Roundup of Early Kindle Fire Reviews

[Agent OrangeZ]

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I am so glad I came to MacRumors today for this vital piece of Apple news.

 

[Xenomorph]

Like I've seen others say, I'm more interested in the new Nook Tablet. Twice the RAM (and more buttons) than the Kindle Fire.

I have a Nook Color and an HP TouchPad (in addition to my iPad 2). The Nook Color gets daily use, and the HP TouchPad just sits.

I got the TouchPad because of the fire-sale, and because of the hope it would get the love the Nook Color has received. It has beefier hardware, but that has mostly gone unused.

If the Nook Tablet comes out with all the power of the TouchPad, in the lovable 7" form-factor and all the tweak-ability of the original Nook Color, then I may sell both my Nook Color and the HP TouchPad and get the Nook Tablet.

The Kindle Fire? It may sell a lot. Initial reviews didn't seem that great, and the fact that it's missing buttons and an SD card slot don't help.

 

[johnytwobax]

The Amazon Kindle Fire is sure to be popular this holiday season among parents who always buy the wrong thing.

Mind including your source on that quote? Or at least include quotation marks...

 

[striker33]

Never judge an android device till it has a custom rom on it.

If someone manages to get say, CM7, working on it, it'd be awesome.

 

[Lightey]

I love how you guys pick the ****** parts of the reviews.

Whoever wrote this is an obvious Apple fanboy and is butthurt that the iPad isn't an e-reader.

 

[hobo.hopkins]

I wasn't aware that kindle is runnin on iOS5...

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Where does it say it's a flop?
You got sales numbers?
Customer satisfaction reports?

I'm sure he meant with the reviewers; calm down about it.

I hope that they can improve this, if for no other reason than to incentivise Apple to lower the price of the iPad or really load up the feature set in the next revision.

I love how you guys pick the ****** parts of the reviews.

Whoever wrote this is an obvious Apple fanboy and is butthurt that the iPad isn't an e-reader.

Imagine that...a fan of Apple writing on MACRUMORS. Judging from your post, I'd say you were the one who is a little "butthurt" by this article.

 

[Prodo123]

Once again, we get the "it's good, but it's no iPad" attitude.

Which in the tablet market, usually means the beginning of the end.

It's no iPad, but it's $200.

 

[marksman]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/9A334)

I was really hoping for something from the fire. Seems where they feel down is in what they had.

As apple has shown you can leave features and items out of your products as long as the ones you include work extremely well.

They had to cut things out to get to the price point but the problem is it seems the stuff left is not highly polished and that will be a problem.

 

[dBeats]

Waa waa waa waaaaaaaaaa. You Lose!

 

[Yamcha]

A bit disappointing based on those reviews.. I had high expectations, even though it's missing many features I kinda thought it would deliver in terms of performance, but If it's sluggish I don't think its worth investing $200 on..

You know even having used an iPad, I think the best tablet out there is the Playbook.. That is if you like the experience you find on a Laptop or Desktop, I'd say with confidence the Playbook is the only tablet that gives you closest experience to what you see on a desktop..

 

[QAZWSXEDCRFV]

The Amazon Kindle Fire is sure to be popular this holiday season among parents who always buy the wrong thing.

+1

However, if people cant afford the hefty price tag of the iPad, i guess its an option, or just get a credit card! haha

 

[xibis]

My kindle fire is on it's way to my house. Not loving what i'm seeing on first impressions so this may end up on ebay because I would imagine the week before christmas this will be one hot item.

 

[gatearray]

"The Kindle Fire can handle about 80 percent of what I want to do on an iPad, for 40 percent of the price. And much of what's missing won't be missing for long."

- You just have a 50% worse user experience to contend with ... No thanks. I'd rather read a book on my kindle iphone app.

And let's not forget, half the storage space as the iPad (8gb vs 16gb).

 

[Consultant]

Keep in mind that you can score a 16GB iPad with 10 hour battery life from Apple refurb for as low as $299.

 

[Laird Knox]

Never judge an android device till it has a custom rom on it.

If someone manages to get say, CM7, working on it, it'd be awesome.

