDEOS UI tab. They did not. Problems like this abound. So Intuitive? Not hardly. 

Easy? The Fire has no form of multitasking. You do a task, you back out of it, do something else, come back to it. Is that . . .  Easy? My iPhone 3G could do better than that with the newer OSes. 

Single Touch? Depends on where you are. To back out of an App on iOS, you hold down the Home button. Once. 

To back out of an app on Fire, you must pull up the ever present and annoying tray on the bottom, and that's assuming you touch it just right, THEN hit the home button. So, not a Single touch, but a couple of them at least. In fact, nothing on the Fire is really very easy to get to, but once you do, you're usually ok. The omnipresent bottom tray is a MAJOR irritant to a purist. 

Beautiful? These days, we're used to very liquid and translucent OSs: iOS, Windows 7, even the newer Androids. This thing has a basic cobalt gray OS throughout, with a very "wooden shelves" motif. It's clunky, unresponsive, it's not exactly simple, and it's not customizable at all. 

100,000 Movies and TV Shows

Over 100,000 movies and TV shows, including thousands of new releases and your favorite TV shows, are available to stream or download, purchase or rent - all just one tap away. Amazon Prime members enjoy unlimited, commercial-free streaming of over 10,000 popular movies and TV shows.

Very few of which any one person will care about. I combed carefully through the Prime movies. Almost ALL of them are ancient, B movies. Not one of which I was looking to watch. 

TV Shows had a couple of good series, depending on your tastes, but only a couple. The ability to SMOOTHLY play my video from other sources would have been a LOT better here. This is something my old iPhone 3G was brilliant at so to see a much more modern device fail at this is hugely disappointing. 

All told, the Prime content is what they are really pushing for you to use with this thing, which if you do, will QUICKLY drive the price from $200 to more than an iPad2. Does that make a lot of sense? Not to me, I'd rather have the bigger, better iPad2(3) and be more open about content. 

We knew this going in, but the Fire IS NOT INTENDED to be an open platform to your content, it's meant to be a closed platform to AMAZON content. As long as you are ok with that, you're fine. Yes, you CAN add your own videos, but getting to them is a pain. The harder you throw yourself against the wall of Amazon Content, the more your head will hurt. 

Not to mention that you must maintain a $80 a year Prime membership to access content on the device, so over time, you're paying a tax to use most of the features of this Tablet Device, assuming you don't eventually root it, and install a custom OS. 

Fast Dual-Core Processor

Kindle Fire features a state-of-the-art dual-core processor for fast, powerful performance. Stream music while browsing the web or read books while downloading videos.

My how time flies like a Swift on speed in the tech business. With the new ARM A9 and Tegra 3 architectures, dual core is hardly state of the art. Does this mean that apps and the OS are ready for quad core and beyond? No, but that's a story for another day. 

The Fire feels snappy enough. Try as I might, I can't find a way to get the traditional Android benchmarks to run on it, so full testing might have to wait for a rooting. 

The Fire only connects to the network ( which it requires for virtually everything ) after several seconds, so no "instant on" here. 

Switching around to different areas is a bit sluggish, and that's with very little content on here. 

For a $200 device, tis adequate, but adequate will feel awfully slow soon. 

Your Favorite Apps and Games

Thousands of the most popular apps, including Netflix, Rhapsody, Pandora, Comics by comiXology and more, plus you'll get a great paid app for free every day. Enjoy the best games, including Words with Friends, Angry Birds, Plants vs. Zombies and more, from top developers like Zynga, EA, Gameloft, PopCap, Rovio and more. All apps are Amazon-tested on Kindle Fire for the best experience possible.

As long as your favorite apps and games are approved for Fire. So far, very little is, and I have a hard time even FINDING something interesting or relevant to download. Let's face it, iOS or Android, 99% of all apps are complete crap. So once you have the few good ones, it's a matter of how well the device runs them. With no GPS, no phone, and few advanced sensors, a great deal of those apps and games are not even COMPATIBLE, and never will be.  

Paid Content Only

Fire comes with what looks like a Facebook app, but it's really just a link to the website. With Fire, accessing anything decent requires more money. 

Amazon App Store - More money

Netflix - More money

Hulu Plus - More money

comiXology - More money

Again, that's not in itself a huge issue, but when you already HAVE a lot of local content or apps, and you want to transfer them to Fire, you find that either you can't, or you have to pay for them again. With an iPad, I could just transfer the stuff I already have and it will work just great. Even my now several year old iPhone 3G could do that perfectly smoothly.

