Kindle Fire- Benefits and Advantages
By BobBrown
Kindle Fire Tablet
 | Amazon Price: $199.00 |
Kindle Fire VS. Nook Tablet
 | Amazon Price: $237.99 List Price: $249.99 |
 | Amazon Price: $159.99 List Price: $249.00 |
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Find What You're Looking For - Kindle Fire Vs. Nook Tablet
with the release of the Kindle Fire tablet, Barnes and Noble is right on their heels with the recent release of their Nook tablet
Amazon Kindle Fire Tablet Review
Amazon has gone all out with their new Kindle, the Kindle Fire Tablet. It's more than just an e-book reader, but not quite a full featured tablet. With its $199 price tag, Amazons Kindle Fire definitely fills a niche.
What is a Kindle Fire?
The Kindle Fire is a new generation of e-reader/tablet cross-over. It has all the features of the original Kindle (with the exception of 3G or 4G) and adds the features of a traditional tablet with capabilities like web browsing, email, movie and music downloads, and about 10,000 apps to name a few.
Features
SCREEN- The Kindle Fire features a full color 7inch 1024x600 screen. This is not hi-def, but it is more than sufficient graphic quality for movies and video streaming, and the same resolution as its closest competitor, Barnes And Nobles Nook Tablet.
STORAGE- The Fire only has 8GB of internal storage space, approximately 6GB of that is dedicated for user content. Don't let storage be a concern though, every Kindle Fire comes with a free 5GB Amazon Cloud Services account allowing you to store any content of your choosing like music, movies, and documents for quick retrieval anytime. (so long as you have wi-fi access)
BATTERY LIFE- 7-9 hours of battery life depending on what you are using the device for is typical. It has about a 4 hour recharge time and will charge from the included power adapter or by USB cable.
CONNECTIVITY- The only web access is through a Wi-Fi connection. Not having 3G or 4G connectivity is one of the shortcomings of the Kindle Fire in my opinion. Perhaps we are likely to see this added in a future model. Also worth mentioning there is no camera on the Fire, though there is a microphone. Without a camera the microphone use is limited, as there is no video chat option available.
APPS- The Kindle Fire is not just for books, even though Amazon has over a million of them available for download. They also have a library of over 100,000 movies, and tv shows. If you are a Amazon Prime member you get access to all of them for free.
If Amazons library isn't enough for you, there are also apps for Hulu, Netflix, Pandora, and more. Also all your favorite game apps are available like Plants Vs. Zombies, and Angry Birds. The Amazon MP3 library has over 17 million songs.
Need to check your e-mail? No problem, Kindle Fire has a built in app, and many more available for download. It operates on a well disguised Android OS, running a 1GHZ dual core processor, and is very smooth for its limited memory (512MB DRAM).
The Kindle Fire has been well received since its release and will probably continue to do very well. When it comes to price vs. features the Kindle Fire is the best device currently on the market with its $199 price tag. I imagine in the next 12-18 months we will see Amazon roll out an even newer Kindle device to compete with its current competitor, the Nook Tablet which has a more than slight technological lead over the Kindle Fire, but at a price point that is $50 higher.
Comments
Daisy,
It seems you are correct. Amazon content has unlimited cloud storage. I am sorry about my mis-statement. I will edit the article to reflect this. Thank you for reading my posts and providing the constructive criticism. Accuracy is important.
Bob,
Thanks for your reply. You might also mention that the Amazon Kindle Fire is not a crossover device. The Fire is a backlit entertainment tablet, not a reflective screen e-book reader.
E-book readers use electronic ink. The reading experience is like that of reading a dead tree book (a book printed on paper) -- light bounces off the page. E-book readers, such as the Kindle DX and the Kindle Keyboard, can be read outdoors in bright sunlight.
Although one can read e-books on a Kindle Fire, one can't read the books outdoors in bright sunlight. Picture looking at a computer screen outdoors on a sunny day and trying to read what was on the screen. You would have the same experience with a Kindle Fire.
The reason the Fire doesn't have a microphone, camera, or GSP capability is because Amazon wanted to keep the price point of the device at US$199. The reason the Fire doesn't have 3G or 4G capability is because buyers would have to subscribe to a service that would substantially increase the monetary outlay for the Fire.
actually Daisy not all ebook readers use electronic ink. Check out Kobo and Barnes and Nobles first go round with the Nook. Both e-book readers with full color screens. The electronic ink is mostly limited to kindles although there are a couple of others.
The Fire does in fact have a microphone which is a feature used for recording childrens books to audio. It does not have GPS or 3 or 4G because the device they will roll out next year will and it cause people to buy all over again. I have a kindle (not a fire) that has 4G and wireless access, and it is at a much lower price point than the Fire. So you see, inclusion of these features are not expensive and have less to do with price point than making sure you are not totally satisfied with the device so you will buy an upgraded one when it becomes available. This is the same reason for the non upgradable 512MB Ram.
Bob,
Can you please tell me where the microphone is on the Kindle Fire? I'm looking at my Fire as I write this, and I don't see the microphone.
Also, which Kindle model do you have that has 4G and wireless? My Kindle DX has 3G and my Kindle Keyboard (formerly called the Kindle 3) has 3G and wi-fi.
nice and informative article!!!
If i was in the car travleing on a trip i wouldn't be able to use internet?:(
Daisy Mariposa 5 months ago
Bob,
The Kindle Fire has unlimited Amazon Cloud storage for apps, audio books, MP3s, video, magazines, newspapers , and e-books purchased from Amazon.com. The free 5GB of Cloud storage you mentioned in your article is for personal documents and books, MP3s, video, etc. that were not purchased from Amazon.