Earlier this month, Amazon had unveiled its Kindle Fire 2 HD tablet, which did take the spotlight for offering all features one would look for in a tab at a much lower cost than the Apple’s iPad.
Amazon is offering these tabs in two versions, 7-inch and 8.9-inch model. The Kindle Fire HD 7-inch model will be shipped this Friday. And the bigger version, 8.9-inch version will be out on November 20th.
However, getting hands on these tabs make you feel they are nice but not great when compared with Apple’s iPad. We are getting you a review of the 7-inch Kindle Fire 2 HD before it hits the shelves so that it’s easy for you to decide whether to splurge on it or rather go and buy Apple’s iPad.
To start, let’s take a look at the most prominent and noted feature- the screen. With a bright light and no glare, the Kindle Fire HD offers you a clear and easy-to-read screen. It has a resolution of 1,280 x 800 pixels, which does offer vivid colors as compared to its predecessors, but stays few steps back Apple’s iPad, which has the highest color accuracy at a 2048 x 1536 resolution.
Getting the Kindle Fire HD high marks were its battery life of 8 hours, enhanced access to cloud storage, and the introduction of a physical volume button and camera.
Also the main focus of the Kindle Fire HD stays on media consumption. The device offers three video-streaming options including Netflix, Hulu Plus, and for members- Amazon Instant video. Apple’s iPad also has access to Amazon Instant video service. Also both the tabs have access to thousands of books and magazines for users to read. For music, both the tabs can have Amazon’s Cloud Player, Pandora, and Spotify. But iPad has iTunes, which the Kindle Fire doesn’t.
iPad also beats the Kindle Fire in terms of games as the former has more and better games as compared to the latter.
However, few other flaws were noted in the Kindle Fire HD. To start, there’s no fully stocked app store whereas Apple offers over 700,000 apps in its Apple App Store. Then there’s lack of a memory card to add to its 16GB or 32GB of memory. Also Amazon sells this device with advertisements, however, there’s also an ad-free version, which can be bought by giving $15 more.
The Kindle Fire HD does make a decent buy at a lower cost. It’s definitely a step ahead its predecessor. It’s sleeker and faster.
But when compared with Apple’s iPad or even Google’s Nexus 7, the Kindle Fire HD got a long way to go. The device still needs to work on a lot of areas to offer users the best tab experience.
It will be out in two versions such as 16GB and 32 GB models. The price of 7-inch Kindle Fire HD starts $199, while the 8.9-inch version will cost $299. That’s a lot less than 4G version of iPad, which starts at $629.
