Amazon's Kindle Fire
quickly became a powerhouse of media content consumption when it was
introduced in 2011, and Amazon's looking to maintain that momentum with
the just-announced Kindle Fire HD.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos took the
stage in Santa Monica, Calif. on Thursday to introduce the Kindle Fire
HD, a new umbrella that covers 7- and 8.9-inch tablets with a variety of
data options.
TechRadar was on hand to take the Kindle Fire HD in all its flavors out for a spin.
Kindle Fire HD specs and design
The
base 7-inch Kindle Fire HD is incredibly light, at 13.9 ounces and
8.8mm thin, with a rubbery backing that makes it easy to grip. The
new HD display packs a 1920x1200 resolution with in-plane switching and
254 PPI, and frankly it looks gorgeous. HD movies like The Hunger Games flow by with perfection, and games like Jetpack Joyride looked crisp despite their pixelated graphics. An
advanced true wide polarizing filter and omni-directional, full
spectrum color make the display look great from every angle, and a touch
sensor laminated to the display rather than simply being stacked on top
of it means a sharper image, better contrast and 25 percent less glare,
according to Bezos.
A new HD front-facing camera supports Skype
integration, and also provides a handy way to tell when the Kindle Fire
HD is upside-down, since there are no physical buttons on the front
bezel (volume and lock controls are on the side of the device). An HD tablet isn't complete without HDMI out, and the Kindle Fire HD sports bluetooth as well.
All
that would be meaningless if the Kindle Fire HD didn't pack a punch,
and under the hood you'll find the TI OMAP 4470 processor, 16GB of
storage (vs. the Kindle Fire's 8GB), new dual stereo speakers with Dolby
Digital Plus, and two dual-band 2.4 and 5GHz Wi-Fi antennas for more
consistent and speedier connections. Combined
with new-ish MIMO tech that improves reception of redundant signals,
all-in-all the Kindle Fire HD's Wi-Fi is reportedly 41 percent faster
than the latest Apple iPad and 54 percent faster than the Google Nexus 7.
That
all sounds great on paper, though in practice the Kindle Fire HD may be
overreaching a bit - it stuttered for up to 10 seconds as we switched
between games, videos, music, web, periodicals, and other categories on
the home screen, though the new carousel/quick access interface is
snappy enough. Pre-order from Amazon UK
Games took a rather long time to load as well, though that may come down to developers more than the hardware itself.
The
Kindle Fire HD brings several new features that streamline the user
experience: Whispersync saves game, book (audio books, too) and movie
progress in the cloud, and X-Ray for movies (using IMDB) can tell you
what actors are in every scene, providing profiles, filmographies and
everything else you expect from the site. They've even got X-Ray for textbooks now.
"Immersion
Reading" fuses audio and text books for, mixing the two together by
highlighting words on the screen as the narrator speaks them.
And
Kindle FreeTime lets parents set different time limits for different
types of content, so kids can read unlimited books but only play, say,
an hour of movies and games.
Early Verdict
Like the new Kindle Paperwhite to the original Kindle, the Kindle Fire HD is an upgrade to the Kindle Fire in every way.
More
than anything, it continues to provide an easy-to-navigate gateway to
Amazon's massive content library, and now more than ever before,
everything is in the cloud. Buggy navigation can be fixed, so we'll reserve judgment until the device ships.
The
7-inch Kindle Fire HD ships Sept. 14 at $199 for 16GB, while the
8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD ships for $299 on Nov. 20, also with 16GB.
There's
also a $499 8.9-inch option with 32GB and 4G LTE compatibility - plans
will cost $50 per year for 250MB a month, 20GB of cloud storage, and $10
in Amazon credit.
Additional data will run 3GB for $30 and 5GB for $50 through AT&T, an Amazon representative revealed at the event.
The
8.9-incher was not available for a hands-on demo at the unveiling on
Thursday, though TechRadar did manage to snap some images of it.
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