November 21, 2011, 7:41 AM — Last week when Amazon's Kindle Fire launched, I promised to do a review or at least a hands-on. Now that I've had a weekend to really play with the thing (and because some friends have been prodding me for my thoughts) I figured it was time to write something up.
At this point there've been so many 'official' reviews published that I've decided to do something more casual. What follows are my personal thoughts on the Kindle Fire, and keep in mind that they come from someone who owns an iPad 1 and an Acer A500 (a 10" Android tablet).
Obviously, I didn't really need a third tablet. So why did I buy a Fire? Because I come from an Amazon household. We buy all our digital media from them. E-books, TV, movies, music...it's all from Amazon (well, I've just recently been buying some music from Google). I don't use iTunes except when forced to by the iPad (which hasn't been connected to my PC in months and months). We're also Amazon Prime subscribers; that's where we buy everything from video games and disk-based movies to coffee for our Tassimo coffee maker. We subscribe to Prime for the free 2-day (and discounted overnight) shipping. Amazon is basically our first stop when it comes to online shopping.
So for us, the Kindle Fire was a natural fit and at $200, it was cheap enough that we didn't have to budget around the purchase.
I'll give you the bottom line right now. If you're not a fan of Amazon's ecosystem, don't get the Kindle Fire. For everyone else, let's get into the nitty gritty.
My out-of-the-box experience with the Fire wasn't 100% positive. The first thing it wanted to do was update itself. It locked up in the process of downloading an update. Not a huge deal but I had to go online and figure out how to reset it. With only one button I figured I just had to hold that one button in, but that didn't work. Turns out I was doing the right thing, but not for long enough. You've got to hold the button in for 20 seconds to get the device to reset. (Those are the directions; I don't think it took quite that long, but it took longer than the 5 or so seconds I was holding it before researching.)
The good news is that it hasn't locked up since, but you know how important first impressions are. I was wary for a while once it was up and running.
My second issue is that it's too heavy, or more accurately, I'd like it to be lighter. It's not that it's actually heavy, it just feels very dense. Personally I'd trade a few hours of battery life for a few ounces of weight shaved off, but that's just me. Don't get me wrong, you can easily hold it in one hand, but you probably wouldn't want to hold it pinched between thumb and forefinger for more than a few minutes. Instead you hold it cradled in your hand, thumb along one edge, fingertips along the other.
By the second day of ownership the weight issue had pretty much disappeared for me; I'd grown accustomed to it and the slightly rubbery feel of the outer shell makes it comfortable to hold for long periods of time. I haven't put mine in a case yet; Amazon sells one that has a strap on the back that you can shove your hand through so you can 'palm' the Fire; that looks kind of interesting. The same case (made by Marware) also serves as a stand for media viewing. I'll report in if I decide to spend almost 25% of the cost of the Fire on a case for it.
I've been reading a lot of reviews of the Fire and many complain about the position of the power button on the 'bottom' of the unit. That bothered me too, for the .5 seconds it took me to spin the thing around. Aside from the lock screen being, well, locked into one orientation, there really is no 'top' to a tablet. You hold it however you want to hold it. I like the power button and headphone jack at the top so that's how I hold it.
There's also a lot of talk about the design, or lack thereof. It is, indeed, a very plain looking black slab when it's turned off. I didn't buy it as a display piece or to impress people with, so that doesn't really bother me. This 'criticism' reminds me a little of the fuss that was made when the iPhone 4s came out and it looked so much like an iPhone 4. My only real gripe design-wise is that it's hard for me to see the jack to plug in the mini-usb charger cable. Black cable, black chassis, black shadow of the socket, and I generally charge it overnight in our softly lit bedroom. I generally have to grab my reading glasses to plug the darned thing in.
So what about actually using it? Really there weren't a lot of surprises. As an e-book reader it's very similar to using a Kindle app on another tablet or your cell phone. If you have an E Ink Kindle and all you want to do is read books, then the Fire isn't for you. As a music player it's too big, of course, and the built-in speakers don't cut it. But if you want to listen to your cloud-based music (using headphones) while reading an e-book, the synergy starts to happen, y'know? While you're reading an e-book you can access volume, pause and skip forward/back controls for audio from the settings widget, which is always available when the UI is displayed (the e-reader software hides the UI when you're actually reading).
