Amazon announced the new Kindle Fire ereader/tablet today for the stunning price of $199. It features a 7-inch color IPS touchscreen, Wi-Fi, and runs an Android-based operating system. It will be able to access a plethora of Amazon media, including ebooks, music and streaming movies and TV shows as well as (selected) Android apps.
Naturally many, including me, are seeing the Fire as an iPad competitor, even though it lacks a camera, 3G connectivity, Bluetooth or GPS and it has only 8GB of internal storage (though Amazon offers unlimited cloud storage with it). Despite all of this, it has generally the same core abilities as the iPad to play games, read ebooks, watch movies, listen to music and browse the web. And the demo videos available so far show that it has a responsive interface focused on making accessing media easy. Amazon seems poised to give Apple a run for its money in the tablet space with the Fire.
While the Fire isn’t incredible enough to make me ditch my iPad 2, I can see it as a tempting device for someone who wants an ebook reader/portable media consumption device for less than $499, the price of the cheapest iPad. It has enough features and is priced so aggressively that it makes me regret getting the Kindle Keyboard (the new name for the previous-generation Kindle) for my husband last Christmas, for which I paid $139.
For a user like my husband, who isn’t nearly as excited about the wonders of iOS devices as I am, the Fire is a great iPad-alternative to give him the ebook reading and occasional game playing he seems to do the most (he currently plays Minesweeper so much on his Kindle Keyboard that he’s worn the lettering off the A, Z and D-pad buttons). I wonder how long it will take my husband to ask me to get him one for Christmas and sell his current Kindle? Since he recently commandeered my iPad to play through Machinarium, a neat and endearing adventure/puzzle game, I’ll be inclined to get him one so he’ll keep his grubby mitts off my tablet.
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