And therein lies one of the biggest problems for me with Android. I don't want to mess around with it to get it working reasonably well. I've spent plenty of years tinkering and now wish to spend my time on other pursuits. Some people enjoy custom ROMs and tweaking settings but I'm over it.

 

[matt90036]

honestly you will be better off getting refub iPod touch for $179, not only you will get huge app support but also $20 bucks for movies and books. of course watching a movie on a 7 inch screen will be better experience kindle fire.

 

[daxomni]

Once again, we get the "it's good, but it's no iPad" attitude. Which in the tablet market, usually means the beginning of the end.

The end of Apple's desire to further innovate beyond a $500 low-res content consumption device?

 

[Ugg]

A positive review from MSNBC:

Kindle Fire review: Yes, it's that good

For me and I think many others as well, the camera and the GPS are very important. I don't think I could make the Fire work for me.

 

[roadbloc]

Interesting how MR picked out all the bad reviews. Many sites including Gizmodo have more positive things to say about the Kindle Fire.

I think it has a place in the tablet market. A well thought out low-end tablet and e-reader for them who are unwilling to fork out the £400 for an iPad.

 

[striker33]

And therein lies one of the biggest problems for me with Android. I don't want to mess around with it to get it working reasonably well. I've spent plenty of years tinkering and now wish to spend my time on other pursuits. Some people enjoy custom ROMs and tweaking settings but I'm over it.

Its not a problem with Android at all.

The problem lies with companies modifying android and putting their crapware over the top of it. Companies such as Orange are notorious for ruining phones with their bloatware and changing the appearance of the UI. So far its only Samsung who have actually managed to get it right.

Theres nothing wrong with the normal Android UI. Dont understand why so many companies want to change it.

 

[paul4339]

it's not the device that counts (in this case) - devices can be made better over time and the problems can be worked out and features can be added.

It's the quality assurance that matters for Amazon in this case.

So far we only have some reviews, but if Amazon is considered a quality service, by releasing a product that doesn't meet user expectations (or inconsistent) it reflect poorly on the whole company.


For example, Apple won't let crap out the door - yes they have somtimes have problems, but they tend to release solid products over and over again, which reflects on their reputation and sets consumer expectations.


Reading books, Amazon cloud and the Silk browsing are what Amazon is betting on and promoted... they have to ensure that these works extremely well.



Otherwise, if you begin to release crap, you start looking like crap.


.

 

[Laird Knox]

And therein lies one of the biggest problems for me with Android. I don't want to mess around with it to get it working reasonably well. I've spent plenty of years tinkering and now wish to spend my time on other pursuits. Some people enjoy custom ROMs and tweaking settings but I'm over it.

Its not a problem with Android at all.

The problem lies with companies modifying android and putting their crapware over the top of it. Companies such as Orange are notorious for ruining phones with their bloatware and changing the appearance of the UI. So far its only Samsung who have actually managed to get it right.

Theres nothing wrong with the normal Android UI. Dont understand why so many companies want to change it.

That's a bit of picking nits but the base argument is sound. I don't want to dink with the ROMs. Does it really matter if that is because of Google, Orange or Amazon?

There is a great community for hacking the ROMs and I think that is fantastic. I'm just saying I'm not interested in dealing with that. Now there is always a chance I might want to use an Android device to power some project but that's a hack beyond basic functionality.

 

[Doc750]

man these reviews are a bit disappointing. I was really looking forward to getting mine in the mail tomorrow. I hope the rooting process comes out with in 30 days, before the return period is up on this.

 

[djrobsd]

Glad I got my 32gb touchpad.. for 50 bucks less

Doesn't look good for Amazon here. Glad I scored a TouchPad. The TouchPad is as close to an iPad as any tablet I've ever played with, and the fact that I can run both WebOS and Android is a huge score too!!

 

[*LTD*]

Never judge an android device till it has a custom rom on it.

If someone manages to get say, CM7, working on it, it'd be awesome.

A what?

Rome?? I was there last year. Had some great pizza.

Signed,

Joe Average.

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it's not the device that counts (in this case) - devices can be made better over time and the problems can be worked out and features can be added.

Tell that to RIM, Motorola, HP.

Time is something players don't really have in this market. You either take the segment by storm and really redefine things, or you're facing an uphill battle. The Apple device in the segment doesn't really help.