I already OWN the Plants vs. Zombies Android app FROM Amazon. Can I download and use it? No. I have to BUY it again because there's a new version optimized for Fire. Even if it wasn't I can't download my own apps to it. Why? I'll get into that down below.

Games for Sensors

The Fire DOES include an accelerometer, but it does not appear to work as smoothly in testing several games as even my old iPhone, and is definitely not as advanced as the newer iDevices, or the Sony Vita. This really isn't a dedicated gaming device, so this isn't shocking news, but it's still rather disappointing. 

Ultra-fast web browsing - Amazon Silk

Amazon Silk is a revolutionary, cloud-accelerated browser that uses a "split browser" architecture to leverage the computing speed and power of the Amazon Web Services cloud. Supports Adobe® Flash® Player. Learn why it's so fast.

I don't know if I'd say "revolutionary" so much as "neat trick". In my testing, there appeared to be little real world difference in browsing speed. In fact, I'm going to bet most people will want to turn off the feature anyway, so that their browsing history isn't being fed through Amazon servers. Let's call this a neat trick and not a real feature. 

To turn off accelerated browsing - Launch browser, click on drawer icon, hit settings, scroll down to "Accelerate Page Loading" and uncheck. 

Millions of Books

Read bestsellers, children's books, comic books, and cookbooks in vibrant color. The Kindle Store offers over 1 million books, including 800,000 titles at $9.99 or less. In addition, over 2 million free, out-of-copyright, pre-1923 books are also available such as Pride and Prejudice. Learn More

Reading books on the Fire is no different than reading on any other bright LCD screen. It's no E-ink. If you think that's fine, go nuts. There are plenty of books. 

Free Cloud Storage

Forget about memory - Kindle Fire gives you free storage for all your Amazon digital content in the Amazon Cloud. Your books, movies, music and apps are available instantly to stream or download for free, at a touch of your finger.

Again, as long as you obtain all of your content from Amazon. 

The lack of any expansion storage is painful, but understandable. I have a feeling that Amazon is going to run into the issue that all companies who attempt to run a closed environment eventually do: Users don't LIKE closed environments, and will eventually either root it, or put enough pressure on them that they will open it up a bit to allow easier access to outside content. 

Your Favorite Children's Books

Kindle Fire is great for parents and kids. Stir your child's imagination with over 1000 beautifully-illustrated children's books, including favorites like Brown Bear, Curious George, andCircus Ship.

Hey, if you're willing to hand over your brand new, $200 window to unlimited spending on Amazon with "one click" that's your business, but I have a feeling Amazon is going to face a lot of angry parents when they discover $1300 worth of new apps and books on their credit card because children have both an absolutely INSATIABLE ability to devour content, and a complete LACK of ability to understand "money". 

Easy to hold in one hand

Designed to travel with you wherever you go. Small enough to fit in your purse and light enough to hold in just one hand, Kindle Fire is perfect for browsing, playing, reading and shopping on-the-go.

This is no problem for me, but let's see that in action: 

I guess it's fine . . .

17 Million Songs

Stream your music library from Amazon Cloud Drive or download to your device and listen offline. Looking for new music? Discover over 17 million songs in the Amazon MP3 Store.

Music playing is about the least interesting aspect of a modern device. The decade old iPod had this down, and maybe sounded better. Sound quality is nothing to jump up and down about, it's just average. 

Extra Durable Display

Our state-of-the art Kindle Fire display is chemically strengthened to be 20 times stiffer and 30 times harder than plastic, making it extra durable and resistant to accidental bumps and scrapes. 

To be honest, I have no intention of testing this. We'll take their word for it. It DOES feel quite stiff, like glass, but since I only have one, I'm not going to torture test it. Maybe next time. 

I guess if you're going to fall off a ledge holding a tablet, you'd want it to be durable. 

Kindle Owners' Lending Library

With an Amazon Prime membership, Kindle owners can choose from thousands of books to borrow for free - including over 100New York Times Bestsellers - as frequently as a book a month, with no due dates. Learn More

This is the biggest bust feature right now. Thousands? It's currently about 5000 and of them, I highly doubt any of it is anything you'd want to read. For example the highly popular Steve Jobs bio, not there. Don't hold your breath that it will be. 

In that regard, it FEELS exactly like a real library. Imagine that, digital content, out of stock. Go home empty handed. It's more than a little funny when you think about it. Amazon: the harbinger of doom for many a brick and mortar store, is out of a book you might want. What is this, the 80's? 

