Except...
I want to put a little bit of a slant on my review. After all, the reason I was very excited about the Kindle Fire when I first learned about it was not because I particularly wanted one for myself (though I did). I was much more intrigued by what a sub-$200 tablet could mean for education. After all, for years I've heard experts say that 1:1 computing initiatives (where every student in a school has a computing device that they carry around with them) becomes a real possibility once the cost for the device gets below $200. Have we finally arrived?
So I'm going to give three very brief reviews of the device. First, I'll review it as a personal media consumption device (which is how Amazon intends it to be used). Second, I'll review it as a possible administrative tool in an educational setting (Could it be a low cost replacement to an iPad for administrators?). Finally, I'll review it as a possible 1:1 instructional device.
Review 1: The Kindle as a Media Consumption Device
Let's get this straight: It's not Amazon that has been referring to the Kindle Fire as a potential iPad killer, or at the very least as the first serious threat to the iPad in the tablet market. That's been all the doing of journalists. Amazon has been saying since the beginning that the Kindle Fire was about media consumption, about driving people to Amazon's content.
And at that, the device gets high marks. As an almost-tablet for watching movies, listening to music, or reading books, the device is great. It's easy to set up, it's mostly bug free, and since I purchased mine from the Amazon website, it came to my house preconfigured with my settings in it, so it was ready to go almost as soon as I got it out of the box (I did have to put in my Wi-fi settings, but that's true for any wireless device). If I'd purchased the device at Best Buy or some other place other than Amazon, I would have had to link it to my Amazon account, but that takes no more effort than typing in the email address associated with your Amazon account and your Amazon password (I know because I deregistered the device as soon as I connected to the Wi-Fi so that I could see what registration was like).
Once setup was complete, all of my previous Amazon digital content (about 80 MP3's, all five seasons of DEXTER, and a couple of books) was available on my Fire to browse in Cloud mode or download for offline consuming. It was a breeze. And since I'd already signed in with an Amazon account, there was no need to register for the Amazon app store. I was ready to go.
I'm very happy with my Kindle as a personal device. Some people have complained that it's too small, as it's only about half the size of an iPad, but I actually LOVE its small size. Any smaller and I'd have trouble reading the text, and any larger (as in the size of an iPad) and I think I'd find it cumbersome to carry around. This Fire is right about the size of a cheap paperback book. It would easily fit in a purse (not that I have one). Heck, it would probably fit in some of my pockets. Others might prefer a bigger screen, but I am very happy with this.
Other people have complained that the screen responsiveness isn't as exact as an iPad. I wouldnt' know. I haven't spent a lot of time with an iPad. I can say it's on par with the screen of pretty much every other Android device I've ever played with. It works fine for me. Others have said that the Kindle Reader app, the thing that Fire ought to excel in, is a little buggy. I'd say I have seen that. There have been a couple of times when I've had to touch the side of the page more than once or twice to get the page to "turn," but it hasn't been a huge deal to me.
Others have complained that the Silk browser is buggy and slow. A couple of blog posts ago I wrote about how, indeed, the browser is slower when Amazon's "Accelerator" caching is turned on. I've since turned my caching off, and I'd say the browser is fast enough for me. I'm not bothered by the little bit of a wait, and I haven't found a web page yet that didn't display correctly.
I will say this, though: I am more bothered than I thought I would be by the lack of a microphone and a camera. When I first read that they weren't included, I thought, "No big deal. I don't plan to Skype with this thing, and I have plenty of other devices that can take digital pictures." But I wasn't thinking big enough. I went into the Amazon app store a couple of days ago looking for a bar code reading program, and there wasn't a one to be found. I had to think about that for a moment before realizing that without a camera the app would be useless. I did the same thing the next day looking to see if Shazaam was in the app store. Shazaam is pretty useless without a microphone, so what's the point? I'm assuming that I'll continue to find apps that aren't going to do what I want because there's no microphone or camera. Or GPS for that matter (The Fire is the perfect size to function as a GPS navigator).
I understand why Amazon left those items out, and they were right to do so. Adding all of them would probably have increased the price of the Fire by a good $100 or $150, and that would have impacted my decision to purchase it. At $199, I purchased the Fire immediately, almost as an impulse purchase. If it had been priced at $349, though, I would have been much less impulsive about the purchase, and I would have started to question why I shouldn't just go ahead and fork over another $150 and get a low end iPad. So Amazon had to drop some things to get to that affordable price point, but I'm finding the missing items are bothering more than I expected.
All that said, I don't regret the purchase. I love the Fire, and I love even more what it and devices like it could mean for the field of education. I'll write about that, though, in a later blog post. For now, I'll close out this post with an overall verdict on the Fire as a personal device. And as I'm an educator, I'll use a report card analogy...
Grade: B
Teacher's Comments: Love the price, the ease of setup, and the size. Hate that there's no camera, microphone, or GPS, but considering the price and what you DO get, this device is worth considering, especially if all you're planning to do with a tablet is browse the Internet, check Facebook, and watch a movie.
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