My Review of the New Amazon Kindle Fire

Have you seen the new Amazon Kindle Fire?  It is awesome!  I per-ordered mine from the Amazon website in September, and just received it last Wednesday.  I felt like a kid waiting for Christmas morning to get here.  I was so excited when it finally came!   I was on my way home from the DMV when my husband called me and said “Where are you at?  Can you stop at the store before you get home and get a coke?”  Sure, I said.  Me, “hey did my kindle come today?”  No, he said.  Then I heard him giggling (yes he giggled), and had the nerve to play with me about my kindle not coming.  I said “don’t play with me, did it come or not?”  Him, “can you just stop at the store and get a coke?”  Me, “I am going to smack you when I get home for terrorizing me.”  (No, I did not really smack him but I did fuss a bit)

My kindle was delivered that day and he was trying to aggravate me, because he knows I have been patiently waiting for it.  Alright, back to the review.  I would first like to say that I am not being paid to give this review or compensated in any way.  I just love the Kindle Fire and wanted to share my review with you all.

When you take the Kindle Fire out of the box, the battery is already 1/2 charged.  Which was cool because you can start playing with it right away.  Registering the Fire was a snap.  If you purchase the Kindle Fire from Amazon it comes to you already registered to your account.  When you turn the Kindle Fire on for the first time it starts to update the software.  Of course you can choose to stop the download of the update and do it later, but I chose to go ahead and let it update.  When you click ‘Web’ it will ask you to connect to a wireless network.  After you find your wireless network and put in the key code you are ready to go.

The display looks great!  It is clear and bright, and the graphics are wonderful.  Everyone is comparing the Kindle Fire to the Ipad, which I can not do, I have never used an Ipad.  This is the first tablet that I have ever had or used.  I wanted to see what a  game would be like on the Fire, so I downloaded Angry Birds.  AWESOME!  The game installed fast and play was smooth.  I must admit that I also wanted to see what all the hype was about with Angry Birds.  I can see how flinging little birds and smashing them into little green pigs can become addicting.  So with my curiosity quenched on the Angry Bird game, I moved on.  Now my husband is addicted to Angry Birds. (it could be worse, right?)

I next set up my email account.  You can easily set up your gmail, hotmail, yahoo mail and a few others in just a few clicks.  Put in your username and password and you are ready to read mail.  The controls are pretty simple to use.  You can delete, reply, forward and even send new mail.  The only thing that I see you can’t do is move your mail to different folders.  Which is ok, I can use my laptop for that later.  You can also move your mail to different folders, which I originally didn’t see this option available.  You have to touch the sync icon at the bottom of the screen, and then you will be able to move a message if you choose.

I have read a few reviews that said the Amazon Silk browser was slow and unresponsive.  I didn’t find that to be true.  All the websites I viewed loaded pretty fast and looked great.  I really didn’t expect the websites to look just like they do on my laptop (but smaller) and they did.  I can even read my blog on the Kindle Fire.  I also typed in the address for a few of the other blogs I follow and they loaded pretty fast also.  You can also open multiple tabs on the Silk Browser, which helps when viewing several sites at the same time.  I am very impressed!

With your new Kindle Fire you get a free month of Amazon Prime.  I wanted to see how movies streamed on the Fire, so I chose ‘My Best Friends Wedding’ and touched play.  The picture was crisp and clear, and looked just as good as a movie streaming on my laptop.  There was no lag or buffering time.  Yep, you guessed!  It was AWESOME!  I am not sure if I would ever sit and watch a whole movie on the Fire, but it is good to know that I would be able to if I chose to.  You can also purchase movies and download them on the Fire, and carry it with you to a doctors appointment to watch in the waiting room.  Which I may do, you never know.

Now as for reading a book on the Kindle Fire… at first it was a shock to my eyes.  I don’t think I will be able to read as long on this device as I did on my Kindle Keyboard.  There are 3 different setting for the screen color when reading a book.  You have the black text on white back ground, white text on black background, and brown text on light tan background.  I prefer the last one.  It is easier on my eyes and I can read longer with that setting.  There is still all the same features when reading, dictionary look up, highlighting text, adding your own notes.  It’s all still there, only better.

I like the carousel.  With a swipe of your finger you can search through all your books and applications.  You can also add books and apps to your favorites.  The only feature that I do not see is that you can not create ‘categories’ for your content.  If you can I have not figured out how to do it.  If you figure out how to add categories, please feel free to share it with me.

I know there are office apps that you can purchase and download, but I haven’t done that yet.  I am not sure if I am willing to pay $15 for the application either, especially when I have Microsoft Office on my laptop.  All in all I love my Kindle Fire.  The price is great for what you get.  The only thing that was not included in the box was a usb cord, but we can purchase one of those pretty cheap on eBay or amazon.

How do you like your Kindle Fire?  Please feel free to share any tips or tricks you may know.  I love learning new things!

Happy Reading!