Amazon Whispersync

Like Kindle e-readers, Kindle Fire uses Amazon's Whispersync technology to automatically sync your library, last page read, bookmarks, notes, and highlights across your devices. On Kindle Fire, Whispersync extends to video. Start streaming a movie on Kindle Fire, then pick up right where you left off on your TV - avoid the frustration of having to find your spot. Learn more

I cannot really test this because I have just the one Amazon device, and even if I did, how many people are so "busy" that they're running around consuming content on multiple different devices? How "frustrating" is it really to "find your spot" in any content? Really just an advertising more than a practical feature. 

Free Month of Amazon Prime

Experience the benefits that millions of Amazon Prime members already enjoy, including unlimited, instant streaming of over 10,000 popular movies and TV shows, Free Two-Day Shipping on millions of items, and now, access to thousands of popular Kindle books through the Kindle Owners' Lending Library. Learn more

I have a feeling that more than anything, this feature is for reviewers. Be that as it may, Prime content is thin, shallow and restricted. I don't really see this changing drastically in the near future. 

The packaging may have been "frustration free" but without an active Prime membership, how frustrating is the Fire going to be?

Read Your Documents

Kindle makes it easy to take your documents with you. You can e-mail documents - including Word, PDF and more - directly to your Kindle so you that you can read them anytime, anywhere.

How exactly is emailing documents to yourself easier than syncing to your computer? I tested the feature and found that the email took several hours to finally go through and for the small document to show up. I'd hate to see what trying to sync all of my content would be like. 

That said, I did manage to put some books I already had on the Fire. They showed right up in the book section, just as expected. 

Had ya going for a second didn't I? Even Kindle books I owned, much like my copy of Plants vs. Zombies would not show up where I expected them to. Why not? I figured out it was because I had ordered various apps, books, and games on my OTHER email address. Since the Fire is tied to ONE email address, and seemingly unable to be used by another user, I cannot put my other, legally owned content on it, even though that content came from Amazon, simply because I used my work address to register it. That is just about the opposite of convenient, and I'm shocked that no one has noticed or complained about this yet. 

For the record, some of those books did show up on the Fire, but in "Documents", not "Books". Intuitive huh?

Now that said: I was able to use the Documents to Go app to add a lot of my work files to the Kindle and allow them to "Sync" to my main computer. This works very well. Buy the app. It works. No review required. 

Email

Stay in touch using our built-in email app that gets your webmail (Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail, AOL etc.) into a single inbox. Import your messages and contact lists from other email accounts. Additional email apps are available in our Amazon Appstore for Android.

Setting up email has been a pain so far. My uryaen address set up on the normal client, but my web mail would not, on two different clients. Notifications are virtually non existent as well, making this a step backward in tech.

Built in Email App

Does not work with my Yahoo mail. 

Other Mail Apps

I tried the Enhanced Email App, but that didn't set up correctly either. Finally I just installed the Yahoo mail app, and it works just like on my phone. No more, no less. The notification sound DID chime, but there was no neat notification tray, nor did the name in the upper corner add a number to reflect the change. 

Quite a lot of annoyance, but supports my previous statement. This isn't really a communication device, any more than a modern iPod is. You should not expect to lean on the Fire for heavy communicating. You CAN, but you shouldn't. 

Test Methodology

The list of Android based testing suites is, to say the least, limited. 

I use the following: 

Quadrant - All default settings - Not currently supported

Nenamark 1 and 2 - Not currently supported

Rightware Browsermark - 78667

Peacekeeper - 299 -  HTML 5 Capability - 2/7 Run 2 = 337

Here is a live video showing the above runs: 

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All told, not half bad. Quite fast, in fact, even without browsing acceleration. Still, as you can see, several of the above tests were not supported, but for everyday use, you should have no problems. 

Test Result Conclusion: 

Unable to run 3D benchmarks for now, but I made a short video of a couple of popular games. Note that the audio pops several times throughout this video. This is not an artifact of the recording process, this is the Fire. Note also that the entire game screams to a halt for a fraction of a second here and there. 

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Still, you can't deny that the thing can render quite well, despite those issues. 

Things I don’t like

Lack of Bluetooth -

As I've said, if my cheap off brand Android phone can have Bluetooth, surely Amazon could have wedged it in here without raising the price. Amazon is hoping you'll spend thousands of dollars on content for the device, which is why they're willing to sell it so cheap. They could have thrown Blue in the mix. 

Lack of expansion slot -

You're going to hear this from every reviewer on the web, so I won't beat a dead fish here. Amazon is really hoping you'll lean hard on its cloud service. With a public that STILL does not fully trust cloud services to begin with, and a lack of "always on" internet access, this really is an odd design decision. Where are you going to use a 7" Tablet? At home, in front of your router? Or is it more likely that you'll use it out and about?

