A Gut-Reaction Review of the Kindle Fire

Y'all already know that we decided to get Alexis a Kindle Fire for Christmas this year. It was delivered to our house yesterday. I've only had a few minutes to play with it, but I thought I would share some initial thoughts just in case you are on the fence about ordering one.

• It arrived in a box that said "Kindle Fire" right on the outside of the box. I have a couple of thoughts about that:

1) Thanks, Amazon, for providing me with an opportunity to learn that my neighbors are good people. In some neighborhoods, it would have been stolen off of the front porch.

2) Thanks, Amazon, for providing me with an opportunity to learn that while my kid can read, she isn't quite advanced enough to figure out that those words were enough to pretty much spoil any attempt at a Christmas surprise for her.

Yeah. so. I'm not a fan of having my purchases packaged in boxes that clearly identify the contents. Could you tell?

• The Kindle Fire itself really, really, really pretty. I'll share some photos and screen caps soon. One note--it's a little heavier than I expected.

• It didn't come with a micro USB cord. Fortunately, we have a few sitting around so I didn't have to go out and buy one. (It did come with a stand wall plug cord to charge it. I want a USB so I can hook it up to my laptop, though.)

• I only had about twenty minutes to work on setting it up for Alexis, but so far, so good. It's very easy to figure out how to navigate all of the screens. I'd say it's pretty much on par with navigating an iPhone.

• One-click purchasing is enabled by default. Since it is ultimately going to land in Alexis' hands, I disabled that faster than you read this sentence.

• So far I have installed Angry Birds and a couple of books. Like I said, I've had very limited time, but I spent the majority of it looking for a decent age-appropriate book or two that fell into the category of FREE. The selection of kid's books that are available at no charge (either for download or "check out") is extremely poor. So far. If I dig deeper and change my mind, I'll post an update. (Kids books start at about $3 and look to be priced roughly the same as physical copies.)

• A free one-month trial of Amazon Prime comes with the Kindle Fire. That's great and all, but Alexis is getting the Kindle Fire for Christmas. That means the free trial will be over by the time it actually gets any use. So, we won't get a chance to really check out the unlimited streaming that comes with an Amazon Prime account. To put it bluntly, that sucks. It's hard for me to gauge if a service is useful without actually using it.

More once I've had a few hours to sit down and whisper sweet nothings to it . . .

Comments

[melody]

Totally agree about the shipping box! We bought a kindle for our daughter for college and signed up for the email delivery notification. NEVER got an email but found the package on our front steps late one evening. As you said thank God for honest neighbors. She's really liking the kindle for text books and required reading.

[hello haha narf]

honest review appreciated. looking forward to more when you have had the time to get more acquainted.