LoganMolen.com - My Spew

I’ve been playing with Amazon's new Kindle Fire tablet since it hit stores Tuesday and am generally impressed with a powerful tablet that acts bigger than its $199 price.

Before we dive into the details, let’s get this out of the way quickly: the Kindle Fire is much more than an e-reader but it is not an “iPad killer.” But it is a very good hand-held computer with lots of upside.

Reading content is at the core of the Kindle brand, but the Fire does so much more. Because it brings good bang for the buck for mainstream America, expect the Fire to be a big hit this holiday season, giving Amazon a strong foundation in its ongoing war with Apple, Barnes & Noble, Netflix and who knows else in trying to win consumers’ time and money.

Some quick observations after a few hours of playtime with the Fire:

The hardware is boring. Real boring. Unlike the Kindle2, which had its own sexiness, there’s no “wow” factor out of the box with the Fire.
The Fire feels good in the hand. It’s heavier but narrower than the Kindle2 and can be held easily with one hand. Compare that to the heavier 9.7-inch iPad, which requires two hands for most uses.
The 7-inch screen delivers vivid display and sharp color. The original Kindle's use of E-ink made its low-glare screen ideal for lengthy reading. I tested the e-reader on the Fire and it performed as well as you'd think it would, but the high-glare screen is likely to turn off hard-core book readers who don't need the Fire's pwerful multimedia capabilities.
Performance is snappy. The dual-core processor handles tasks without delay, although I’ve read reviews suggesting response times lag behind the iPad. Maybe so, but average consumers won’t care, and for $300 less, it’s not a big deal.
The user interface could use some improvement. The power button for some reason is at the bottom of the device, and on multiple occasions my hand inadvertently hit the button, prompting a message asking me if I wanted to power down. Volume is controlled form a soft key on the screen, not outside the device, as is the case with most other tablets and smartphones. Takes some getting used to.
The Kindle Fire rendering of Wired magazine is similar to the iPad. There's just less text per page. I had major problems trying to convince the Wired magazine app that I was a print subscriber and thus eligible for a free download. I finally gave up and paid for the magazine, just to compare it with the iPad and print versions. As with the iPad version, Wired on the Fire is essentially an interactive version of the print magazine, The Wired app for Kindle Fire renders advertising oddly. The black space above and below the ad on the left is unused. On pages without ads, content fills that space. with pages presented identically across all platforms. I found stories easy to read, even with the smaller 7-inch screen. The interactive features, such as video and animated text, worked flawlessly. One odd thing, though: full-page ads on the Fire were published at about 75% the size of pages with news content. That’s not the case with the iPad, and I'm guessing it's because the ads don't naturally render to the new size. Ultimately, however, I wonder why would Wired would penalize precious advertisers by making those full-page ads harder to read on a smaller device.
I downloaded a copy of Tuesday’s New York Times. There was a lot there, but I found the navigation lacking. Unlike the hierarchy with the iPad app, the Fire presents the Times’ content in one big “index” page, with all stories given identical weight. You can narrow your view by section, but I still felt like I was sorting through a feed dump.
The Kindle store features a wide variety of name-brand magazines, presented mostly as digital replicas of their print editions.There are a lot of magazines and newspapers to choose from, as well as Amazon’s deep library of books, movies, music and more. It should be no surprise the Amazon ecosystem is front and center, particularly the free or low-cost content tied to the Amazon Price subscription plan ($75 a year gets you unlimited free shipping, plus free streaming or reading of a sizable number of books and movies).
It’s too early for me to judge battery life, but I burned through half a charge the first day by simply trying out all the different features, a few downloads and web searches here, some video streaming there. The Fire’s capabilities are far greater than the Kindle but so far there’s no comparison between the two devices (and I’m not alone in that comparison).
Streaming and downloading is quick -- if your connection is good. It took very little time to download a 1.5 megabyte TV show at home but downloading the latest issue of Wired (260 megs) from Starbuck’s AT&T wi-fi seemed to take forever.
The video is crisp and streaming flawless, even as the video download from the Amazon store continued in the background.
The is not a productivity device. The email client is straighforward, and allows for multiple accounts. The virtual keyboard seems cramped, but then again the Fire’s 7-inch size -- even in landscape mode -- ensures limited word processing. As is the case with all tablets, heavy typists will prefer laptops, even netbooks.
I’m still trying to figure out when the Fire’s gyroscope triggers landscape vs. portrait mode. It's nice when it works, but I was unable to view some unoptimized websites in landscape mode. Makes for a sour viewing experience.
I found the highly touted Silk browser meh, neither good nor bad. I’ll put it through the wringer and try to pass along an update.
Apple has made an art of product packaging. Amazon has learned with the Kindle and is getting there. But I was disappointed to find the box contained only the Fire and a power cord. No USB cable, no screen wipe, no stickers. I guess that’s understandable since Apple reportedly is losing several hundreds dollars on each device, but the unboxing will leave many spoiled consumers thinking, “Is this it?”
When I launched the Fire today, a software update kicked in. That’s good, an indication Amazon’s programmers are reacting to initial feedback.

That’s a lot of ponder, and I’m just scratching the surface. Bottom line is Kindle Fire is a product that’s good and destined to get better as its app store grows and larger tablets are introduced. Fire’s relatively low price and Amazon’s willingness to spend millions on subsidized prices in exchange for building market share ensures iPad finally has a battle on its hands (think iOS vs. Android). The two devices appeal to different audiences but that gap will close as time goes on.

As a very satisfied iPad user, I can’t wait to see what the future brings.