Quote:
Originally Posted by wizwor
seems like everyone reviewing the Fire has an agenda. I think I'll just pick one up and see for myself.
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I stopped by Staples to grab one this morning. They were still waiting for the shipment to arrive. When I returned to the store after work, Fire posters were in the windows and there was a demo unit on display. After playing with the demo unit for a half hour, I bought two. I used Discover cash back to pay for the Fires, so my cost was $160/unit (Discover lets you purchase $25 Staples gift cards for $20).
My Fires were #2 and #3 sold at that store, so they are not exactly flying off the shelves.
I unboxed the unit when I got home. It was bigger and heavier than I expected. It's not TOO big or TOO heavy -- just a little bigger and a lot heavier than the Kindle I have been carrying around for a month. You won't slip it in a shirt pocket, but it easily slides into my front or back pants pocket which is nice if you are dashing through an airport.
Setup took just a few minutes. The keyboard is much better than my Storm2. Turns out bigger really is better and I like that the pressed key pops up above my fingertip as I type. It was painless to enter my wireless password and amazon credentials. My library loaded almost immediately. The Fire is a good ereader. It works in both orientations and the sepia color scheme is very comfortable for me. When you click a link in a book, the web integration is much better than on my Kindle.
I loaded the free Netflix app and watched an episode of The Office. This caught the interest of my oldest. He had 'no interest' in any tablet until tonight (he has a 14" laptop and a Droid2 phone), but monopolized the Fire for a full five hours. He gave Prime a thumbs up (better app than netflix and a surprisingly large library), installed some games (including a free version of Angry Birds), and surfed the web.
My wife also used the Fire for a half hour declaring it, "Awesome."
I didn't carefully measure the battery life, but 7-8 hours seems to be right on. College Boy returns to school tomorrow. I'll give this thing a thorough once over and post a followup. My first impressions are very positive.