Amazon Kindle Fire HD
The Kindle Fire HD is the first Amazon tablet to hit the UK. With its 7in screen, dual-core CPU and tempting price, it appears a bargain. But is it?
“Cloud Drive offers 5GB of online storage for your documents, while Cloud Player stores up to 250 audio files”
● PrIce £159 ● comPany amaZon ● WeBSITe amazon.co.uk
It's been a long time coming, but Amazon’s tablet is finally available to buy in the UK. The Fire HD has a 7in (1280x800) 10-point touchscreen, dual-band Wi-Fi and a slightly faster processor than the standard Kindle Fire sold in the US. The Kindle Fire HD runs a highly customised version of Android 4.0. In fact, you wouldn’t even know it was running Android if it weren't for the occasional in-app advert for
Android apps on the Google Play store. Amazon would prefer you to think of the Fire HD as a touchscreen e-reader with extra capabilities, such as videos, music, games and apps. Amazon has done a great job of making a slick system that is both easy to use and intuitive.
Interface
We like the Fire HD's lock screen, which displays a different wallpaper each time you turn it on. However, unless you pay an extra £10 at purchase, you'll have to put up with special offers on the lock screen. The home screen has a menu for jumping to the various different types of media, with a carousel of recently used apps, books, websites and everything else. Below this you get a 'related items' carousel, which in essence shows contextual adverts for the item showing in the main carousel. For example, if it's a game, you'll see a list of games ‘Customers Also Bought’; if it's a website, you get a ‘Trending Now’ list; or shortcuts to creating a new email if the calendar, email or contacts app is highlighted above.
Tapping each menu item at the top of the screen displays the content stored on your device for that section. A toggle button at the top lets you switch to what's available in the cloud. Confusingly there are two separate cloud services: Cloud Drive and Cloud Player. The former provides 5GB of storage for your documents, photos and videos; the latter is just for music and lets you access all the tracks you've bought through the AmazonMP3 store, plus 250 of your own tracks. This is increased to 250,000 with a £22 annual subscription.
Similarly, you can upgrade your 5GB of fi le storage to 20GB for £6 per year, up to 500GB for £160 per year. The device itself has 16GB of storage (or 32GB for £199). It's possible to drag-and-drop fi les to the Fire HD as you would a USB fl ash drive, but we saw mixed results. Some photos were displayed with the wrong aspect ratio, and some MP3s were ignored.
Books and films
One of the main reasons to buy a Kindle is to read e-books, and the Fire HD’s interface is almost identical to a traditional E Ink Kindle. Of course, the experience is completely different. The Fire HD’s LCD isn’t nearly as easy to read in bright light, and it's refl ective. You get the option for a sepia look if black text on a white background is too dazzling, and there's a white-on-black mode, too. The Kindle Fire HD uses IPS panel technology, which offers very good viewing angles. The screen resolution is also suffi cient that characters are sharp and easy to read. Whispersync means you can carry on reading any title from where you left off, even if you pick up on a different device.
Amazon owns Lovefi lm, which means you can access Lovefi lm's library of on-demand movies. The selection isn't all that impressive, but more disappointing is the lack of offl ine viewing. At least movie soundtracks sound better than on most tablets, thanks to a pair of rear speakers with dual drivers and Dolby virtual surround technology.
Apps and browser
Amazon's Appstore has a lot of popular apps, but it's not as packed as Google's Play store. You'll fi nd top titles such as Angry Birds, Bad Piggies, Netfl ix, Facebook, Twitter, iPlayer and more, but no Google apps. The browser is based on Amazon's Silk technology and looks much like the standard Android browser. The default search engine is Microsoft's Bing, but if you delve into the Fire HD's settings you can change this to Google. The browser doesn't support Flash, so catch-up TV and YouTube videos are out of the question.
Hardware and performance
At just under 400g, the Fire HD is pretty heavy, and that's without one of Amazon's cases. It's very well put together, though, and feels like a solid slate, with no creaking or bending. You’ll fi nd a micro HDMI output, volume rocker, power button and headphone socket on its sides. A front-facing HD camera is primarily intended for Skype; there's no rear-facing camera. The Fire HD isn't as fast as we'd like. It doesn't feel as snappy as an iPad mini or Nexus 7, especially when browsing the web or launching apps. Scrolling around web pages shows a white screen until the content is loaded. In Geekbench 2, the Fire HD managed 1,124, which is signifi cantly lower than the Nexus 7’s 1,452. Running the SunSpider Javascript test it returned a score of 1,783ms – again, this is slower than the Nexus 7’s 1,665ms.
Specifications
7in (1280x800) capacitive multitouch IPS screen; Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich; 1.2GHz TI Omap 4460 dual-core processor; 16GB storage; dual-band 802.11b/g/n; 1.3Mp front camera; mini HDMI out; micro USB 2.0; accelerometer; 16.4Wh lithium-ion battery.
No comments:
Post a Comment