Amazon Kindle Fire HD shortreview

Plus

• Sharp, warm screen
• Unmatched media library
• Highly streamlined UI

Minus

• Online stores are sluggish
• Lack of core tablet functionality
• Poor app store

Starting from just £159, and offering a 7-inch HD display and a 1.2GHz dual-core CPU, the Amazon Kindle Fire HD appears to offer great value for money.

But it also needs to offer a stand-alone tablet experience that's capable of matching - or even surpassing - its illustrious rivals.


The Amazon Kindle Fire HD certainly matches the Nexus 7 in terms of price and raw hardware, and it comfortably trumps the iPad mini on price and screen resolution.
But, as we've come to realise, Apple's dominance in the tablet market has been built on strong design, coupled with a peerless content ecosystem and a super-slick UI.

The Amazon Kindle Fire HD may be cheap, but ultimately it will still need to embrace all three of these key elements if it's to succeed.
If you still think of Amazon Kindles as those little monochrome holiday companions, then you should know that the Amazon Kindle Fire HD is a completely different beast.
Rather than focusing on the very specific job of downloading and reading electronic books, this is an all-purpose tablet that acts as a window onto Amazon's wider multimedia world - films, music, apps and games are all included in the Kindle Fire HD's remit.
With that in mind, the Amazon Kindle Fire HD is a much simpler, purer design than the original Kindle.
The emphasis here is on the screen first and foremost, with the only hardware controls coming in the shape of some weedy and difficult-to-locate volume and power buttons on top of the device, right alongside its 3.5mm headphone jack.

The lack of a fixed home key adds to that minimalistic vibe (we'll discuss the effect that has on usability later). The only detail on the front of the device is a 1.3-megapixel camera for video calls - there's no rear-mounted camera here.
Despite that impossibly cheap price point, the Amazon Kindle Fire HD doesn't feel like a cheap device. It's solid in the hand, with none of the creak you find in many budget Android tablets.
There's a nice contrast between the Amazon Kindle Fire HD's smooth, glass front and its grippy matte back. It's quietly pleasing from a tactile perspective, even though it lacks the sheer machined precision and premium feel of Apple's tablets.
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