Amazon's Kindle Fire – First Impressions

I received my Kindle Fire last night and upon opening the box and getting a good first look at it, my initial reaction was: “Damn! This thing is small!” Then, after remembering that the Fire is a 7″ tablet designed primarily for Amazon’s products and services and that my previous expectations were skewed somewhat, I settled down and started looking at it from a different perspective: Awe.

The Fire ships with just the tablet itself and the charging cord. Nothing else is required. It also shipped with a near full charge, which was a good thing. I imagine that Amazon probably felt that buyers would want to jump into things pretty fast when they received theirs, so an initial charge is a nice touch. Normally, it takes about 4 hours to completely recharge the Fire according to their user guide.

The Fire also has a user guide pre-installed to help users get up to speed quickly. There are also a few apps pre-installed as well along with any content you may have already purchased from Amazon such as movies, books, magazines, music, etc. This content is stored on Amazon’s Cloud if you chose to store it there initially.

After going through the first steps of setting up the wi-fi, registering my Fire and so forth, I was able to instantly access all of my digital purchases that I had stored on Amazon’s Cloud. This in itself, knocked my socks off. No having to hunt down anything, connect a cable or wait on a long download. It. Was. Right. There. This to me was like being greeted by a good friend. It just felt good.

Music played flawlessly and sounded very good with the two speakers mounted on top of the Fire. Movies also played very well with no long buffering or hesitation. That’s two things I counted on to, hopefully, work well out of the box. I wasn’t disappointed. The books I had previously bought were there too. Easily readable with page turns accomplished with either a ‘Tap’ on the right of the screen or a gentle ‘swipe’ from right to left. I don’t presently have any magazines to check out on the Fire but I’m sure that’s not too far off.

There is a jack on the bottom of the Fire to plug in a set of ear buds similar to those that come with the iPhone for private listening. I’m sure this will get a lot of use when visiting my doctor. Waiting room times will hopefully, seem to be much shorter. Right.

Speaking of using the Kindle Fire, one thing to keep in mind is that the tablet is wi-fi only. Once you’re out of range, you have no connection to the web. So make sure that you have any content already downloaded before leaving home unless where you’re visiting has wi-fi too. In this case, you can check email, browse the web, connect with friends on Twitter and more.

The browser seems pretty fast and all of the websites I typed into the address bar loaded pretty fast. You can bookmark them too so going back can be faster next time around. Typing on the Fire’s virtual keyboard is touch and go for me as I’m more used to typing on my laptop’s physical keyboard. My iPhone gives me fits typing sometimes too so I can’t place the blame entirely on the Fire for this.

Since my first encounter with the Fire last night and this morning, I’ve grown more accustomed to it and appreciate what it can do. It’s no iPad killer nor is it going to be an Android-based tablet killer. It’s not designed for that. Instead, the Fire will enable a user to access their content either from Amazon’s Cloud or directly from the tablet itself. Books, movies, music, documents, etc. right at your fingertips. This aspect it seems to do quite well.

The cover for my Fire came via UPS this morning and is quite handsome. I recommend getting one for yours as the back of the Fire seems very slippery for some reason. I was concerned it may slip from my hands while using it. The cover readily cured this issue and also allows you to prop the Fire on it’s side to watch a movie.

After I’ve had it for longer than a day, I’ll post back with a follow up about such things as battery life and other ways to load content on it. I’ll let you know what I find as far as any weaknesses are concerned and strengths.