It seems every few weeks something is dubbed either an iPhone or iPad killer. For weeks we’ve been hearing about a new tablet Amazon was coming out with that was supposed to finally give Apple a serious run for the money. Well, today Amazon released the long await tablet, called the Kindle Fire, which will begin shipping on November 15th.
Amazon’s Kindle Fire does give the Apple iPad a run for the money, but only because it is $199 versus $499 for the least expensive iPad. The new Kindle Fire is a nice small 7″ color tablet that should work wonderfully well on the Amazon.com website….giving the buyer access to everything from books and magazines to movies and songs. It also allows users to load Word documents, PDF’s and even email. It features a dual core processor, but with only 512Mb of RAM and 8Gb of device storage. It even features a Gorilla Glass coating which is quite scratch resistant, a nice plus if you are going to read on the bus or subway every day.
The Kindle Fire misses the mark in that it has no cameras or wireless network access. Not 4G, not even 3G, which is slow, but at least available most everywhere across the country. The 8Gb of device storage seems chintzy, but Amazon is really pushing cloud storage, which gives you virtually unlimited storage. Then again, without a 3G or 4G connection even the biggest cloud storage is of no use if you can’t find a Wi-Fi signal.
The best feature about this tablet is the price. If you’ve been waiting for the price of tablets to drop, you’ve found a great device for the price. $199 for a color tablet that can surf the web, download emails, play games, music, movies and yes, even allow you to read books. For us, however, it needs more features, more hardware, more internet access to be a serious competitor to the iPad or some of the other Android tablets like the Motorola Xoom or Samsung Galaxy 10.1.
Before you run out an pre-order one today or tomorrow, we advise waiting for a few weeks as rumor has it Barnes & Noble is soon releasing the Nook Color 2, another 7″ color e-reader that should see some improvements over a very nice device they launched last year to pretty much positive reviews. Then you can make an educated and thoughtful decision as to which is right for your needs.
