IsaGeeks

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mah newest obession - you probably *need* one.

Hi. My name is Brian, and I’m a gadget junkie.  (Everybody say, “Hi, Brian!”)

The number of Apple products I own borders the absurd, and you can ask anyone in the office about my mobile phone addiction. Verizon absolutely loves me – I’m pretty sure they own at least one of my kidneys for all the phone upgrades I’ve done to get the latest and greatest hardware.

So when Amazon (which is my second love next to Apple) said they were going to release a tablet device – the Amazon Kindle Fire – there really wasn’t any question about getting one. Oh, sure – I tried to tell myself I didn’t need it; I already own an iPad, so why do I need an Android tablet?

The answer is so I can review it for you guys. At least, that’s what I tell my wife. There probably needs to be a show on Discovery Channel about people like me.

The Kindle Fire packaging. Note the quick-start card behind the unit.

I received my Fire in the mail today, and it came in a plain brown “no-hassle” box with the device, a power adapter, and a quick-start card. (Yes, card – no manual.)  It was extremely easy to set up: Open the zip strip on the box, take the Fire out, and hit the power button on the bottom. (Which is, coincidentally, the only button on the device.)

The first thing that happens is the Fire walks you through the interface. This is almost unnecessary – the interface is simplistic and very easy to use. There is navigation across the top that lets you choose from different types of media (books, music, videos, apps, etc). Your most recently accessed items appear in the center of the screen, and you can quickly swipe through them to an app or book you just used.

Once you’ve completed the brief walkthrough of the device, you’re off and running. Mine came already attached to my Amazon account, so when I went to the Apps area, there were apps I’d previously purchased, but they were “in the cloud” – meaning they were saved on Amazon’s servers, not a physical drive on the device. I was able to download all my old apps by pressing a single button for each app, which was nice.

The video playback is pretty spectacular. When using it on my home network, I could stream a feature-length movie (Inception, because it’s awesome) without any stuttering or interruption. I was able to rewind and fast forward with no issues, and the sound quality is pretty good through the two speakers at the top of the device.

I was fooling around under the hood, and the settings are pretty limited, especially for an Android device. This is probably a good thing – it allows less mucking about with the operating system, and ensures that the device runs as Amazon intended.

Web browsing is an interesting thing on the Fire. Amazon replaced the standard Android browser with their own, and it actually works better than the Android version. I had the same experience with email: the email app included with the Fire is easier to set up and use than the standard Android version.

Bottom profile of the Kindle Fire.

There are a few problems with the Fire, however. The first problem I ran into was when I fired up a game, and the sound came blaring out of the speakers.  There’s no external volume control – you have to bring up a shortcut to the settings, choose the volume control, and turn it down from there. Not really a deal breaker by any stretch, but don’t start playing a game when you’re supposed to be taking the trash out. I’m just saying.

I also noticed that once you get the Fire really multitasking (for example, downloading several apps at once), the screen becomes a bit unresponsive. You have to wait for the device to catch up to what you’ve asked it to do before it’ll let you move on to another task.

The last thing is there is no access to the Android Marketplace. (This is where most Android users buy their apps.) You can only buy Android apps from Amazon’s App Store. This makes sense when you think about it: Amazon has essentially subsidized the Fire down to $200 with the expectation that you’ll buy content from them. Allowing you to buy your apps somewhere else doesn’t make good business sense. That having been said, I don’t like being forced to use Amazon for Amazon’s benefit. Still, the apps in the Amazon store are kind of “vetted” – there are no real junk apps in there (unlike the Android Marketplace).

Isagenix To Go works pretty well with the Fire. The 7″ screen is large enough for apps and books, but it’s just a tad small to read some of the documents we have on it. On the other hand, the flip chart looks pretty good, and videos look spectacular.

Here’s the bottom line: If you’re looking for a (much) cheaper alternative to an iPad, this is the way to go. It works very well, it’s simple to use, and will do pretty much everything you need it to.