Cheap, Short AC Adapter - 

For a device that comes with only ONE accessory, you'd hope it would be a nice one. It's really not. In fact, I've seen OTHER Chinese knock off parts that were better built. 

The Fire requires the AC adapter to really charge. If you attempt to charge off USB, you will find that it charges EXTREMELY slowly. In fact, even left overnight to charge, it was only at around 70% when I checked on it. Therefore, you're going to want to find a longer AC adapter than this short, about four footer. 

Part of my new process for reviewing complete consumer products is to get some perspective, in person, from a few other parties. In the section below "Impressions from uryaen.com contributors" we'll take a look at how the unit is perceived by other parties, including this "WiFi only" issue. With a modified and proprietary OS, will Fire run ANY apps not specifically designed FOR it? Testing this is problematic for a variety of reasons, but we'll come to this more as we go along. 

Apps designed for Fire ONLY - 

Angry Birds HD, Plants vs. Zombies ( For Kindle Fire ), we see a number of issues here. I hope that Amazon will clean up the store a bit, as this causes some confusion. Do not like. 

The most onerous set of Terms and Conditions I have ever seen -

By purchasing the Kindle Fire, you have agreed to not one, but TEN SETS of Terms and Conditions. Combined, this is a document of 22,753 words.

Seriously. 

Show of hands: how many of you even KNEW that, much less READ any of these documents? Do you have ANY idea what you're agreeing to? I'm willing to bet that less than 1% of the people who pre-ordered a Kindle Fire and are not a professional reviewer bothered to even look into this. 

There is actually some interesting stuff in there, such as:

You CAN turn off Silk Cloud Accelerated Browsing - The info sheets for the Nook Tablet would have you believe otherwise, but there is a "Basic Mode" wherein Amazon is not actively collecting information on everything you use the tablet to view. 

Issues?

Lots of little things already mentioned. Lack of Bluetooth, lack of smooth playback of non Amazon video content, audio quality and popping issues, sluggish performance . . . all relatively minor nigs, but they add up. 

Other Features

None. That's it. Fin. That's what the Fire is and does, comprehensively. We can hope for some firmware updates to resolve audio and gaming performance issues, but nothing is going to change the limited storage and lack of Bluetooth. 

Impressions from uryaen.com contributors

Coming Soon!

Integrity Check

As this is a brand new paradigm in product reviews, I will take a moment to explain the logic behind it in each of my early reviews.

This is how it works:

For my site, my keystone paradigm is “Integrity”. It governs everything that I do. I do not “scoop”, I do not “spy”, nor will I purchase stolen hardware, or less serious but still crappy behavior such as copying content, posting something on my site as if it was my content, with a “via-“ link. There is no via ANYthing on my site. 100% of all of my content is generated by me. Period.

On that same token, I have certain standards for vendors. It has been my long experience that vendors will treat their reviewers equal to how they treat their customers. The only difference between a professional reviewer and an end user is that reviewers don’t pay for the product. However, we still, or at least, I still expect a certain degree of support, communication, acceptance of feedback, and level of behavioral conduct.

As part of this process, I will detail my dealings with each company from first contact, product acquisition, support, and follow up. Exceptional companies will gain a lot of credit here, and the poorly run, greedy, or otherwise “less thans” will be outed.

COMPANY

Unit was purchased new from Amazon, and Amazon PR has never responded to messages. While off-putting, this does not indicate a lack of integrity per se, so the jury is still out on this issue.

Support

All we know so far is that the Fire comes with a one year limited warranty. I have read the text of the warranty, and while there is nothing terribly unusual, it does feature a disturbing number of instances of "permitted by law". 

For the greasy fingered among you, Amazon offers an extended two year warranty with "Accident Protection" from a third party that reads a little more generously. You can have your device replaced up to three times in a two year period for an additional $45. Is that worth it? That depends a lot on your priorities. They also offer a third party case for about $45 as well. What if you got both? You just spent $100 to protect a $200 device. Does that make sense? Not to me, but I take very good care of my things, and in two years, something much better will come along anyway. 

Conclusion

The Amazon Kindle Fire. Who is it for? If you have an Amazon Prime Membership, or are willing to pay for one, and have a desire to access all of that content in a portable device, go for it, you'll find little that is easier and less expensive. 

If you are looking for an inexpensive Android Tablet Computer, don't look here. You're just going to be frustrated. 

Tune in soon for a head to head with the Nook Tablet, and for additional updates as the device matures.

All images copyright 2011 uryaen.com . Image credits: Amanda, Bethany, Caroline, and Audrey. 

 

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