Kindle Fire Review

Good:

1. Impossible not to mention the price first. At $200, it is an easy recommendation to those interested in buying a tablet but hesitant of a $500 plus price tag. And it cannot be understated, the Kindle Fire is a very good (not perfect) iPad substitute.
2. Amazon.com and cloud integration is seamless. Apart from the price tag, this is easily the biggest selling point. Once registered, all Kindle books, magazines, applications, Amazon instant video and MP3s sync immediately.
3. Bright, color rich screen. Decent built-in audio. It's small and lightweight, yet sturdy.

Unsure:

1. The Amazon Silk web browser is fast, but the quality of a particular page is really inconsistent. Having the ability to tab browse is awesome, but it would be nice to be able to view websites and internet video in a landscape mode. This could possibly be corrected with a firmware update.
2. The battery life is about 7 or so hours. In this price range, it is neither good nor bad. For how I use the device, it is more than acceptable.
3. No access to the Android application marketplace. This might be a bigger deal at launch, but the Amazon app store will grow rapidly to the point of it being irrelevant.

Bad:

1. No 3G support and only 8 gigabytes of on device storage. As impressive as the Amazon Cloud is, it is moot if you can't communicate with it. For times when you don't have access to wifi, this could be a legitimate pain.
2. No camera, bluetooth. Cameras are nice, though not a necessity. Bluetooth is a bigger deal with regard to making edits to documents with the virtual keyboard.
3. It doesn't have that Apple polish. The Kindle Fire suffers from a little bit of first generation "jankiness". This will be a bigger deal to some than others. In most cases, it's form of function. But it's hard to rival the sleekness of the iPad, and the Fire falls short.

Conclusion: Buy it if you are either heavily invested in the Amazon cloud with your Kindle and MP3 library (and if you have a Prime account for streaming video), or are looking for a cheap alternative to the iPad. Don't buy it if you want a top of the line tablet with a fully established application store and/or if wifi isn't readily available in your daily life. It's not an iPad killer, but it's a legit competitor. It will do well in expanding the tablet market, which I think we can all agree is the healthiest of predicaments.

Good:

1. Impossible not to mention the price first. At $200, it is an easy recommendation to those interested in buying a tablet but hesitant of a $500 plus price tag. And it cannot be understated, the Kindle Fire is a very good (not perfect) iPad substitute.
2. Amazon.com and cloud integration is seamless. Apart from the price tag, this is easily the biggest selling point. Once registered, all Kindle books, magazines, applications, Amazon instant video and MP3s sync immediately.
3. Bright, color rich screen. Decent built-in audio. It's small and lightweight, yet sturdy.

Unsure:

1. The Amazon Silk web browser is fast, but the quality of a particular page is really inconsistent. Having the ability to tab browse is awesome, but it would be nice to be able to view websites and internet video in a landscape mode. This could possibly be corrected with a firmware update.
2. The battery life is about 7 or so hours. In this price range, it is neither good nor bad. For how I use the device, it is more than acceptable.
3. No access to the Android application marketplace. This might be a bigger deal at launch, but the Amazon app store will grow rapidly to the point of it being irrelevant.

Bad:

1. No 3G support and only 8 gigabytes of on device storage. As impressive as the Amazon Cloud is, it is moot if you can't communicate with it. For times when you don't have access to wifi, this could be a legitimate pain.
2. No camera, bluetooth. Cameras are nice, though not a necessity. Bluetooth is a bigger deal with regard to making edits to documents with the virtual keyboard.
3. It doesn't have that Apple polish. The Kindle Fire suffers from a little bit of first generation "jankiness". This will be a bigger deal to some than others. In most cases, it's form of function. But it's hard to rival the sleekness of the iPad, and the Fire falls short.

Conclusion: Buy it if you are either heavily invested in the Amazon cloud with your Kindle and MP3 library (and if you have a Prime account for streaming video), or are looking for a cheap alternative to the iPad. Don't buy it if you want a top of the line tablet with a fully established application store and/or if wifi isn't readily available in your daily life. It's not an iPad killer, but it's a legit competitor. It will do well in expanding the tablet market, which I think we can all agree is the healthiest of predicaments.

Got a Kindle Fire for Christmas.  So far Giantbomb is the only site that gives the silk browser serious issues.  
 
