Kindle Fire... The Scorched Review

Last week the new addition to the Kindle family was unveiled here in the UK, The Kindle Fire came to Amazon and participation stores and was the most eagerly anticipated Kindle device to hit the shelves. It's not just a Kindle e-reader but a tablet too. 'Powerful and Portable, 'Beautifully Simple' says Amazon. It looked like this Autumn's best and most affordable tablet, able to watch movies, play games, read books and surf the web viewable on a stunning HD LCD screen, with Dual- Core 1.20GHz processors, built in Dolby speakers and available in a whopping 32GB storage and a front facing HD camera.

Being a sucker for gadgets the spec list looked brilliant, I had heard about the Kindle Fire since it's release in the US some time ago, and the reviews seemed pretty good. With the ability to download movies from Amazon's Instant marketplace and the selection of a ton of apps available, the Kindle Fire looked to rival and out-do the iPad. So I pre-ordered my copy in Waterstones, then when the day came a week later I picked up my new Kindle Fire. I remember entering the store, I could barely hold in my excitement, I felt like a child making my way towards Santa to receive my gift. Money was exchanged, excitement now ready to burst out of me. I had a hard time trying not to skip out the shop and pelt through the shopping center to get home and check out my shiny new gadget. I wouldn't have imagined that I was hurling towards the dark bleak pit of disappointment avenue...

So how do I put this. Well to start off there is NO video marketplace, no place to purchase movies at all! Next to our Yankee brethren we have been royally shafted! With the US version you are presented with Amazon Instant, us folks in the UK we are given movie streaming through Lovefilm, a subsidiary company of Amazon, plus the opportunity to download Netflix as well through the Kindle's App store (I'll get to that later). So when you are without Wi-Fi the Kindle Fire become, well just a color Kindle with a few games and listen to some music, which I have to add you are able to purchase through Amazon. However when the Fire is connected to your PC or Mac, you are able to put videos on it's hard-drive once the device has been mounted. The Kindle is a little finicky though as it doesn't support .AVI, .WMV, .FLV and some MPEG4 video codecs, and obviously forget your iTunes videos too unless you have DRM removal software!

Next item we come to is the app store. When browsing the app store I noticed that it was pretty sparse and when I did come across an app that I wanted, for example Monopoly, it says that my device wasn't comparable. Like what kind of crap is this! So not only I got jipped with the films but the app store too.

I have to say though, what I was impressed with was the sound quality from the on-board speakers, boasting two Dolby Audio speakers mounted on the back. The HD LCD screen is nice too.

So that's it. The review done.

My advice: Get an iPad mini, I know I will be.