Posted on 09/29/2011 8:30:46 AM PDT by Kaslin
Brother and sister gadget freaks, by now you’ve seen the news: Amazon has introduced four new Kindles — one of them a 7-inch tablet for the low, low price of $199. Is it time for Apple to start crapping itself? Let’s take a look.
At the low end you have the new Kindle, much like the old Kindle 3 I love so dearly. The cheap-ass “keyboard” is gone, replaced with a simple-looking row of controls under the screen. You can get it for as low as $79, if you’re willing to look at ads instead of book covers on your screen saver. Or you can pay $109 if you aren’t.
This one is WiFi only — and that’s fine by me. Melissa has the WiFi-only Kindle 3 and I have the one with 3G, but I’ve found that for most people, it’s probably a convenience not worth the extra fifty bucks. I think 3G connectivity is a must for a tablet — but we’ll get back to that in a bit.
My one complaint about the Kindle 3 is that the page-turning buttons are much too easy to hit by accident, especially if you like to read laying down on your side. The new buttons solve that problem. It’s also quite a bit smaller and lighter, more than I’d even hoped.
Amazon is getting wonderfully close, I think, to the time when they’ll give out Kindles for free with some kind of “Kindle Prime” book-buying subscription. Two years sounds about right.
For another twenty or thirty bucks — $99 with ads, $139 without — you can buy a Kindle Touch. It’s not quite as small and light as the new Kindle Untouched, but it’s still smaller than your Kindle 3. Bring the price up to $149, and you’ve got 3G added to the soup.
But the Touch still features an E Ink screen, which is great for reading, but lousy for manipulating. E-Ink can refresh the page only twice each second. To me, adding touch to E-Ink is like adding an aquarium to the dashboard of your car. Sure, it looks pretty — but what is it really going to do for you? However, if Amazon has given the interface enough Ooh-Pretties, maybe this will be a show-stopper. For me, though, I’d stick with the $99 model.
And what’s with charging $20 to get rid of ads on the Untouched, but $30 to get rid of them on the Touch? That silly kind of pricing signal tells me that Amazon has developed the Touch for status-buyers, and not because touch ads anything vital to the user experience.
If you need a keyboard, you can get the “new” Kindle Keyboard for $99 with ads, or $139 without. Near as I can tell, it’s last year’s Kindle 3 with a new name and a lower price. Nifty, if you can’t live without the World’s Worst Keyboard™. This is old news — don’t bother.
But the real showstopper is the Kindle Fire. Imagine: A full-color, multitouch, 7-inch Android tablet for just $199. Has the iPad killer finally arrived?
No. But that’s not to say the Fire isn’t a nice piece of kit — for what it is.
First off, the Fire was not developed by Amazon’s in-house Kindle team. Instead, Amazon went to the builder of RIM’s ill-starred PlayBook, and told them to plop in a slower processor and strip the rest of the hardware down to the bone. The goal? Hit a BOM of $180 so they could sell the thing for $199.
What’s left out?
• Size. 7″ versus 9.6″ on the iPad, and 10.1″ for many (most?) other Android tablets. That’s about 40% less screen real estate — you’re one adult-male finger away from blocking a big chunk of your screen. There’s a reason no one has yet to make a success out of that small a tablet.
• Real multitouch. iPad can distinguish between all ten of your fingers at once. Fire does but two.
• Camera. You won’t be getting anything like FaceTime.
• Memory. 8 gigs. That’s not many apps. iPad starts at 16GB and ramps up to 64.
• 3G. Not offered. I know I’ve soured on 3G for my Kindle, but it’s an absolute must for a real tablet computer.
• Battery life. Kindle gives you 7.5 hours of video, iPad gives you 10-plus.
• That wet dream BYTE magazine claimed Amazon would sell for a mere $139, but sharp VodkaPundit readers knew it would never happen.
What do you get?
• Access to pretty much all your Amazon Prime media purchases — music, TV, movies, books, or magazines.
In other words, Kindle Fire is the “media consumption device” so many people accused the iPad of being. And judged on that basis, I think this is a terrific bargain. The Fire isn’t a competitor to the iPad. It’s the device Apple hasn’t made yet: Fire is the iPad Air. You’ll store most of your files in the cloud, and do most of your heavy lifting on your desktop computer or your full-size, full-multitouch, full-memory tablet. For media consumption, 7″ should be just fine.
Personally, I don’t need anything to fill the “gap” between my iPad and my iPhone. But I think millions of people would like an inexpensive media player that offers easy and plentiful access to content.
Amazon has got a monster hit on its hands.
I use a 9” Pandigital Tablet/e-Book.
$199 and it works fine for what I need. No camera, and very few apps, but it is good.
I love Amazon, Kindle, and Jeff Bezos. They send me money every month.
I have the original Kindle. Still works great and I use it everyday. I did put in my order for the Kindle Fire though. I thought it was time to upgrade. And the price is much less than my original kindle cost me.
And Yes, I think Amazon has a hit with the Kindle Fire.
What makes it so much better than the original Kindle? I have a laptop and a regular Kindle....why would I want a Kindle Fire?
Yes, I’m curious about your thoughts, TWM, on the Kindle Fire, too—my husband is thinking about that for his Christmas present but wants to read some reviews.
I love Amazon, haven’t tried a Kindle, and I love Bezos. Bezos and I were aquaintences back in High School. Super smart guy, very personable, unlike alot of geeks. Wonder if he could give me a work at home job :)
If I heard correctly this morning on one of the news programs, "they" are already talking about an upgrade for the holiday season. Don't know what that would entail, but that seems to be the latest rumour.
If most of what you do is web-surfing, e-mail and entertainment, the Fire will serve your needs well without busting the bank.
It is a smart move on the part of Amazon to use the razor/blades idea for low-end tablets.
If you want a feature-rich tablet, go with iOS or Windows 8.
I see this affecting other Android tablets more than anything else.
Thanks for the tip!
For me it’s a fairly simple thing. This device appears to be a info-device. It’s not a lap-top, It’s not a I-pad. It’s a E-Book Reader, a music player and a Video player.
Mostly I like to read, but I also like my music, mostly Jazz with a sprinkling of everything else from Folk music to Heavy metal. This will allow me to read and play music at the same time.
It will play movies for me. I have one TV in the entire house. It’s the old saying 300 channels and nothing that I want to watch. Actually that’s not true, what I want to watch nobody else want to watch and vice-versa. Being a laid back guy I put on my noise-canceling headphones and listen to my music when the darn thing is on.
So to re-iterate it’s a info-device and at $199 that’s a price I can live with. If you want I’ll let you know how I like it in a few month’s when it comes out.
will I be able to see GBTV on the new kindle?
Just friend him on Facebook.
Glenn hasn't said anything about the kindle yet, but you can get a GLBT app if your so inclined.
Thanks....I thought it was out already? I would be interested in how you like it after you use it.
I looked at his bio. He was born to a teenage mother, and she only stayed married to his father for a year. Jeff was adopted when she remarried. Steve Job's mother was an unmarried university student and he ended up being adopted. I can't help but think that these days they may not have been born at all.
And no DRM, EVER.
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