Amazon Kindle Fire The Good the Bad and the Ugly

There has been a lot of talk about the Pros and Cons of Amazon’s latest Kindle, the Kindle Fire. For some, it was the best thing since sliced bread, while for others, it lacked the bells and whistles. Here we look at the good, the bad and the ugly of the Amazon Kindle Fire and try to explain it in non-tech lingo.

What’s So Darn Good about the Amazon Kindle Fire?

• The Price – the unbeatable price $199
• The responsive multi-touch screen – the video (courtesy this Kindle Fire Review) below clearly demonstrates the ‘sensitivity’ of the touch-screen. The image at the top-left was the final result of this drawing
• True widescreen – the Kindle Fire has a 16:9 screen in contrast to the 4:3 screen of the Apple iPad
• Easy accessibility to media – newsstand, books, music, movies, TV shows and web, just a click away. The numbers are mammoth, tens of thousands of movies and TV shows and millions of music tracks – not sure how many of us will have the time to go through all that
• Easy navigability – something everybody has been impressed about
• Ultra-fast proprietary Amazon Silk browser – the ‘workload’ of loading a web page is split between the Kindle Fire and Amazon’s cloud. From our experience, there is nothing SUPER ULTRA fast about it, but there is certainly nothing sluggish about it either. Side by side comparisons with the iPad 2 showed no difference after multiple testings, at least nothing noticeable. A lot of Kindle Fire users will confirm this.
• Ebook reading interface – much better than a regular E-ink screen. I see how that can be a controversial statement. E-ink screens are supposed to be ‘less bad’ on your eyes. May be.. but every time you ‘turn’ pages, the screen ‘refreshes’ or ‘flickers’. In contrast, turning pages on LCD screens like the Kindle Fire, the iPad or the very computer screen that you’re reading this on seems flawless. And you get to read under low lighting conditions without having to depend on an external light source.
• The Kindle Fire App Store – not nearly as big as the Apple App store, but so far, I’ve been able to find an App for everything that I searched the App store for .. from business apps to kids apps to games to food to daily organizational apps (to do lists) to social networking and email. As there is this ‘one paid App for free everyday’ thingy, you rarely have to purchase applications (if you’re as stingy as I am). Their Kindle Fire App Storeis kind of hidden, so to make life easier for you, this is what it looks like
• Last but not least, the size – bigger is not always better. The Kindle Fire, fits perfectly in your palm (for holding it with one hand) or your jacket pocket.

Isn’t there anything bad about the Kindle Fire?

Sure, there are a few ‘shortcomings’. But would Amazon have been able to sell the Fire at $199 had they incorporated those features?

• No camera or mic – no video chatting
• No 3G option – the price difference between the 3G + Wi Fi model and Wi Fi only model on the iPad 2 is $130 suggesting that 3G hardware must be pretty expensive. But some of us may have been ready to spend that extra dough had Amazon made that option available
• Storage limitations – the Kindle Fire comes with only 8GB of internal memory. If you have access to a Wi Fi network that gives you access to Amazon’s unlimited cloud storage, the 8GB limit really won’t be a problem. According to Amazon, that’s enough room for “80 apps, plus 10 movies or 800 songs or 6,000 books”. However, if you’re going to be away from a Wi Fi network for a looong period, more internal storage could have been handy

How about the UGLY features of the Amazon Kindle Fire?

It’s $200! $100 would have been nice! Sure, $50 would have been even better! Seriously, for $199, there’s nothing ugly about it. More RAM, more memory, cameras, mics, GPS, 3G, larger screen all would have been nice, but then you’re also never going to get it for $199.

According to analysts, 80% of iPad owners don’t make use of the advanced features it has to offer. The Kindle Fire will more than likely satisfy or exceed the ‘tablet needs’ of this category of tablet users.

Check out the full potential of the Amazon Kindle Fire here.