OK all you new Kindle Fire owners out there, what's the best way to view GB on our new devices??

waiting for a UK release date, buying this looks like an option for me.

does it read .cbr .cbz?

@ptc said:

Got a Kindle Fire for Christmas. So far Giantbomb is the only site that gives the silk browser serious issues. OK all you new Kindle Fire owners out there, what's the best way to view GB on our new devices??

As of right now, the website is working for me. What part of the website isn't working? (this is the m.giantbomb.com)

@ptc said:

Got a Kindle Fire for Christmas. So far Giantbomb is the only site that gives the silk browser serious issues. OK all you new Kindle Fire owners out there, what's the best way to view GB on our new devices??

In all honesty, the mobile page works best for me (but I am a subscriber, so...). It's weird; the 7" tablet means that you'll be using mobile sites more often than not, but it should be able to support full sites just as well...sometimes.

Buy an Ainol Novo 8 Advanced instead of the Kindle Fire.  Much better 'ipad substitute' for a lower price.  Faster CPU, better GPU, higher resoultion screen (1280x768 vs 800x480), better touch technology (5 point vs 2 point), includes 2 USB ports, HDMI out and a lit trackball.  I just bought one, it runs Gingerbread (with Honeycomb and ICS coming soon) and can run all standard android apps, is easy to root and will even run advanced stuff like emulators and Tegra games.
 
It also includes a camera which works with skype and if you really want 3G you can use an after market 3G USB dongle (it supports around a dozen different devices all easily obtainable via ebay pretty cheaply) with a sim card of your own choosing.  The advantage is that you're not locked to a plan.

The Kindle Fire looked very promising, but it didn't meet my expectations. Good review!

@ptc said:

@ABritishNerd: yep, guess I need to subscribe. Here's to hoping for a New Year's sale!

There's a sale on at the moment. :) http://www.giantbomb.com/forums/general-discussion/30/hey-premium-memberships-are-on-sale/529409/#261

Sounds pretty close to my experience with the Fire. I can't justify $500 for an iPad for what I'd do with that device: casual web browsing, eBooks, and Netflix. But $200 for a smaller, less powerful device? Much more justifiable.

@Knives said:

1. The Amazon Silk web browser is fast, but the quality of a particular page is really inconsistent. Having the ability to tab browse is awesome, but it would be nice to be able to view websites and internet video in a landscape mode. This could possibly be corrected with a firmware update.

This one I had a question with, though. What are you talking about when you're referring to landscape mode? I get that whenever I turn the device to its side, as long as I remember to unlock the device's orientation setting. I usually keep it locked because I don't like text spinning all over the place when I'm reading in bed. But when a video loads in portrait mode, I have to remember, "oh yeah, it's locked in portrait mode." Were you referring to something else?

@Ubersmake said:

Sounds pretty close to my experience with the Fire. I can't justify $500 for an iPad for what I'd do with that device: casual web browsing, eBooks, and Netflix. But $200 for a smaller, less powerful device? Much more justifiable.

@Knives said:

1. The Amazon Silk web browser is fast, but the quality of a particular page is really inconsistent. Having the ability to tab browse is awesome, but it would be nice to be able to view websites and internet video in a landscape mode. This could possibly be corrected with a firmware update.

This one I had a question with, though. What are you talking about when you're referring to landscape mode? I get that whenever I turn the device to its side, as long as I remember to unlock the device's orientation setting. I usually keep it locked because I don't like text spinning all over the place when I'm reading in bed. But when a video loads in portrait mode, I have to remember, "oh yeah, it's locked in portrait mode." Were you referring to something else?

This was fixed in an update.

@mr_ink_5000: It got my Fire to read those files by using a program called calibre. Just DL it and install. Then import what ever comic you want to send to the device and convert it to mobi, making sure that you check the settings (i.e. make sure its in fire format and for the conversion to keep the color instead of turning it back and white.) the conversion takes a bit. After its done, connect your Fire and one of the buttons at the top of the program should be "send to device" (once the Fire is in USB mode) and that should do it. It also comes preloaded with Comixology if you have a library there too. You wont have the doulbe tap to zoom in like in Comixology but you can zoom like a regular document.

It's good if you don't own an ipad. It's an ipad lite.

@avidwriter said:

It's good if you don't own an ipad. It's an ipad lite.

Its price is also lite.