I bought a Kindle Fire at launch, not really sure why, so I figured I should write up a review.
The main point of comparison for me is the iPad 2 (32gb, wifi) that I have had since July. I also have a Kindle 3rd Gen (what they call a Kindle Keyboard now) which conveniently died on me shortly after I got the Fire, but Amazon is sending me a replacement as I write this. This has also been my first experience using an Android device, albeit a well-veiled one.
My first impression is that the device is the perfect form factor for reading at night in bed. Previously I was using the iPad for this, due to the backlit screen, but I never really enjoyed it. I think the e-ink Kindle is still the best reading experience over all but I will use (and have been using) the Fire at night.
They appear to basically be using the same app that is on the iPad for reading Kindle books. This annoys me for a few reasons:
1. The app does not display page numbers for books. On the e-ink Kindle this seems to either work or not on a per-book basis, but they never work on the iPad or Fire app, even for books that I know had page numbers on e-ink.
2. The app does not have an easy way to jump chapters. The Kindle Keyboard lets you jump to the beginning/end of the chapter (and from there the beginning of the next/previous chapter), but this does not seem to be a feature. Instead you need to go to the table of contents and hope you know which is the next chapter.
3. The e-ink Kindles allow you to categorize your books into folders but the Fire and iPad apps do not. You just get one big list of your books, which I can only imagine will be harder to manage if you have a big collection.
The main UI for the Fire is okay, though I do have an issue picking an item from the main carousel as it seems very precise how much you need to scroll to bring something to the forefront. The way they split off different types of media into categories makes sense and the cloud portion mostly works.
One thing that immediately annoyed me is that they include a bunch of pre-installed “apps”, many of which are just shortcuts to mobile web versions of popular sites. Facebook is included in these and for some inexplicable reason you cannot delete it. I do not use Facebook so deletion was my first instinct and I quickly discovered you cannot hide or get rid of it at all which I find very frustrating.
It seems like there is a limited selection of apps as you are stuck with only Amazon’s store by default. This means if I want something that Amazon does not list (example: Spotify), I have to circumvent their rules and side-load. This is basically the last thing I want to do and a large reason why I like iOS: (Apple only lets you do what they want, but what they want for a phone/tablet generally is inline with what I want [not so much with an OS but that is another post]). So no Spotify or other apps that I cannot easily download.
That said, they do include integration with their own cloud for music and video. I have been buying music from Amazon MP3 for a while now, though I had to re-upload most of it to the Amazon Cloud myself, so I have a pretty large selection.
When I first selected Cloud music there were a multitude of icons and everything seemed fine. I did notice that one album (Strange Mercy by St. Vincent) was missing, though it came up after I did a search and then later did appear when I sorted the cloud collection by Artist again. So I am not sure if it was a “catalog download in progress” issue or if more albums are not going to appear until I notice they are missing.
Having access to the Amazon prime video collection is nice (since the iPad will probably never get this), and there is also access to Netflix as well, though I have yet to find something that Amazon Prime has and Netflix does not. Maybe something will come up.
So far I am not crazy about the on-screen keyboard. I seem to be mistyping a lot, though I may still be in the adjustment period which I believe I had with the iPad as well.
The Silk browser does not really impress me at all. It seems slower than the iPad or iPhone and often times pages will not render beyond the first screen. Meaning I can see that there is more page that normally I could scroll down to see, but the browser will not let me scroll vertically.
This is also an issue inside the Amazon app on the device (not sure if this is well-veiled mobile web or what). They let you filter by categories on Amazon, but often times the category pages just do not load beyond a list of question marks. I tried to find a Fire case using the app and gave up in frustration.
I have not tried the reading experience for magazines as the free trials provided are auto-renew and I do not want to accidentally get stuck with a subscription. I did download Comixology and comics look pretty great. There is a definite contrast difference between the Fire and the iPad and I am not sure if I necessarily preferred one over the other.
In general though, I am a bit disappointed in the Fire. It is pretty decent at being a back-lit Kindle but not quite there as a fully featured tablet.
Maybe I have been spoiled by the iPad, but I think if this was your first tablet experience you might not see what the big deal is. It does reading as well as I would hope, with the caveats listed above, but everything else is okay at best (music, video) and dreadful (web browsing) at worst.
