Hardware, Schmardware – Let's Sell Some Content The business press has celebrated the $200 Kindle Fire as an iPad killer – a loss-leading product that's been priced to lure away potential iPad customers, with Amazon making back all its money (and then some) by selling untold petabytes of content from its own digital storefront. But all those consumers who pre-ordered the Fire knew this going in, right? And unlike most of its tablet competitors, the Fire lacks a camera, 3G data connectivity, and a slot for removable storage.Īs an assembly of physical components, the Fire lives at the bottom of the tablet food chain – and this limits what the Fire can actually do as a piece of mobile hardware. The Fire's processor, a 1GHz dual-core chip, appears all but insufficient for fluid, silky-smooth web browsing, an area where I found performance to be preternaturally slow. The Fire's 7-inch, 1024圆00 screen is too small for many key tablet activities. The Fire isn't a dud, but its real-world performance and utility match neither the benchmarks of public expectation, nor the standards set by the world's best tablets. >The Fire is a fiendishly effective shopping portal in the guise of a 7-inch slate.īut everything I describe above accounts for just the first five minutes of Kindle Fire use.
And then they will marvel at a device that really does bring something fresh and clever to the tablet space – namely, an insanely low price. They will issue themselves hearty high-fives for having the foresight to purchase the year's hottest gadget, sight unseen. These lucky few will bask in early adopter bliss. When all those people who pre-ordered the Kindle Fire receive their tablets in the mail this week, they will rip open their new toy's bespoke cardboard packaging – it looks nothing like a typical Amazon shipping box – and be greeted by a playful home screen that comes personalized with their very own name.
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