The Amazon Kindle Fire HD ($199/16GB; $249/32GB) isn't a tablet.
It's more like a shop window onto the world's biggest content
department store. The new 7-inch model from the super-retailer offers up
a well-designed interface that provides an easy way to consume Amazon's
huge library of content and services and to buy, buy, buy. That makes
the Kindle Fire HD (KFHD) highly entertaining, and potentially the best
purchase for tablet shoppers who value ease of use over all else. But in
an increasingly competitive 7-inch tablet market, it stops just short
of earning our Editors' Choice award. That honor remains with the Google Nexus 7 Black Wi-Fi 16GB Tablet Google Nexus 7
Fire up the display, and—WOW! The
7-inch IPS LCD is only 1,280-by-800—a fairly standard resolution for a
small-screen tablet—but it's non-reflective, with great color balance,
and a terrific viewing angle. It's better than the Nexus 7's same-spec
display. You'll be able to watch this for hours.
Above the screen, there's a 1-megapixel video camera that
can only be used by certain apps, such as Skype and Evernote. You get
micro HDMI and micro USB ports on the bottom panel, but no memory card
slots, and the battery isn't removable. Fortunately, the KFHD has pretty
long battery life, with a solid 7 hours of video playback with the
screen pumped up to maximum brightness. The Nexus 7, though, scored more
than 10.5 hours on the same test.
Interface, Apps, Content, and AdsThe
Kindle Fire HD runs Amazon's custom operating system over a base layer
of Android 4.0. Call it "Amdroid." While Amdroid is compatible with most
third-party Android apps, the user interface is totally unrecognizable
from stock Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich). The focus is on letting you
easily play with the stuff you download from Amazon.
The first thing you'll see when you turn on a Kindle Fire
HD is an ad. Amazon feeds these "offers" to your tablet instead of
showing a standard lock screen. During my review period, they rotated
between one ad for a TV show, three for movies, one for a book, and two
offers for $5 Amazon coupons. A two-line text ad also floats at the
bottom of every home screen while you're using the tablet. If you hate
the ads, you can pay Amazon $15, and you'll never see them again.
Like the earlier Kindle Fire, the KFHD's home screen
starts with a horizontal list of clear, text options: Shop, Games, Apps,
Books, Music, Videos, Newsstand, Audiobooks, Web, Photos, Docs, and
Offers (the aforementioned ads). Below that there's a large, rotating
carousel of the most recent icons you've used. There's no easy or
obvious way to flip through multiple apps you're running at the same
time, although the music player hangs out in the notification bar so you
can pause it as needed.
If you're in portrait mode, the sell gets even harder:
Many of the recently used icons on the home screen start to display a
list of suggested purchases below them, while links to webpages show
other trending pages.
Click into any category and you get a virtual bookshelf of
your content, divided into Cloud and Device sections. When you have
Wi-Fi signal, you can download stuff to move it from the Cloud (where
you have unlimited storage space for your Amazon-purchased content) to
the Fire itself, or delete it back into the Cloud to free up your
available 12.6GB of on-device space. (There's no memory card slot, but
you can double your storage with the 32GB Fire HD, which will cost you
an exta $50.) When you're outside the reach of Wi-Fi, only the Device
shelves are available. All the sections also have a link through to
Amazon's store so you can buy more content when you're connected, of
course.
The Web comes courtesy of Amazon's Silk browser, which has
largely failed to live up to its promises of being super-fast and
seamless through cloud acceleration. While it's a perfectly fine
browser, Chrome on a Tegra 3-based Android device is faster with
smoother scrolling. Amazon says Silk will speed up over the next several
months as its servers optimize various Web pages.
The Photos section displays pictures
from your Amazon account or your Facebook account (but not your friends'
photos). Docs displays documents you've sideloaded or e-mailed to the
Kindle's unique address; it displays PDFs, Word documents, and
PowerPoint presentations handsomely.
Posted in: Amazon
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