Amazon Kindle Fire First Impressions: Solid but Limited

29.09.2011

Amazon succeeds with the Kindle Fire in several respects. First and foremost is the price: At $199, the Kindle Fire falls into territory that won't make a huge dent in consumers' pocketbooks, and it's almost, but not quite, an impulse buy.

Another win: Its on-board storefronts for Kindle books, Android apps, and movies and TV shows are visually appealing. The device's tight ties to the various storefronts, coupled with the company's vast selection of movies, TV episodes, books, and music, set the Kindle Fire apart from the crowded pack of generic Android tablets, which can play content but have no direct hooks to stores (beyond the books and movie rentals in Google's Market). With the Kindle Fire, acquiring content and using it on your tablet looks to be seamless. More critically, seeing what's in the cloud for you to download should be simple, too--as simple as tapping on the content, and tapping Download. Of course, it's difficult to say just how deep and smooth the integration is, given the limited bits on display at the launch.

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