As a video player, it's really nice. I thought a 7" screen might be a little too small, but this is very much a personal video player so you're generally holding it close to your face anyway. All the controls you need are there on the video screen. Volume, scrubbing, and an instant 10 second rewind: a very welcome feature. If you've got music playing when you start a movie, your music will fade out as the video starts. Again, synergy. The Fire is a great way to take a movie to that over-stuffed easy chair in the den while everyone else is watching football on the big screen in the living room.
The Fire has a "Docs" media tab that, in my experience, isn't as well thought out. You'll face a few challenges here, and the first is getting a document onto the Kindle. One option is to email them an address Amazon assigns to your account. That's pretty cumbersome. It takes a while for your document to arrive and it won't appear in the Docs tab until you hit Sync from the settings menu. So, if you're like me, you'll sit there tapping Sync over and over and over until your document finally arrives. Alternatively you can plug your Fire into a computer using a USB cable (not included) and drag files over.
MS Word documents that you get into Docs are treated like e-books (including the fact that they can't be edited). They get paginated so you have to flip from page to page rather than scrolling, nor can you zoom in or out. I also tried an e-book I'd bought in PDF format. It was big (85 megs) and my email provider (Gmail) wouldn't let me attach it, so I had to do the USB cable thing. On the iPad or Android tablet I would've used Dropbox, but that's not available on the Fire. Box.net is, but it limits file sizes to 25 megs (for free accounts). Once I got the (admittedly massive, for a PDF) file onto the Fire, I found I was really taxing the system. It took a long time to render nicely, though once it did it was functional enough. With a PDF at least you can zoom in and out.
All in all, the Docs section feels like a real weak point in the Kindle Fire system. If you really want to work with documents you should probably look for an App, which brings us to the next section.
As you probably know, Amazon opened an Appstore last March and has been building up quite a library of Android applications. Some of them work on the Fire, but some don't. It's frustrating to know, for instance, that the very nice Aldiko e-reader app (which handles those ePub format ebooks that the Kindle software won't read) is available on Amazon's Appstore but blocked from the Fire. That said, the basic apps you'll probably want (Netflix, Pandora, and of course ComiXology!) are there. Oddly while both Rdio and MOG have apps in the store, Rdio's is approved for the Fire while MOGs is not. None of Google's apps are available.
This gets back to the Fire being an Amazon tablet more than an Android tablet. There're enough apps to keep the average user entertained, but techie users are going to feel limited. There are some Office-type apps that should make up for deficiencies in the native Docs functionality, and some of them even connect to Dropbox, Google Docs and so on. I was also pleased to find that Amazon hasn't blocked side-loading apps that aren't in their app store.
The last tab feature is Web. I haven't done a lot of speed tests to see if this Silk browser is faster than other browsers; I haven't noticed it being significantly faster or slower in practical terms. By default you'll get the mobile version of a website but there's a setting for "Desktop or Mobile View." Some sites seem to honor this, others don't. Google sites, including Gmail and Reader, do, but there's a catch. They display OK as long as you don't want to scroll the page. Google's HTML5 scroll bars just don't work in the Fire's browser.
Your best bet is to stick with mobile sites, but that's not nearly as rich a web browsing experience as you'd get on other tablets. Alternatively, sideload the Dolphin browser and ignore Silk.
So to recap, the Fire is a great device for consuming Amazon content. As an Android tablet, it is mediocre at best. Whether it's right for you or not depends on what you're looking for. I'm happy with it, but not over-the-moon in love with the thing.
Sunday morning, having negotiated a deal wherein my girlfriend took the dog for her morning walk, I rolled over in bed, grabbed the Fire and in the space of 4 screen taps, I'd purchased the Sunday edition of the New York Times for 99 cents. It downloaded in a few seconds and I started reading the magazine section. I popped over to the music tab to play some mellow Sunday morning tunes while I read. When the paper got boring I jumped over to the novel I've been reading. That's the kind of scenario I bought the Fire for, and that's why I'm pleased. However once again, there's a catch. The version of the Times I got was very much a 'mobile' version: a list of headlines and mostly just the text of stories behind them. A rich, more 'newspaper-like' experience would be nicer.
If you're on the fence about the Fire, think of it as an Amazon Tablet. If that sounds like a neat device, go for it. If you're looking for an Android tablet, I'd suggest saving up about $100 or so more and shopping around for a Honeycomb tablet; that way you'll get the full Android experience. I'm hoping that Amazon continues to update the Fire to get a more consistent 'tablet' experience going on. As it is, there're too many places where you feel like you're holding an over-sized phone (the software is based on Gingerbread, not Honeycomb) rather than a tablet, and that doesn't do the hardware justice.
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